How Is Your Backyard?

There is a little booklet put out by Dr. Albert Day called, "The Healing Ministry." In that book, he says there is a kind of poverty today about which we need to be concerned, and that is the poverty of expectation on the part of so many Christians. They just don't expect God to do much in and through their lives. But, if we had faith, he says, and if we would let him, God could do so much for us and through us. "Our chronic weakness is not that we expect too much from God, but that we trust Him far too little."

That reminds me of a little boy I heard about. Seeking to emphasize the Christmas story of the Star in the East compared with other stars in the sky, his Sunday School teacher asked the class to count the number of stars they could see at night. Reporting answers the next Sunday varied as149 to "too many to count," the pupils were fairly much in  agreement. That is, all except Bobby who answered positively, "Three."

"But Bobby," asked the teacher, "how is it that you saw so few stars when the other children found so many?"

Bobby thought a minute. Finally he answered:"Well, our backyard is awfully small."

That is our problem, isn't it? Our backyard is too small. Our faith is too puny. There is not that sense of expectancy, of excited anticipation that fired those early disciples. It is that poverty of expectation that keeps us from gaining great victories. 

Questions to Ponder

• Do you really trust God?

• Is your backyard too small?

• Does your life show excited anticipation and expectancy?
  

In His Service,
Terry Phillips