APRIL 2025 NEWSLETTER
APRIL 2025 NEWSLETTER
ROBERT LINDENBERGER
405 INDIAN RIVER AVE. 504
TITUSVILLE, FLORIDA 32796
God is good all the time; all the time, God is good! Amen?
Just a reminder, I told you about being addicted to TV, Facebook, and the Computer. I got that way, trying to go one more day on planet Earth without the feeling of being in everyone’s way. My first move was into a room, then a nursing home, and now the Towers. I spent more time at the computer than with God, and the Bible reading and prayer really put me down and filled me with anxiety. My anxiety came from pride. I believe my timeline hands were the best. So I wanted them to proceed on in order. A question through my thoughts, however: Are your plans God’s plans?
The problem was my planning—God calls us to be wise stewards of our time, opportunities, and resources—and my arrogance. I was fixated on my understanding of events and how I wanted them to turn out, not on God’s purpose and how he wanted my plans to turn out.
James encourages us to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.” (James 4:15). We’re to plan not with a presumptions mindset, thinking how we know everything and have control over our lives, but from a decision of submission to God’s sovereignty and wisdom. After all, we “do not even know what will happen tomorrow.” An argument is that we are helpless and like a mist that appears… And then vanishes (V 14).
Only God has authority and power over everything in our lives; we don’t. Through the Scriptures and the people, resources, and circumstances He allowed each day, He guides us together in submission to His will and ways. Our plans are not to come from following ourselves but from following him.
-- Adapted from ODB, Karen Huang, March 28, 2025
Why did Jesus die on the cross?
When Jesus said that he had come to give His life a ransom for many, His ear probably realized that He had the Jewish sacrificial system in mind. His hearers probably realized that He had in his mind the Jewish sacrificial system from early childhood. They had seen sheep, oxen, or turtle doves brought to the altar and killed. They knew that the animals were associated with their sins. As they watched the priest place his hand on the forehead of the animal, they understood that his blood, in some way, symbolizes the taking away of their guilt.
A story from American history illustrates this principle. In a tribe of Indians, someone was stealing chickens. The Chief declared that the offender would receive 10 lashes. When this stealing continued, he raised it to 20 lashes. Still, the chickens methodically disappeared. In anger, she raises it to 100 lashes. – A short sentence of death.
The thing was final, but the Chief is in a terrible dilemma. The thief was his own mother!
When the day of the penalty came, the whole tribe gathered. When does the Chief’s love override that of Justice? The crowd gasped when he ordered his mother to be tied to the whipping post. The Chief removed his shirt, revealing his powerful stature and the whip in his hand. But instead of raising it to strike the first blow, he handed it to a strong, young, brave at his side.
Slowly, the Chief walked over to his mother with his massive arms around her in a golfing embrace. Then he ordered the brave to give him the 100 lashes.
That’s what Jesus did for us. In LOVE, He became our substitute and died in our place. He overcame our inability to save ourselves by paying the price for our sins. In our illustration, a mother’s life is extended by the substitutionary love of her son; for us, everlasting life was brought through the substitutionary death of Christ.
Therefore, Christ’s death is of tremendous value, where it reached the goal between God and man. 2 Corinthians 5:15: “And He died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died for them and rose again.”
Jesus loves you, and so do I.
'Ol Uncle Bob, Storyteller
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