Quote from Forum Archives on June 11, 2012, 12:17 pm

Posted by: edwrather <edwrather@...>

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The Burning Bush Devotional
There are 16,000 Subscribers to the Email Devotional

06.11.12

Special People

But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of
God, to those who believe in His name. - John 1:12.

Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be
called children of God! Therefore the world does not know us, because it did
not know Him. Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been
revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be
like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. And everyone who has this hope in
Him purifies himself, just as He is pure. - 1 John 3:1-3.

".do not get the idea you're anything special. Because you're not." - David
McCullough Jr. speaking to the 2012 Wellesley High School graduating class
in Wellesley, Massachusetts. Sadly, I agree with David McCullough Jr.
somewhat; in that it appears that students in these days whether graduating
from an exclusive, private school, or from a public school have a sense of
entitlement. However, is this worse today than it was thirty or forty years
ago? Maybe we are just better at identifying and communicating about this
issue than we were in the past. In part, we are better at this because we
experienced it ourselves.

For the majority of students in schools, in the United States, they live in
a some what protected environment. The egos of these students have been
protected to some extent from the reality of what it will be like to live in
the real world making a living. Even though, I grew up on a farm, and had my
share of work on the farm; I still was not as prepared for life on my own as
I would have liked to have been. I know what McCullough was trying to do,
because I have tried to do the same thing in Baccalaureate messages I have
given. In other words, these students, maybe all students need to wake up to
the fact that life is not a bed of roses; and it will be a shock, a
challenge beyond anything they have faced, to leave their protected
environment and face life in the real world.

What I found out, after I had left my protected home environment, was that
my own abilities, my own intelligence, my own resources were not enough to
survive in the real world. What I needed was something, no someone, bigger
than me to enable me to live life. That someone that I needed was and is,
Jesus Christ. I would not be alive today without Jesus. I would have long
ago been crushed and defeated by life without Jesus walking with me through
each day.

The truth is that without Jesus you are not all that special, but with Jesus
you become a very special person. Receiving Jesus as your personal Savior
makes you a child of the King, and not a child of just any king, but a child
of the King of kings, and the Lord of lords. When you are "born again" by
receiving Jesus as your Savior, the Creator of the universe takes up
residence within you (1 Corinthians 3:16). By yourself, in your own
strength, life can be very difficult. However, when God Himself lives within
you, when the Creator of the universe lives within you, your resources for
living life are exponentially greater than anything you can imagine. That is
why the apostle Paul was able to say in Philippians 4:13, "I can do all
things through Christ who strengthens me."

Copyright © 2012. Ed Wrather. The Burning Bush website has been online since
January 31, 1998. On June 8, 1998 the email version of the Burning Bush
Devotional was first sent. Ed Wrather began writing devotionals in the early
1990s. The distribution of these first devotionals was primarily through the
Burning Bush Newsletter sent to prison facilities throughout the United
States and Canada.

Thank you for your prayers for my wife, Jeanie, she has completed chemo for
ovarian cancer and is continuing to improve. Thank you for your prayers for
Missy Dyess who is recovering from a horrendous head on vehicle accident. In
the seven weeks since the accident she has made much progress. She is still
in the hospital and still need your prayers to continue to recover. Please
pray for my nephew, Ron Wagner, as he has a surgery tomorrow for removal of
a tumor wrapped around his carotid artery and which is approaching his brain
stem. Many prayer needs are posted at the Burning Bush website on the Prayer
Request page. You can also post your prayer requests there and they will be
forwarded to the Burning Bush Prayer Group (Of course, I am always in need
of prayer - please pray for me.).

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