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Tuesday, May 22, 2012

The Devotional - A Look at the Book #716

by Jesse Abel
God loves you and me. The truth is hard to understand isn’t it? Why is that? Maybe because we know that we are unloving. God does not look upon our unloving nature as we do, so His plan is to give us a new nature, one that is loving, one that even you can love 2 Corinthians 5:17 and Romans 13:14.

As a senior enlisted man and stationed on a Naval Base one of my military duties was Command Duty Officer or CDO as it is more popularly known! In this position of duty which begins at 1600 (4 pm) each evening the individual has all of the power and authority of the Base Commander who is normally a Navy Captain, the duty ends at 0800 (8 am) the following morning.

One evening I was called to a disturbance at the Marine Barracks which also housed a small club, the band that the Marines had hired for the evening entertainment was extremely loud and the music sounded anything but entertaining.

There I was inside this establishment, I did have a couple of sailors with me but I felt alone and a bit unsteady. There were several Marines, some women and the band; at first I was ignored so I took the night stick from the sailor standing beside me and slammed it on a table, a loud noise followed by breaking drinking glasses and grumbling people, then silence.

Now I had their attention the thought of what was I going to do next ran through my mind since the loud bang of hitting the table even startled me! I grabbed my composure and said directly to the band; “the noise you people are making is disturbing the whole surrounding area, you need to turn the volume down on those instruments if you plan on continuing to play music this evening. If you fail to do that I will shut the building down and throw you off the base… forever!”

Someone said, “you can’t do that, you are only the CDO” this was all I needed to hear. I ordered the base police (Marines on duty) to shut the building down and escorted the band off the base. While this was going on I was reminded of another day when as a young petty officer I had Shore Patrol duty and was called to the dance floor to face someone with a knife. I was scared, really scared but somehow I managed to face the man and take the knife from him without incident.

Why am I telling you of these events? As that young Shore Patrol Petty Officer I was an unbeliever of the gospel of the LORD Jesus, but I was very conscious of my need for God’s help; as the CDO I was a believer in the LORD Jesus and I knew that God would help. A small seed of faith is all that is needed for Biblical Faith to be the building blocks to form your every step in life. Thank God for the authority He appoints in our life, it may be that one day soon He will place you in a position of authority. Even if it is temporary it will be yours to glorify Him. How will you fare? Romans 13:1-7

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