Utica Baptist Church, Utica, Mississippi

  There are many people alive in our day whose experience with God is mostly, if not entirely, second-hand. All they know about God is what someone else has told them. They are living off the spiritual experience of others, never really knowing for themselves the joy and peace of living with Christ. They allow others to spoon-feed them when it comes to spiritual things.

In some rodeo circuits there are those known as "shout-gate cowboys." They are nothing more than spectators who sit on the gate and offer an unceasing barrage of advice and criticism to those who participate in the rodeo. What makes this rather amusing is that these shout-gate cowboys wear the jeans, the boots and the hats, perhaps chew the tobacco and speak the language of the rodeo--but many of them have never even ridden a horse. Their entire knowledge of the rodeo is second-hand in the sense that it is something they have watched, but in which they have never participated.

Shout-gate Christians will never be in a position to see the wonder of holy ground. They are unaware of the awesomeness and majesty of Holy God, because their experience of Him is only second-hand. They may wear the costume, speak the language and even fool a lot of people with their apparent spirituality. But they've never "ridden a horse"--they've never experienced the power of the Risen Christ for themselves. They don't know what it means to walk with Christ in a victorious life, with full assurance of their salvation and peace with God.

So let me ask you: is it time for you to get off the fence and start walking and talking with Jesus?

--Rocky Henriques, www.uticabc.com

  "But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus." (Philippians 3:13)

Although the sun bombards the earth every hour with billions of kilowatts of energy, we can protect ourselves from most of its effects with a hat and sunscreen. On the other hand a laser can take just a few watts of energy, focus them in a coherent stream of light and drill a hole through a diamond.

The difference is focus. Tenor superstar Luciano Pavarotti learned the importance of focus from his father. The young Luciano became a pupil of a professional tenor in his hometown of Modena, Italy. At the same time, he enrolled in a teachers' college.

When he graduated, Luciano asked his father, "Shall I be a teacher or a singer?"

His father replied, "Luciano, if you try to sit on two chairs, you will fall between them. For life, you must choose one chair."

The same thought was expressed in a quote by an unknown author: "A man with two watches is never quite sure what time it is."

The now-famous Luciano Pavarotti wrote years later: "I think whether it's laying bricks, writing a book--whatever we choose--we should give ourselves to it. Commitment, that's the key. Choose one chair."

The same is true throughout all of life. Take living for Christ, for example. We cannot serve Christ and walk in the paths of the world. We cannot please both Christ and our own desires. It inevitably happens that when we try to do that, our hearts are drawn away from Him, because He will not share His Lordship with anything--or anyone.

So to paraphrase the elder Pavarotti, "Choose one passion." Will it be Christ, or something else?
--Rocky Henriques, www.uticabc.com

Occasionally, scientists add one additional second to their atomic clocks, making that particular month one-sixtieth of a second longer. Atomic clocks run independently of the rotation of the Earth, and occasionally they have to be adjusted. Our planet's rotation at times speeds up and sometimes slows down--not enough that we can tell it--but scientists have yet to understand why.

Why is it important that one tiny second be added to the world's clocks? In our day, exact time is needed for modern navigation, affecting global navigation satellite systems, among other things.

Ships and aircraft use satellite signals and radio waves to help determine their location. An error as tiny as a millionth of second can produce a position error of a quarter mile. That may not matter much when a ship is in the middle of the ocean, but it's not a very good thing to happen whenever a pilot is attempting to land a jumbo jet on a runway in a metropolitan area.

So, to keep everything running the way they should, an adjustment has to be made to the atomic clocks.

How many adjustments have you made to your life in Christ lately? At times our spiritual growth races at an accelerated speed, while at other times it merely crawls or halts altogether. It serves us well to stop periodically to examine ourselves before God and make any adjustments which appear to be necessary.

A daily quiet time before God can alert us to subtle changes in our love for and commitment to Christ. Considering our very human tendency to fall short, the necessity of such a time of examination increases with the passing of time.

So it may be a very small adjustment which needs to be made, but don't fall into the trap of thinking that because it isn't huge, that it can be delayed. Fail to make the adjustment now, and somewhere out there in the future there may be a mistake--or a sin--which could have been avoided.

It may be a habit or a sin which needs to be forsaken. It may be a godly habit you need to pick up, such as regular worship, prayer and Bible study. It may even be some slight adjustment in your schedule so those things will be possible.

Is it time to adjust your spiritual "atomic clock"?

--Rocky Henriques