“Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” Matthew 4:19
Hello Friends:
Welcome to the Soulwinnersr.us website. Remember again what Jesus said in Matthew 4:19, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.”
I’m struggling lately with thinking of content related to evangelism for my website videos. And for that matter, sharing the life-changing gospel of Jesus Christ with others.
Our family has been hit with many unforeseen blows in less than two months. It started with the frigid snow and wind storm before Christmas resulting in a power and internet outage. After that several other things went wrong:
- Our garage door sensors stopped working requiring me to get new ones. The door opened, but we had to shut it manually until I installed the new sensors.
- We got a new internet service provider after our old one failed three times in the last year for up to two days. This change required many changes with emails and all the websites that used our old email. What a long chore that was!
- Our basement started leaking some water again after last summer thinking I had it fixed. It's not bad, but any water in a basement is not good.
- I had to take my wife’s laptop to a computer repair shop to replace her hard drive with a solid-state drive. Thankfully, my cloning of the drive was successful! I was sweating it for a while. Some computer companies sure don’t make laptops very accessible to change things.
- An unexpected problem out of the blue with Social Security.
- Heat pump failure. Does anyone realize the cost of replacing an old R22 coolant system with a new R410 system? It isn’t cheap.
I don’t think I have a full-blown Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder or OCD, but I do think I have some OCD tendencies like perfectionism or a preoccupation with details. It makes it difficult at times for me to move forward with a task if something else is looming in the background. I’m very prone to try to resolve first the nagging background problems, or chaos if you will.
My OCD tendencies have followed me all my life, even into employment. My former bosses acknowledged it in me, but I think they sometimes saw the benefits of it, as long as I was able to reign in the time-consuming aspects of it.
I had one boss tell me when I was thinking about going back to college to get a higher degree, “Arlen, just do what you have to do to pass. No employer will ever look at the grades you got.” That boss didn’t know me very well, thinking I might be able to do something just half-hearted.
At my last job, I ran an employment program. I took time to assure the procedures of the program were as repeatable and standard as possible. The benefit of the extra time I took was that I and the workers under me didn’t have to strive so hard to follow the standard procedures. My bosses knew that I would to the best of my ability follow the directives of the State of Ohio oversight board to whom our program was accountable. Also, the national accreditation board every three years was always very impressed with my attention to detail. One accreditation official from New York City even gave me his card and encouraged me to consider becoming a fellow accreditation official, traveling the country to make sure that other employment programs did things correctly. I was honored, but with a family to consider, I declined to pursue it.
Now that I’m retired I still have that drive to get things right—to make order out of chaos. It has helped me to write grants for Mission to Amish People. It has also helped me when doing remodeling projects at home and for others. I am persistent to try to do things right.
But how does this OCD tendency to make order out of chaos affect my drive to share with others the life-changing gospel of Jesus Christ? It hasn’t been easy, as evidenced by the fact that I haven’t posted anything in about a month. And worse yet, I’ve only personally shared the gospel with two heat pump guys.
My conclusion is that my only option is to trust Jesus and His Holy Spirit to help me make order out of chaos. Probably my favorite verse lately that I’m calling on to help me is found in Jeremiah 33:3. I have used it in several posts in the last number of weeks. Here it is:
At my last job, I ran an employment program. I took time to assure the procedures of the program were as repeatable and standard as possible. The benefit of the extra time I took was that I and the workers under me didn’t have to strive so hard to follow the standard procedures. My bosses knew that I would to the best of my ability follow the directives of the State of Ohio oversight board to whom our program was accountable. Also, the national accreditation board every three years was always very impressed with my attention to detail. One accreditation official from New York City even gave me his card and encouraged me to consider becoming a fellow accreditation official, traveling the country to make sure that other employment programs did things correctly. I was honored, but with a family to consider, I declined to pursue it.
Now that I’m retired I still have that drive to get things right—to make order out of chaos. It has helped me to write grants for Mission to Amish People. It has also helped me when doing remodeling projects at home and for others. I am persistent to try to do things right.
But how does this OCD tendency to make order out of chaos affect my drive to share with others the life-changing gospel of Jesus Christ? It hasn’t been easy, as evidenced by the fact that I haven’t posted anything in about a month. And worse yet, I’ve only personally shared the gospel with two heat pump guys.
My conclusion is that my only option is to trust Jesus and His Holy Spirit to help me make order out of chaos. Probably my favorite verse lately that I’m calling on to help me is found in Jeremiah 33:3. I have used it in several posts in the last number of weeks. Here it is:
“ Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and incomprehensible things you do not know."
Who is better to help us make order out of chaos than God?
Until I see you next time keep sharing the wonderful love of Jesus with others,
Arlen
Until I see you next time keep sharing the wonderful love of Jesus with others,
Arlen
No comments:
Post a Comment