Chrome-Shining Faith

Barbara Derksen

Chrome Shining Faith

 

 

 

Please enjoy this excerpt from

Chrome-Shining Faith

by Barbara Derksen

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

PROPITIATION

is a big word that means appeasing another person’s anger by the offering of a gift. The human race,

because of Adam’s sin, is judged by God’s perfect standards, the standards that define sin in the

first place. We fall short of that standard. The sin we commit against each other and against God is in

 

direct opposition to His holy nature. The Bible says that this makes God angry because He cannot

 

look on the very thing He created to have fellowship with Him. He misses us. God’s anger is not an

 

irrational lack of selfcontrol, as it so often is with humans.  However, God’s opposition to sin cannot

 

be dismissed with a wave of the hand. It requires something much more substantial

to appease it, to pay the debt we owe handed down as a judgment when Adam was tossed out of the

garden. And the Bible states that it was only the cross that did this.  Jesus willingly became “the

 

propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world”. When the

 

New Testament speaks of “propitiation,” it means that Jesus’ death on the cross for the sins of

 

mankind put away God’s wrath against his people once and for all.

 

And He is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole

 

world

1 John 2:2 (KJV)

Droplets of sweat dotted his cold damp forehead.  Crater sat on the lumpy cot, cringing inside,

contemplating his death. He was innocent but that didn't seem to matter to these people:

 

the prison guards, prison warden, the prosecutor and the judge who had sentenced him. They

believed he was guilty and deserved their harshest punishment. Crater knew who should

be there instead of him. He loved the man.

He’d never squeal on him. So he waited.  The inmates on either side of him, waiting with

him, seemed to sense his preoccupation with the next steps in his life, the steps that would

take him, and someday them, to the gas chamber.  They tried to distract him but they, too,

were preoccupied with the clock ticking nearby.  Each tick grew louder as time rushed towards

completion of the sentence handed down by the judge, a righteous man, who believed he

 

was doing the right thing.  Jesus Christ walked this path for you and me.  He knew we were guilty of

 

the sin He was going to be executed for and yet He said nothing.

His heart did not feel anger towards us for the position we’d put Him in. He extends to us

LOVE, unconditional. He walked the Via Delarosa to hang on a cross. Someone had to pay

the price exacted by God for the sin we committed.  We turn our backs on God’s perfect

standards every day. Jesus was the appeasement that would bring us into right fellowship

with our Creator.

If you have not done so already, accept that Jesus died in your place, for your sins. Feel the

emotional impact of those words and His deed.  Repent. Begin life anew. Place your trust in the

Holy Spirit to teach and guide you as you walk toward eternity.

Father, thank You for providing a way that I can sit before Your throne in heaven some day.  Thank you for loving me so much that You willingly went to that cross.  Help me to be worthy of Your sacrifice from this day forward.  Amen

Fearless Freddie

A Sunny Tomorrow

A Sunny Tomorrow is a collection of Christian based stories for children by Theresa Franklin.  Please enjoy this short story about a little boy who can be every parents nightmare.







My mom calls me Fearless Freddie. She says I would go bear hunting with a switch, but I‘m not going to do that. If I caught a bear, he would have to sleep with me in my bed and I think he would take up too much room. Besides that, he would get hair in my bed. Sleeping with his hair in my bed would itch, like my neck does when I get a haircut. I hate getting haircuts.

I do a lot of things that make Mom angry. I don‘t mean to make her angry. She thinks I do those things because I am not afraid of anything. Really, I do them because I want to make things nice for her and my dad.

Like the time my dad got a new lawnmower. He was proud of it. I don‘t know who painted it, but they didn‘t do a very good job. It was red all over. Only one color? I thought it would look better with more colors on it, so I painted it.

I used the spray paint I found in the garage. It was a really pretty blue. I ran out of paint before I finished painting the lawnmower, so I got another can. The paint in that can was black.
It wasn‘t as pretty, but it was better than all red. When that paint ran out, I used another one. The paint in that can was yellow. It ran out too, but I didn‘t have any more cans. I stood back and looked at my work. I did a good job. The lawnmower looked much better now that it had more than one color on it. I went in the house and with a big smile on my face said, ―Mom, come see what I did for dad.‖

She came in the garage and looked at the lawnmower. She didn‘t smile but her eyes got real big. She breathed deep one time and said, ―Oh my goodness. I don‘t think your dad is going to like that.

When my dad got home she told him to go out in the garage and see what I did. From the way my mom told him, I was kind of scared. She didn‘t tell him all happy and excited. She told him in that voice she uses when she said, ―Look what your son did.  I don‘t know why she calls me Dad‘s son when she is angry with me.

Dad took me out in the garage and I showed him the lawnmower.
He said, ―What did you do?‖ I said, ―I made it pretty for you.

He didn‘t like it. I guess he only likes red. He made me help him clean it with some stinky stuff he called paint remover. I was crying while we were cleaning it. Not because of the stinky stuff, but because my dad was upset with me. See if I ever paint something for him again.
One day my friend, Dustin and I didn・t finish our math work before recess so the teacher made us stay in while the other kids went out to play.

After they left, Dustin said, "I have a whole ball of string in my backpack.  Do you want to see it?"

I did.  When he got it out to show me he dropped it.  It rolled on the floor under a chair.  When we tried to get it out, it got tangled around the led of the chair.  Then I got a really good idea.  I always get really good ideas.
I told Dustin, "We should see how far the string will go around the room under the chairs."

So we started at the first chair and wrapped the string around the chair legs, then we went to the next chair.  We did that all around the room except we skipped our chairs.  Then, we sat down and finished our math assignment.  When the other kids came back, the one that sits in the back pulled out his chair first.  All the chairs in the room fell backwards.  It made a horrendous crash.  It must have scared the teacher because she started breathing real hard and her nose kept puffing out like a horse.

Finally she said, "Go to the principal's office--now!"

I heard her say that, but it didn't sound like her.  Her voice sounded like a man's voice.  I hope she wasn't sick.  The principal called our parents and told them what we did.  They didn't think it was a very good way to spend our recess.  I tried to tell them it was a spearmint to see how far the string would go, but they said we shouldn't have done it.  I couldn't watch TV for a week.

Another time the teacher was reading with some other kids and we were supposed to be doing a worksheet, but it was boring.

Dustin had some more string and he asked me to tie his hands together. I did a really good job. Then the teacher came to our desks to see what we were doing.

When she saw Dustin's hands, she said, ―Go show the principal what you did.

On the way down to the principal‘s office I got to thinking that he might not think I did such a good job so I said, ―Let‘s untie you before we go to see Mr. Bertrand.

When we got into Mr. Bertrand‘s office, he asked why we were there and I said,

―Because we were talking when we should have been doing our worksheet.

He said, ―Well, be quiet and do your work.

On the way back to class I got to thinking the teacher must have liked the way I tied Dustin. Why else would she have sent us to show the principal?

Before we went into the classroom, we stopped and I tied him up again. When we got into the classroom, I told the teacher what the principal had said. She didn‘t like it and went to talk to him. He called us back down to the office and took away Dustin‘s string. Then, he yelled at us for lying to him. I don‘t know why he did that. I didn‘t lie to him. We were talking when we were supposed to be doing our work. We lost our recess.

Sometimes I get curious. One day I was playing in my dad‘s old truck. It was a cool truck. If you push on the middle of the steering wheel the horn would blow. I started wondering how the horn works. So I got a screwdriver and stuck it under the part that made the sound. I pushed real hard and the top just popped off. Suddenly all kinds of springs and other parts started jumping out from inside the steering wheel. I tried to put it all back, but every time I got one spring in, another would pop out. I gathered all the parts up and put them on the seat of the truck real neat so my dad would find them.

The next Saturday when my dad got it his truck, he said, ―What happened to my truck?‖

I said, ―Well, Dad, I got a little curious.‖

I don‘t remember all the words he said, but I know he doesn‘t say those words when Mom is around. He told me to leave his truck alone.

One day I was playing superhero. I put on my cape and went outside to save the world. I thought that every superhero should be able to fly, so I started practicing.
I would stand on something and jump off. The wind would grab my cape and I would fly—for a little ways. I figured that if I kept practicing I could fly farther.

Then, I decided that flying around outside wasn‘t as cool as saving someone from a building or a car. So, I stacked some boxes beside my mom‘s car and jumped through the window that she left open. I heard this horrible scraping sound. When I looked at the door there were scratch marks on it. Then I remembered that I had on my superhero belt buckle. My mom said maybe I needed to be a little older to be a superhero.

When I grow up, I will be a superhero and I‘ll invent lawnmowers with all the colors of the rainbow. Until then, I‘ll just be a little boy with parents who don‘t understand him.

Two Up

Barbara Derksen

Two Up

 Two Up is a devotional book especially for bikers by Barbara Derksen.  The following is an excerpt:

Yet to all who received Him, to those
who believed in His name, He gave the
right to become children of God. John 1:12

Accepted as God’s Child

Jenny looked at her birth certificate. For some
reason, her father’s name was not on it. She
decided to ask her mother about it.
For three days, Jenny’s mom avoided the conversation 

but then one morning, she sat down
at the kitchen table just as Jenny was about to
leave for work. “Your father and I were never
married. He was just a date, someone I hardly
knew. He got drunk and… I never saw him
again.” Jenny’s mom hung her head. A lone
tear trickled down her cheek. “Nine months
later you were born.”
Jenny’s insides felt as if she were on the downward
ride on a rollercoaster. She searched her
mother’s face looking for some sign that she’d
heard wrong but her mom’s expression
said it all. My mom was raped,
Women who are raped today, are
pressured to abort their babies.
Before Jenny could say anything, her
mother stood. She wrapped her arms
around her only daughter and
said, “You were a gift to me from
God Himself. I have loved you
since the moment I saw you.
When I met your father, he fell in
love with the two of us. When we
married, he adopted you right
away.”
Being adopted, for Jenny, meant
she had a family. She had a father
who loved her and two younger
brothers who teased relentlessly
but were fun to be around anyway.
The fact that her father had
adopted her as a baby never made
her relationship with him any
different than the one he had with
her brothers. Jenny was taken care
of as if she had been born to her dad.

If you have asked Jesus to be the
center of your life, you have the
privilege of being adopted by the
King of Kings and Lord of Lords.
You have a Father who loves you,
who cares about your deepest
desires and who always has me
to listen when you talk to Him. You
can call Him “Abba” just as if He
were your very own daddy.
Hold your head up this day. No
matter what your circumstances

are, you have a Father who loves you. Under
difficult circumstances, or when you are challenged
to step out of your comfort zone, He
walks beside you and gives you the power to
overcome whatever tries to defeat you or
mess you up.

If you have never asked Jesus to be the center
of your life, you have the opportunity to receive
Him now. Pray this simple prayer acknowledging
your need for a Savior, and your need for a Father 

who will love you unconditionally.
Father God, thank you for loving me. I am so
sorry I have acted independently from you.
Please come into my life and make me your
child. Adopt me into your family, Lord.
AMEN..