A farmer came into town and asked to owner of a French restaurant if he could use a million frog legs.

The restaurant owner was shocked and asked the man where he could possibly get so may frog legs.  The farmer replied, “There is a pond near my house that is full of frogs—millions of them.  They croak all during the night and are about to drive me crazy!”

So the restaurant owner and the farmer made an agreement that the farmer would deliver frogs to the restaurant, five hundred at a time, for the next several weeks.

However, the first week the farmer returned to the restaurant looking rather sheepish, carrying only two scrawny little frogs.  The restaurant owner said, “Well—where are all the rest?”

The farmer said, “I was mistaken.  There were only these two frogs in the pond.  But they sure were making a lot of noise!”

Problems always seem bigger in the dark.  How many times have you laid in your bed at night worrying about something that seems overwhelming—like a million frogs croaking—but then, in the light of day you wondered what all the fuss was about?

You may be wrestling with some sort of problem right now—a nightmare that seems so big that it constantly overshadows your life.  Perhaps it has to do with finances or relationships.  Maybe you’re struggling with fear that has come from something your doctor told you or a loved one recently.  Whatever it is, the fear this problem induces is so “loud” you can’t “hear” anything else.

As Children of God—we must remember that no matter what their cause, the nightmares of life are always tiny in light of our all-powerful, all-knowing, always-present, all-loving heavenly Father.  No problem is too big for Him to handle—and over and over in His book, God tells us we need not fear.

Psalm 46:1-3 “God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble.  Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging.”

2nd Corinthians 4:7ff – “…we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.  [So, we may be]…hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.”

Romans 8:37-39 – “In all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.  For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

1 John 4:4 – “The One Who is in you is greater that the one who is in the world.”

The next time “the frogs of your life croak loudly” – the next time fear threatens to overwhelm—remember Who God is!  Remember Whose you are!

Keep the SON in your eyes!

During one of the most volatile periods of the current economic crisis—a week in which global stock markets declined by $7 trillion—Philip Yancey received a call from an editor at Time magazine. The editor’s question was simple: “How should a person pray during a crisis like this?” Here is a summary of what Yancey shared in response, as printed in Christianity Today:

The first stage is simple, an instinctive cry: ‘Help!’ For someone who faces a job cut or health crisis or watches retirement savings wither away, prayer offers a way to voice fear and anxiety. I have learned to resist the tendency to edit my prayers so that they sound sophisticated and mature. I believe God wants us to come exactly as we are, no matter how childlike we may feel. A God aware of every sparrow that falls surely knows the impact of scary financial times on frail human beings.

If I pray with the intent to listen as well as talk, I can enter into a second stage, that of meditation and reflection. ‘Okay, my life savings has virtually disappeared. What can I learn from this seeming catastrophe?’ A time of crisis presents a good opportunity to identify the foundation on which I construct my life. If I place my ultimate trust in financial security or in the government’s ability to solve my problems, I will surely watch the basement flood and the walls crumble.

A friend from Chicago, Bill Leslie, used to say that the Bible asks three main questions about money: (1) How did you get it? (Legally and justly or exploitatively?); (2) What are you doing with it? (Indulging in luxuries or helping the needy?); and (3) What is it doing to you? Some of Jesus’ most trenchant parables and sayings go straight to the heart of that last question.

The same week that global wealth shrank by $7 trillion, Zimbabwe’s inflation rate hit a record 231 million percent. In other words, if you had saved $1 million Zimbabwean dollars by Monday, on Tuesday it was worth $158. This sobering fact leads me to the third and most difficult stage of prayer in crisis: I need God’s help in taking my eyes off my own problems in order to look with compassion on the truly desperate. What a testimony it would be if, in 2009, Christians resolved to increase their giving to build houses for the poor, combat AIDS in Africa, and announce kingdom values to a decadent, celebrity-driven culture. Such a response defies all logic and common sense — unless, of course, we take seriously the moral of Jesus’ simple tale about building houses on a sure foundation.

How would you respond to Yancey’s last question? During this time of financial insecurity what is your money doing to you? Is it causing you to fear such that you have focused on self,  forgotten God’s promises,  and reduced your tithes and offerings to kingdom causes?

In Malachi 3:10 God says, “Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse that there may be food in my house.  Test me in this and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it.”

Keep the SON in your eyes!