Chuck Colson in Breakpoint shared the following illustration. “It’s a cartoon staple: Donald Duck is quarreling with chipmunks, Chip and Dale. When Chip and Dale race up a tree, Donald Duck saws off the branch on which the chipmunks are sitting. But the laws of physics operate differently in cartoon land than in real life. When Donald finishes sawing through the branch, it doesn’t fall to the ground; the tree does.

“The cartoon is funny—but in real life, if someone saws off the branch we’re sitting on, there are dire consequences. This is just as true when it comes to the law as it is with trees.”

There’s a great tendency today among many, including some Christians unfortunately, to compromise convictions for convenience especially when we cut off the branches of God’s laws that we don’t like or want.

For instance, I recall an ad on the radio a few years ago reminding us of how many million people up to that date had died of AIDS. The ad pointed out that that was as many people as the entire population of Australia. For a hard-hitting emotional emphasis, the ad then says, “Could you imagine wiping out the entire population of a nation?”

Most of us will agree that help is urgently needed to stop the spread of this dreaded disease. However, while the importance of safe sex is emphasized—abstinence in most circles isn’t—which is the only safe sex outside of marriage. And what about the estimated 45 million babies who have been killed by abortion in the U.S. since abortion was made legal—not to mention the murderous atrocity of partial-birth abortion! Who will weep for these innocent, helpless children? That’s twice the population of Australia—the land of my birth. And I surely thank God that abortion wasn’t legal when my mother was carrying me! And I would dare to suggest that most, if not all, pro-abortionists were also thankful that abortion wasn’t the choice of their mothers.

In reality, can we Americans in particular expect God to deliver us from terrorism without when we legalize it from within? And how long will we justify and excuse irresponsible sexual and other sinful behaviors?

What we fail to realize is that God’s laws were given for our safety, wellbeing, and protection. When we distort or defy his laws to justify and excuse behavior that God calls sin, we don’t merely cut off the branches, we destroy the tree. In other words we ultimately destroy ourselves and the world of our children and our children’s children.

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, in your mercy please send—whatever it takes—a great spiritual awakening to our land while there is still time. Help us to see that we cannot defy your laws and live safely and securely—nor establish a safe and secure haven for our children and our children’s children. May we as a people turn back to you, the God who reminds us that “blessed is that nation whose God is the Lord.” Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, amen.”

1. Psalm 33:12 (NIV).

Clark Strand, a former Zen Buddhist monk, shared how “two years ago, on board a midday flight out of Memphis, Tenn., I suddenly found myself repeating the words, ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me!’

“This would not have been remarkable had I been a member of the Orthodox Church, which for more than a millennium has used that prayer as its preferred method of contemplation. For that matter, it would not have been remarkable had I been a Christian of any kind. As I was a Zen Buddhist who professed no belief even in God, much less Jesus, it came as a bit of a shock.

“I was on my way back from the bathroom when the plane simply fell out of the sky. My feet kept lifting up off the floor. I hung comically for moments on dangly puppet legs, and then somehow I managed to make it back to my seat. I had just buckled in when my wife turned to me from across the aisle where she was sitting with our two young children and said the four words no one on an airplane ever wants to hear: ‘Do you smell smoke?’ It was the moment we’ve all imagined. You look forward and backward into the faces of the other passengers (complete strangers, all but a few) and read there the selfsame thought: ‘So this is what it means to die.’

“Miraculously, just minutes later we were back on solid ground. The plane, as we later found out, had developed an electrical fire in the control console, and the pilot, not knowing how long he could steer it, had descended as fast as he could, driving her for all she was worth, covering the 25 minutes back to Memphis in just under 10 minutes flat.

‘When all seemed lost, it wasn’t Mu I had cried out, or even Buddha, but of all things, Jesus—in spite of everything else I had ever believed or done.

“Only later that night in the hotel room, with the children in bed, did I remember the moment during the flight when my spiritual life had taken a 180-degree turn and, as it were, headed back to port.”²

Need I say more?

Brett Blair tells how the late Dr. Paul Quillian, the beloved pastor of First Methodist Church of Houston, Texas, saw (in his fifteen years of ministry) the church grow from 2500 to 6000—an effort that he called a labor of love. Not many knew that Dr. Quillian as a young man had little thought of ministry and was working in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, at a bottling plant when his minister paid him a call. His pastor started with the question, “How old are you?”

“Thirty.”

Quillian’s preacher then said, “When you stand finally before the Lord God, what will you tell him you did on earth—made red soda water?”

The young man snapped back, “And what is wrong with red soda water?”

Nothing—except you happen to be endowed with great talents and abilities which I cherish for God and the Christian ministry.”

Consequently, the young man went back to school and prepared for the preaching ministry. He itinerated in Arkansas. Finally he was called to the First Church in Houston. He became a wonderful leader for Christ because someone recognized the gifts and talents within him and took a few minutes out of the day to tell him so.²

Are you using your talents for the glory of God and the betterment of others? And do you know someone whose potential you see? Be sure that you tell them and be an encourager to them.

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, thank you for all the people who encouraged me when I needed it most. Please help me to use the gifts you have given me to serve you no matter how small or big that way may be. And help me to be an encourager to those who also need a word of encouragement whatever that word may need to be. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, amen.”

1. 1 Thessalonians 5:11 (NIV).

2. Brett Blair, Sermon Illustrations, January 2000.

In a Reader’ Digest article, author Robert Fulghum tells about “an international chess competition many years ago in which a man named Frank Marshall made what is often called the most beautiful move ever made on a chessboard. Playing against an equally skilled Russian master, Marshall sacrificed his queen in an unthinkable move—a move to be made only in the most desperate of circumstances. But it turned out to be a brilliant move, so brilliant that the Russian conceded the game.

“When spectators recovered from the shock of Marshall’s unusual tactic, they showered the chessboard with money. Marshall had achieved victory in a rare and daring fashion. He had won by sacrificing the queen.”²

One of my life’s goals was to build my own home, which I did in South Australia quite a few years ago. It was high up at the top of the Adelaide hills overlooking the city and the ocean beyond. The view was magnificent. I built that house with the idea of living in it till the day I died. At the time my ministry was flourishing and there was no way I planned or wanted to leave the house I built or the work I started. But the “Hound of Heaven” kept bugging me … and bugging me … and bugging me through circumstances beyond my control. In exasperation I finally prayed, “Okay, God, you win. You can have my new home and my ministry and everything I have here. I’ll go anywhere in the world if you’ll just give me peace.”

I think God must have a sense of humor too because in my prayer I said, “But P.S. God, please don’t send me to Alaska because I hate the cold.”

Little did I know what lay ahead. As a result of what I thought was “sacrificing” my most prized earthly possession, God has blessed me far beyond all that I dreamed would ever be possible (not that it happened overnight). The ministry I believed God called me to has greatly expanded, and I am now living in, of all places, sunny, warm Southern California. It was no sacrifice!

I’ve learned through experience that you cannot out-give God.

If there’s something you are holding on to that is hindering you from becoming and doing what God wants you to be and do, consider it prayerfully and be willing to let go of it. As another has said, “Don’t sacrifice your future on the altar of the immediate.”

And as Jim Elliot, martyred missionary, said: “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, if there is anything I am clinging to that is hindering my becoming and doing all that you envision for me to be and do, will you become ‘the Hound of Heaven’ in my life and show me what it is. And please give me the courage to let go of it to become all that you want me to be, and to do all that you would have me do. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, amen.”

1. Jesus in Matthew 6:33 (NIV).

2. Robert Fulghum, “Time to Sacrifice the Queen,” Reader’s Digest, August 1993, p. 136.