Small Potatoes

Good morning! This is the day that the Lord has made; I will rejoice (spin) and be glad in it!

I awakened this morning thankful that today is Friday. I love the weekend. I get to spend time with my wife and children, and I also have several opportunities to spend time with my wonderful church family and share with them what God has been pouring into my heart.

As I begin to contemplate about this weekend, I began to think about the many fine, Godly people that are facing difficult situations in their lives. As we go through difficult times, it is easy to lose our perspective in life. We can forget what our main purpose in life is. I would like to share something from God’s Word with you:

2 Corinthians 4:16-18 Therefore we do not become discouraged (utterly spiritless, exhausted, and wearied out through fear). Though our outer man is [progressively] decaying and wasting away, yet our inner self is being [progressively] renewed day after day. (17) For our light, momentary affliction (this slight distress of the passing hour) is ever more and more abundantly preparing and producing and achieving for us an everlasting weight of glory [beyond all measure, excessively surpassing all comparisons and all calculations, a vast and transcendent glory and blessedness never to cease!], (18) Since we consider and look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen; for the things that are visible are temporal (brief and fleeting), but the things that are invisible are deathless and everlasting.

Verse seventeen in the Message version of the Bible says, “these hard times are small potatoes compared to the coming good times, the lavish celebration prepared for us.”

I love that! The hard times that you may be going through today are just SMALL POTATOES compared to the coming good times, and “lavish celebration prepared for us.” “Us” is referring to the children of God. Sometimes we just need to think about heaven. Listen to what the Apostle Paul tells us about this:

Colossians 3:2 (AMP) And set your minds and keep them set on what is above (the higher things), not on the things that are on the earth.

Meditate for a moment on the words of this old and powerful song:

“It will be worth it all when we see Jesus, Life's trials will seem so small when we see Christ; One glimpse of His dear face all sorrow will erase, So bravely run the race till we see Christ.”Sometimes just the truth about heaven can change our perspective.

Now, if you will, please read this excerpt from Randy Alcorn’s book Heaven:

“In 1952, young Florence Chadwick stepped into the waters of the Pacific Ocean off Catalina Island, determined to swim to the shore of the mainland California. She’d already been the first woman to swim the English Channel both ways. The weather was foggy and chilly; she could hardly see the boats accompanying her. Still, she swam for fifteen hours. When she begged to be taken out of the water along the way, her mother, in a boat alongside, told her she was close and that she could make it. Finally, physically and emotionally exhausted, she stopped swimming and was pulled out. It wasn’t until she was on the boat that she discovered the shore was less than half a mile away. At a news conference the next day she said, “All I could see was the fog…I think if I could have seen the shore, I would have made it.”

My prayer is that as you go through this weekend, you won't be overwhelmed by the FOG of your troublesome situation, but you will be able to “see the shore” and remember that there is so much more to life than just what you see in the here and now!

2 Corinthians 4:18 There's far more here than meets the eye. The things we see now are here today, gone tomorrow. But the things we can't see now will last forever.

Now that’s not SMALL POTATOES.

I hope to see you Sunday morning as I preach an illustrated message entitled, “The Road of Regrets”. Please invite your friends and family! Blessings and I love you! This is my commitment to you as your Pastor:

"You will never knowingly suffer at my hands. I will never say anything or do anything knowingly to hurt you. I will always, in every circumstance, seek to help and support you. If you're down and I can lift you up - I'll do that. If you need something and I have it, I'll share it with you. If I need to, I'll give it to you. No matter what I find out about you, no matter what happens in the future - either good or bad, my commitment to you will never change. And there is nothing you can do about it."

Rejoicing (and spinning) in this wonderful day,

Pastor Rusty L. Blann
First Assembly of God
West Memphis, Arkansas