What’s your Lion?

Well we just missed the snow! It all hit up north. I think they said that Virginia Minnesota got 32 inches of snow within 24 hour hours. Needless to say they were all trapped. The snow wasn’t the light and fluffy kind. It the back breaking, heart straining kind. Well enough about the snow. Don’t want to talk to much about it, because it might come back and bite us. Well I’ve been reading a book called “In a Pit With A Lion On A Snowy Day” written by Mark Batterson. I’m not done with it yet. I will tell you that it is a great book. Eye opening on many things. This story does come from the Bible. Which I never realized it was in there. Read over the story a few times and it never sunk in until this book. This is the scripture 2 Samuel 23:20-21. It says this. There was also Benaiah son fo Jehoiada, a valiant warrior from Kabzeel. He did many heroic deeds, which included killing two of Moab’s mightiest warriors. Another time he chased a lion down into a pit. Then, despite the snow and slippery ground, he caught the lion and killed it. Another time, armed only with a club, he killed a great Egyptian warrior who was armed with a spear. Benaiah wrenched the spear from the Egyptian’s hand and killed him with it.   Benaiah did become David’s bodyguard because of his resume. Which this story is already pretty impressive without the Lion. Some did say that the Egyptian warrior was almost the size of Goliath. So for him to grab the spear from him and killed him with his own spear. That is impressive. So the Lion story just a little bit more impressive. How many of you can actually say that you would chase after a Lion and kill is with your hands. Not only chase it down, but jump into a pit that must have been slippery from the snow. The average size of a lion weighs 500 pounds. The teeth are strong enough to break through bones and the claws are sharp enough to tear your flesh right off. So how many would you chase one down now. Now most of us would look at the lion and might do these 2 things. We would either run away or be so terrified that we would faint and pretend we were dead. So let’s look at the Lion story even more closely. Now here’s Ben ( I’ll just call him Ben it’s shorter and easier to spell). He has choices to make. Does he go after the lion or just he stay put. Why does he chase after the lion? Well let’s look at his resume for his body guard job. Killing the Moab’s and Egyptian is impressive, but David is looking for someone that has courage and the faith to go with it. So if he do what God told him to do his resume without the lion would have looked just like everyone else. Now you add the death of the lion. Now David was impressed. He knew first hand how tough that might have been. Bingo he got the job. Ben could have backed down on any of these things but he didn’t. He chased after them. Were they tough? I would think so. Did he get hurt himself? I would imagine. The thing is it didn’t stop him. He knew what had to be done and he knew that God had his back. So what is your lion? Is it financial? Your weight? Addictions or your job? Maybe you started something and you failed at it? So here you are. Your stairing at your lion. Are you running away or towards your lion? See God never said that life is going to be easy. Even the lions that you are facing are going to be used by God. You might be thinking that I’m crazy. You are saying that God is letting me go through this tough time on purpose. Yep I am. Let’s put is this way. If a person would have never got drunk. Then eventually got tired of being drunk and found God and God changed his ways. We would never had AA. Or the individual that went through bankrupcies and loosing job after job. We wouldn’t have any financial books out there that have helped millions. See the troubles that you’ve gone through or are going through God wants to use those things for other people. There has been pastor’s that have fallen on there faces after trying to start a church and it not working. To find out another pastor had gone through the same thing and now has one of the strongest church’s in there community. If we didn’t go through tough times then how would we be able to help others. Yes we went through those tough times, but didn’t God still get us through them. So when we see the lions that are facing us we need to stand up and chase after it. Don’t let it chase us. Maybe we shouldn’t be asking God to get rid of the problem, but how make us strong and the answers to get through it to help others. Look at Peter. He denied Christ 3 times after he told Jesus he would die with him. Just imagine him hearing the rooster crow. I imagine every time he heard the rooster crow it reminded him of that day. Then Jesus asked him 3 times if Peter loved Him. Peter said yes 3 times. Bringing him to the love Jesus has for him. Now think on how all the disciples died. Maybe Peter had to go through that trial to incourage others and himself to stand up and die for the name of Jesus. I know for Christians we want our lives so perfect in every way. We never want to have hard times. If we never had hard times than everyone’s ministry would be boring. How would we be able to help others? See if a person was delivered from alcohol. What a ministry he could have. Not only to everyone that’s around him. He also could go to other countries where they do have drinking problems and help deliver them also. I look at my Lion’s in my life now and see how I can help others from them. See my lion right now is financies. When I left the Associate Pastor job that I had I took over a 1000.00 pay cut every month. Well that would hurt anyone’s pocket book. It did with us. We have to children to feed and one that needs diapers. Which is 20 bucks a box. It’s amlost worst than the price of gas. So we went into the prayer mode. Wondering why we were going through this if we were listening to God. Well needless to say we have to get our house up for sale or we’ll loose it. Some might wonder why I’m telling you this. It’s because I wouldn’t have it any other way. See if we had the money to keep going we wouldn’t have to put our faith out there for money. Now isn’t our God the God of the impossible. See the tougher the problem looks the more of God’s glory becomes. See when things look impossible God get’s all the glory. If things aren’t to impossible then we might give God some of the glory and then take the rest of the credit. I know in our Lion chasing we are about to kill that stinking lion and God is going to come out shining. Just look at our situation. The economy is on the decline. This is the worst time to sell a house. So what a better time to see God shine. Even though we are in a rough situation. I have peace about it all. I will say that I didn’t always have this peace. There were times that the lion was chasing me. Even a couple of times he might have been chewing on me. Not anymore. I’ve got him in the choke hold and he’s roaring for mercy. So don’t get scared when something pops out of the blue. When God tells you to do something. Do it. Run after it with all you have. Don’t worry about what’s around you. Just care about what God told you. Even though times get tough it didn’t catch God by suprise. He’s just waiting for the perfect time to straighten in out. So don’t give up and don’t stop chasing that lion on the snowy day. God Bless.