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There are over 1100 stories and commentaries on this blog. It is added to daily.
Click on http://wyrickswritings.blogspot.com to read selected Sermons from over 50 years of Rev. Wyrick's ministry.
Paul Harvey said something once that we all need to fairly often repeat and remind ourselves is true "In times like these it is good to remember, that there have always been times like these."
The old mule was in first class trouble. He had fallen in the well and the farmer and his friends were unable to save him until the old mule had an idea.
The old mule was in first class trouble. He had fallen in the well and the farmer and his friends were unable to save him until the old mule had an idea.
"If I can just get the farmer to throw dirt into the well I can shake it off my back and climb out on the gathered residue."
But since the farmer didn't speak mule and the mule didn't speak farmer...how could he communicate this idea.
And then it came to him. "I have a highly irritating bray that sometimes drives everyone in the barnyard crazy. If I start braying louder and longer than I ever have before maybe the farmer after he tries shouting and several other ways to silence me...maybe he will decide maybe shovelfuls of dirt will do the trick."
And that is how it happened. How in this obvious fairytale the mule was saved and salvaged.
And the thing is...in real life...if we work at shaking off our problems and adding in their place problem solving thoughts and life enriching deeds...it is amazing how much better life can be.
David Livingstone lived in Africa as a Missionary. He lived so deep in the jungles that you couldn't get there from here...or hardly. One day, one of his church leaders wrote him a letter saying, "We have some good men who want to come and join you. Can you tell us where we can find a good road to where you are?"
Livingstone wrote back, " If you have men who will only come if there is a good road , I don’t want them. I want men who will come if there is no road at all."
Problem solvers build roads as often or even more so than they simply travel them. They know that life has chasms and rivers and impediments of all sorts and sizes and they know that with God's help they can sustain themselves long enough to solve many more problems than they could otherwise.
Positive people. Not shrinking people who when confronted by a problem grow rapidly smaller before your very eyes.
Alfred Armand Montapert wrote, The majority see the obstacles; the few see the objectives; history records the successes of the latter, while oblivion is the reward of the former."
How do you solve problems? One at a time...otherwise they can overwhelm you.
It is unfortunate...but yes sometimes the old saying "When it rains it pours" comes true...and we wonder where to start putting out a fire or plugging a leak.
So don't scattergun back and forth between a series of problems. Pick out the one most serious and/or the one you feel needs your attention first and put the others on the back burner.
And sometimes the best thing to do first...is nothing...take a walk around the block and simmer down...sleep on it overnight...otherwise you may flood a problem with not well thought out solutions and end up flooding the whole thing.
Relax...it takes 30 seconds to move from stressful thinking to less...play some music...that can speed up the process...write a picture of your pet across your mind...imagine a waterfall with a mountain backdrop...tense doesn't help one's reasoning powers.
In short, don't decide whether you want to continue to be a salesman after a week of poor sales. Sleep on it. Work at it. Pray toward sharper insights. You may still decide you aren't cut out to be a salesman but you won't have rushed toward a life changing decision.
If you are a professional ball player don't decide to quit when you are in a midst of batting slump.
If you are a...
Some problems really do get worse...and need radical decisions...
but patiently slowly thinking through certainly up the odds that you may well come up with a solution you would have never seen if you had rushed the process.
Slowly decide so that you will not prematurely plummet off a cliff.
And consider problems a friend in disguise. They test your mettle and in the process allow you to get a good look at yourself...in a way you never can ...when everything is going right.
To know who you really are and what to do with the "you person" you have to study yourself in both shadow and sunlight.
I have learned so much from my failures and my pains and my illnesses and the chain of adversities that have sometimes assaulted me. I have learned not to let them beat me down. I have not enjoyed them. But I have learned from them.
Sometimes in my waiting and learning time I have suddenly seen a problem in a new light. Time is a wonderful teacher. It really is.
Sometimes, to help my insight, I have gone searching in biographies both secular and sacred to find out what others did when faced with a similar problem. It isn't always necessary to reinvent the wheel.
I have sought and found humility rather than let pride make me a fool ...with humility I have gone to another person and asked for their advice...and sometimes taken it because their thinking was far better and clearer than had been mine.
"Don't keep doing the same thing and expect different results." I have tried to learn from my mistakes and not repeat them. Be they economic, spiritual, educational or otherwise...the lesson of experience quickly raises its head and speaks...we just have to be wise enough to listen.
"Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you." (James 4:7) How could any intelligent person do otherwise? Ask the millions of intelligent people who ignore this advice every day.
The Bible is filled with this theme said in dozens of ways. It is not that we do not know...
"I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world." (John 16:33)
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"You don't drown by falling in the water; you drown by staying there."
— Edwin Louis Cole
CHURCH BOOK CLUBS ARE USING REV. WYRICK'S 9TH BOOK "The Spiritual Abraham Lincoln." If you would like to purchase it at a special price...
It is available on amazon.com, Barnes & Noble and many other book sites.
It is available on amazon.com, Barnes & Noble and many other book sites.
A new quote below from Rev. Wyrick's 9th book THE SPIRITUAL ABRAHAM LINCOLN (read the rave reviews below the quote)
Everything that happened in the war was not of blood and pain and hate. The best in man sometimes rises out of the worst. More than likely the story of what happened one cold day during the terrible battle of Fredericksburg reached Abe’s ears and pleased the heart of this forgiving President. It was a dreadful battle that cried out for some miraculous act of empathy.
A Sergeant Richard Kirkland of Company E Carolina Regiment made a request of his commanding officer that was almost denied. He had looked too long at the tortured, twisted dead and dying men and could finally stand it no more. He sought startling permission to take water and aid to those dressed in both Blue and Gray.
“You may get a bullet in the back of your head, son,” he was told. The soldier replied that he wanted to go anyway.
“May God protect you,” said Major General J. B. Kershaw. A short time later, men on both sides of this field of agony and despair, watched in awe as the young man vaulted over a bloodstained stonewall and walked unarmed and seemingly unafraid among the dead and dying. They saw him kneel down and cradle a fallen Union soldier in his arms, offer him a drink of water, rest his head on his knapsack and cover him with his own overcoat. And then move to another soldier nearby. This time it was a Confederate soldier.
Again and again throughout that long, pale December afternoon, just eleven days before Christmas, Sergeant Kirkland returned with water until every living soldier, from both the North and the South, had felt his compassion and concern.
General Kershaw later wrote that not one shot was fired during that time. That never had he heard such silent respect. “…no doubt,” his pen etched, “all the trumpets of heaven resounded on this monumental day.”
"Positive, powerful utterances...skillfully enhancing our understanding and appreciation of Lincoln while revealing the Divine source of his strength."
Lt. Colonel C.A. Olsen (Ret.) Asbury College (Professor Ret.)
"The Spiritual Abraham Lincoln is an extremely well written book that investigates what might be termed the spiritual side of President Lincoln. It's both scholarly and very readable. I came away impressed at Mr. Wyrick's portrayal of the President and with an altered and enlarged vision of the man:'
William Hoffman, Award winning fiction writer; author of Blood and Guile, and Wild Thorn
"Wyrick has authored a wonderful examination of the spirituality of one of American history's most devoutly religious leaders...a pleasant and readable book that has a rich depth of information."
Maynard Pittendreigh Presbyterian minister
"When it comes to invoking religion in support of any of their decisions, politicians need to sit at the feet of Abraham Lincoln. Reinhold Niebuhr once called him 'America's greatest theologian.' Why so great? Because he invariably distinguished between human works and the works of the Almighty. As Wyrick says, 'He wore the mantle of humility easily: because he was more impressed with what God was doing in the world than with what he, president of the United States in the midst of an awful crisis, was doing. That is why in his last major speech he distinguished between both human causes in the Civil War and the Almighty's 'own purposes.' Lincoln would have agreed that it is better to leave God-talk out of politics than to decorate human proposals with divinity. This is a book for our American time. Through his careful study of Lincoln's career, Wyrick compels us to remember that piety belongs in politics only when piety transcends politics."
Dr. Donald W. Shriver
Emeritus professor at Union Theological Seminary in New York. Author of An Ethic for Enemies: Forgiveness in Politics
"V. Neil Wyrick's fine work allows the reader to appreciate Abraham Lincoln's Christian commitment and his prophetic role in American history. Should have a wide readership."
James H. Smylie Professor of Church History (Ret.) Union Theological Seminary, Richmond, Virginia
"Neil Wyrick's The Spiritual Abraham Lincoln should be read by anyone attempting to understand the man who was probably the most complex person to ever hold the office of president of the United States. Dr. Wyrick is intent on demonstrating that the spirituality so often expressed in Lincoln's writings and speeches was not merely lip service to a Deity, but rather expressions of a profound faith in a real God. It was this faith that provided the wisdom, compassion, insight and sometimes steel that Lincoln would need in full measure as he led the United States through the Civil War. Dr. Wyrick's clear and unpretentious style of presentation is very much in keeping with the character ofhis subject, and in so doing, Wyrick makes his point very well that Lincoln, his beliefs, and the faith that formed them, are as relevant to a troubled America in 2004 as they were in 1863."
Daniel Allen Butler, author of "Unsinkable"; The Full Story of the RMS Titanic, The Lusitania and The Age o f Cunard
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