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2/15/24 Your Table

A family, known in their community as compassionless due to their uncaring attitude for everything other than satisfying their own needs, sat down for their evening meal. One table - adorned with a fine linen tablecloth and exquisite china - was set for the parents and their children. A second table for the grandparents was off to the side, set with a vinyl tablecloth and unbreakable plates and cups because they had grown feeble. Their shaking hands and poor eyesight had caused just too many spills and broken dishes for the family to trust them at the other table.

One day the young daughter of the family was playing house. She had a second table set up with her dishes and cups. Her mother entered the room and asked why she had the extra table. The daughter responded, “Oh, that’s for you and Daddy when you get old.”

Compassion is one of the characteristics of Jesus. He cared for others more than He cared for His own life. Families with little or no compassion for the plight of others are relatively useless in a society. Taking and rarely giving, while teaching their children to do likewise, they exhibit their unChrist-like attitude wherever they go. Imagine the ripple effect.

As a father, you have an astounding opportunity to add wealth wherever you and your family live, if you understand God’s plan for you. When you invest the wealth of Jesus in your children, not only do you give them the opportunity to lead honorable, significant lives before the Father; they also gain the ability to affect their immediate surroundings with that same immeasurable wealth and much needed compassion.

Let’s talk more!

Jim Corbett

2/14/24 No Options

“I have designed you to be advocates one to another. I have called you to watch out for your brother’s or sister’s best interests before your own. You are to lay your life down for them. That is the very basic heart involvement toward one another if you call yourself followers of My Son. There are no options. If you act in any other way toward each other, you are denying My love to them. You are a hypocrite if you do not love one another and then profess love for Me. Your praises are empty. Your worship is nothing but lies. Turn from carnal feelings and sensual motivations. Love one another as freely as you breathe. You will then testify of My love for you to a world that needs to understand the wonders of the cross.”

John 13:34-35 NIV

34) “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.

35) All men will know that you are my disciples if you love one another.”

John 15:12-14 NIV

12) “My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.

13) Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.

14) You are my friends if you do what I command.”

1 John 4:20a NIV

If anyone says, “I love God,” yet hates his brother, he is a liar.

It is always fascinating how we pick and choose the Bible verses that allow us to remain in our carnal ways of thinking, by-passing those that are definitive commands to follow. The Word is very clear about how we, as followers of Christ, are to act one to another; yet we gloss over some of the commands - not suggestions - of the Lord as if He really didn’t mean what He said.

The word “friend” in John v.14 above is a covenant term. Jesus was making a covenant statement about how we are to act one to another if we say we are in covenant with Him. It looks like He said we are “in covenant” with Him IF we love each other in the same manner that He loved us. Wasn’t He the One who gave up His life for us?

Yikes, Lord! Turn my heart to Your ways,

Jim Corbett

2/14/24 One Day

Harry Chapin wrote a song called “Cat’s in the Cradle.” It talks of a father who’s always too busy to spend time with his son, even though the son admires him and wants to be just like him when he grows up. At the end of the song, we learn the son turned out exactly like his father, prioritizing everything else above their relationship.

Each of our days is important enough to be numbered by God. He is looking to fulfill His purposes in the people He brings our way through us, especially our children. Our children should desire to be just like us because they experience us being just like Jesus toward them. That hope should be nurtured each and every day. It will not happen automatically one day in the future. It happens conversation by conversation, fulfilled promise after fulfilled promise, with a continual assurance and demonstration of their importance. They need to know you value your relationship with them, which will help them to understand God’s love for them.

God wants your children to grow up to be just like Jesus. The best example He has placed in their lives to show them the character of Jesus ought to be you. In what ways are you showing Him to them?

Let’s talk more!

Jim Corbett

2/13/24 Fully His

“Submit your needs to Me. I will cover them with My love. Submit your plans to Me. I will apply My wisdom, so that they have eternal value. Most of all, submit your heart fully to Me as Jesus did. I will enlarge it to include all that I am as your God.”

Proverbs 16:9 AMP

A man’s mind plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps and makes them sure.

Proverbs 20:24a AMP

Man’s steps are ordered by the Lord.

Isaiah 30:21 NIV

Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, “This is the way; walk in it.”

Matthew 10:29-31 NIV

29) “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father.

30) And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered.

31) So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.”

John 5:19-20 NIV

19) Jesus gave them this answer: “I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.

20) For the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does.”

What an astounding privilege - to have a loving Father Who cares about all of our days and desires to be involved in them for our good!

A spirit of compassionate insight (mourning) is the spirit that “drove” Jesus from His kingly station in the heavens down to earth to take on the form of one of His own created beings. He placed Himself “in the shoes” of each one of us both in this life and for eternity.

Feeling our present and future pain of separation from the Father, there was nothing that He could do but spend His life for us. His focus was on our loss. He cared about what would happen to us if He didn’t intervene on our behalf.

Having no separation between His heart and the heart of His Father, He also took as His own the loss that the Father had because of the sin of mankind, which caused separation. Father longed for all those He loved to cherish His glory for their well-being. Because the Father felt that way, so did Jesus - not in an elementary form of human caring, but with all of the compassions of the Father. When He moved in compassion, our needs and pains were taken on by Him as His own.

Own my heart, Lord,

Jim Corbett

2/13/24 Nothing More Important

We live in a throw-away society where products are geared toward planned obsolescence, newer is supposedly better; and why fix it when you can throw it away and get a new one. Well, that’s certainly not the way God wants us to approach our marriages and families. He asks us to do everything we can to monitor, rescue, rebuild, and help repair the lives we steward as husbands and fathers. He calls us to do it mainly on our knee

When the enemy attempts to harm those we steward, we must engage in spiritual warfare on behalf of those he’s attempting to destroy with everything we can muster by the power of the Holy Spirit. We’re to minimize other priorities and fight on their behalf until the war is won. Other than our personal relationship with Christ, there should be nothing more important to us than maintaining Christ-like relationships within our families and engaging in the restoration of either our marriages or our children when they are in peril.

As you appraise your marriage and the lives of your children, ask the Lord to show you His perspective. Ask Him to allow you to see them as He sees them. Do they have need of your spiritual intervention? Is it time for you to say, as Paul did, that you are as if in the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed in others? In your case, that would be your relationship with your wife and the welfare of your children. Is your approach as intense as Paul’s was? It should be!

Let’s talk more!

Jim Corbett

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