Dave Edlers Ramblings

“Revelation”

admin — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 23:22:51 +0000

I was eight and staying at my cousins for a couple weeks of the summer when I hit a baseball really hard for the very first time. It wasn’t even a fair ball but I hit it really hard. And the “revelation” came. “I can hit!” That revelation carried me to the Big Leagues.
Jesus is our “revelation”. He reveals God the Father to us. Through Him we understand the power and work of the Holy spirit in us. Jesus is our revelation. In him we live and work and breath. That revelation allows us to live a life of victory bringing glory and honor to him.

“Don’t Poke Me!”

admin — Wed, 26 May 2010 18:15:31 +0000

My best friend used to poke me in the chest with his finger and it made me so mad I could have slugged him. I’d yell, “Don’t poke me!”. I began to ask myself why it bothered me so much to poked in the chest and came to this conclusion. As I grew up when my dad did not like what I was doing or had issue with me he would narrow in on my chest with his big strong fingers and thump me in the chest. It hurt. Both physical pain and the mental pain that goes along with not meeting the standards of the one you loved the most. It was a negative experience that upset me. It was locked in my subconscious.
Proverbs 1:7 declares; “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge;” As with my father what I believe today is that the “fear” described here is the same kind of honor that drove me to want to please my dad and upset me when I fell short. It is the kind of thing that Christ Followers need to drive into their subconscious so that it will lead them to repentance. It is one thing to confess your sin, admit you have not measured up. It is another to repent, to move in a different direction, to make your actions measure up to the one you love. Fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.

“Just As he Had Promised”

admin — Wed, 19 May 2010 15:02:08 +0000

Understanding a promise is a wild revelation. Have something come out of the Word of God and stick in your being, hide itself it that place where you know things, is life giving. God’s Word makes those promises come alive with the stories of the saints and how God moved to fulfill the promises He makes. In todays reading from our life journal we hear the story of Solomon unfold. Of the abundance and peace that follow his reign and his life. How not just he prospers but how all around him prosper. Solomon asked for wisdom and God was so pleased He gave him wisdom and all the other things he could have asked for and much more. The part of todays reading that I love and fills me with faith is “The LORD gave wisdom to Solomon, just as He promised him;”
LORD, give me some of that.

“As A Father”

admin — Thu, 13 May 2010 15:29:26 +0000

The man who leads our drama department has written the drama’s for the series we are in called “Letters From The Cross”. This weeks drama is of a man sharing for the first time with his wife that he was beaten and brutalized by his father. As we were talking about it he confessed that it was easy to write because he had lived it. That inspired me to share some of the things that I remember from my own childhood that have to do with my dad and his treating of me and my siblings and mother. “Father Issues” is what we call them. They play such an important role in our lives and in particular in the way we see God. They fog the picture of the true father heart of God and his character and love for us. Today in our Life Journal in 2 Thess. 2 Paul is reminding the receivers of the letter how they had treated them as fathers treat their children. His great concern for them. I wonder if they had father issues and couldn’t see it.
The key piece of my Christian journey that has allowed me to move on with my own father issues have to deal primarily with the acceptance of my father as a sinner. Someone put it this way, “We are sinners raising sinners”. My dad had father issues too. Wonderfully I had a moment when I was able to go to my dad and forgive him and ask him for forgiveness. It changed my life and changed his too. God used it to transform my dad into someone who until his death wanted to make sure his children knew he loved them. I am following his example.

“They Cried Out All The More”

admin — Mon, 03 May 2010 15:51:07 +0000

Two blind men are sitting on the side of the road and hear that Jesus is passing by and start crying out, “Have mercy on us son of David.” The crowd that is following tries to quite them. But they own’t be silenced. They cry out all the more. There are always things that try to silence us. Things we feel or sense that keep us from crying out all the more for the things we want or need God to do for us. We feel unworthy, so we stop crying out. We don’t see progress, so we stop crying out. I could go on but that is not the point of this story. Nor is it the reason the story is in our bibles. The story is there to encourage us to keep crying out! Jesus stops and asks, “What is it you want me to do for you?” Then he heals them. The point of the story…don’t stop crying out!

“The Instability of the Red Flyer” or “I dumped My Grandkids on the Driveway”

admin — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 14:46:52 +0000

Emma is two, Brady is three. Susie and I were watching them while their mom and dad went to a pastor’s conference in Vancouver. As their parents were driving out of our driveway I was pulling them in the Red Flyer wagon down the driveway on our war to the park down the street. I moved the wagon to the side of the driveway so their parents car could safely get by us. I put us on a little side hill and as we were waving to their mom and dad I started to pull them forward. The sidehill caused the wagon to tip over and spill my grandkids out on the driveway as their mom and dad were looking in the rear view mirror. They both started screaming and I wasn’t sure which one to pick up first. As I was making that decision their mom had run back and started to console them. Man was she fast. Boy those Red Flyers are unstable on sidehills.
Life dumps us out sometimes. We get in unstable places. We aren’t cared for very well by the people who are supposed to care for us. Life happens is a way I say it most often. Psalm 139 declares to us that even when life happens, or in dark unstable places, God is there. “Even there Your hand will lead me” is what the Psalmist says. “And Your right hand will lay hold of me” is how it continues. The “right hand” signifies the powerful hand of God to protect and care for His people. That is the hand, the power, that is available to those who love him.
That is great comfort in these unstable times.

“Giant Slayer”

admin — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 15:29:29 +0000

The giants in life take many forms. They are powerfully built. They are positioned against us. Determined to destroy us. Each of us without much thought can start to name them. The things we battle against. The things we have determined oppose our prosperity. The giants.
David is facing the Philistine, the giant, and declares; “This day the LORD will deliver you up into my hands, and I will strike you down and remove your head from you.” And then he walks out and does just that. Takes his smooth stone, puts it in his sling, lets it fly, strikes down the giant. There is so much there for us to learn. Here is what it says to me today, every time I read the Word of God I get something new, but here is what I needed to see and hear today: First, make the declaration, speak to the giant the truth of who is for you, the living God. Second, walk out, stop hiding, quit not facing your giant, walk out, take him on. Third, load up, be prepared. Pray, study, get yourself ready for the battle. Fourth, let it fly. Take no prisoners, unleash the onslaught. Jesus declared that nothing is impossible for those who love and follow Him. He declared we would trample on snakes and scorpions. That we would defeat the giants. Let it fly!

“A Soldier’s Embrace”

admin — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 15:36:41 +0000

Sunday was Easter and the house was packed. I got word that a man in uniform was among us. I love to honor those who are serving our nation when they come to church so as I took the podium I asked him to stand so we could thank him. As he did the congregation applauded loudly. I was proud of their response and to be honest got a little teary, I do that.
After the service standing at the front of the auditorium was the soldier. He said simply to me, “I gave my life to Christ, it was time.” He’d been coming to church and had not been in uniform before but it was this day, Resurrection Sunday, that it all came together for him and he decided to surrender his life to Christ. My heart was leaping, this is what I live for, to see people come to Christ. In the next moment he threw his arms around me in a big embrace. He thanked me and talked over and over about how “it was time”. I encouraged him and thanked him for taking his time and making sure he knew what he was doing, the commitment he was making. He must have embraced me four or five times as we talked.
I loved it. Because it was real. This young man, this soldier, had made a very real commitment to the King of Kings. And he embraced the messenger who was humbled by the way God had moved.

“Easter 2010″

admin — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 23:36:26 +0000

“Thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ”. The end of 2 Corinthians winds down to this handful of statements. “Thanks be to God”, what a declaration for Easter. “Who gives us victory”, by the power of the resurrection. “Through our Lord Jesus Christ”, in Jesus, through His work on Calvary, we have victory.
Do you remember who you were? Without Jesus? Do you think about what you were chasing and what seemed so important to you? Before Jesus? “Thanks be to Jesus” Have a blessed Easter!

“Puzzle’s Aren’t Rest”

admin — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 13:38:02 +0000

We just got back from Arizona for a week of vacation in Spring training Mecca. What a place to get to go in the spring. Baseball and golf, what a way to rest and relax. But to my horror our vacation mates came back to the condo with a 1000 piece puzzle. 1000 pieces! Took everything off the coffee table and went to work. A puzzle! Life is a puzzle! We’re always trying to figure out how to make it work. To put things together so that every one is happy. Why? To rest and relax would you sit down and try to put a puzzle together? That is not rest or relaxing in any way.
In Joshua 21 at the end of the chapter it says this: “And the LORD gave them rest on every side, according to all that He had sworn to their fathers, and no one of all their enemies stood before them; the LORD gave all their enemies into their hand. Not one of the good promises which the LORD had made to the house of Israel failed; all came to pass.”
That is the kind of rest I need, we need. Rest from our enemies, on all sides. From outside and inside. Those forces of culture and life that beat us down. Those things from the inside that drive us away from the one we want to serve and bring honor to. Rest. On all sides. That sounds good. Did you catch the piece that you must cling to, “not one of the good promises”. This is a promise of God to His children. Those of us who have chosen to follow HIM. A PROMISE!