“Karen’s Notes!

Insights from a Glory-Bound Lady”

                                                       Selected Notes

Volume 5 Number 28 “It Is Going to be a Great Day Indeed”

July 13th, 2022

It caught my attention and immediately I smiled.

I am holding Karen’s Bible study journal. Some of the things she wrote in this particular journal are sermon outlines of the messages I preached and when she was able to come with me as I traveled for the ministry of Baptist Church Planters. Other notes are little things she wrote to herself as she studied and thought about God’s Word.

Many years ago on August 21^st, she wrote something that jumped from the page. She drew a picture of the sun, with a happy face shining and lots of beams extending. At the bottom of it she wrote, “Sunny” (now with another smiley face) “It’s gonna’ be a great day!”

Apparently, we had an extended spell of cloudiness and rain. I know that she loved sunny days! So would you like to know what she was thinking through on this sunny, gonna’ be a great day, kind of moment? She was thinking about how temporary our time is here on this earth.

It really struck her that she is a “stranger, a sojourner, a pilgrim” here and now. Let me take you to the Scripture which she was thinking through, and then I’ll share a tiny part of her notes.

“Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims…” (1 Peter 2:11).

Karen wrote: As a stranger or sojourner, I must remember:

My position. I hold the position of being “dearly beloved” according to 1 Peter 2:11a. What a wonderful change because now I am a new creation in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17).

My purpose. “That ye may be blameless and harmless, the sons of God, without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom you shine as lights in the world: holding forth the word of life…” (Philippians 2:15-16).

My privilege. “Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God” (2 Corinthians 5:20).

My prohibition. “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passes away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abides for ever” (1 John 2:15-17).

(She then wrote at the bottom of some other notes on that same day, the following:)

DARE TO BE DIFFERENT!

Michael’s observation. Please understand that Karen never thought herself to be sinless. None of us are. But she really did have the desire to remember her relationship with the Lord Jesus. That was just one of the many things that really drew me to her. Even as a teenager, those four things were important to her. They need to be important to you and me today because we, too, are strangers and pilgrims in this old world.