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#TripleThreat
Gene Kissinger
The Quarter story. redeeming the time brothers podcast a podcast by Gene Kissinger and Norman Kissinger, two brothers who spent their lives in ministry and raising large families our desire is to provide a digital place for those who long to belong and as always, we want to leave a nightlight on for you.
that nightlight is at a Proverbs chapter 17 and verse 22, where it talks about the the benefits of a happy spirit, a merry heart doeth good like medicine but a broken spirit dries the bones, a merry heart doeth good like medicine, but a broken spirit drieth the bones.
He's talking here about the benefits of joy and having happiness as a hallmark of your life. Being a winsome witness for Christ. By having a light heart instead of being dreary toward everybody that's around you. Some people are just like a continual drip, drip, drip. They're full of sadness and despair and depression and God wants us to have joy Now that doesn't mean there are not sad moments or difficult issues in life, but they're also always good things that are going on around us
blessed things,
hopeful things,
wonderful things.
I remember listening to Norman Cousins. He wrote a book called headfirst he had he had received two different incurable diagnoses from doctors. He used humor as one of the medicine protocols to bring himself to the place of wellness. The doctors said there was nothing they could do for him. He rented Three Stooges videos and various other things that he thought was funny. This was back in the time when they had reel to reel kind of film, and he would watch that and laughter he found allowed him to be pain free. And and ultimately he got cured from these two terminal diagnoses. And he wrote a book called headfirst abiut it. In it he talks about being asked by a group of physicians to come and talk to some cancer patients that they wanted to give these patients at least Some hope and to lighten their day and cousins was a pretty funny guy. So he's up in front of these cancer patients, And he's talking about going up to a payphone. Now, you guys that are younger, you probably have no idea what I'm talking about. But those of you that have got a few years behind, those with a few miles on your odometer, know what a payphone was. It was the way we used to communicate when we were out and about and we needed to call home or call a store or whatever, we didn't have a cell phone in our pocket. And so we had to go plug a quarter into the payphone and then make a phone call. You needed a quarter, It was kind of a survival tool, so that you could make an emergency call if you needed to. Well, cousins put his only quarter in this payphone and it didn't connect him to the number and so he needed the quarter back and so he called the operator and the operator gave him the runaround, you know, like they do at a company, there's always a procedure for how to do the thing at the company, if you feel like you've been taken advantage of, they'll take your name and your address and they'll send you the refund. And he explained to her the stamp and the envelope would cost more than a quarter. He just wanted her to make the pay phone give the quarterback so he can make his phone call. He then said, you add the price of the person that licked the envelope and the stamp and and so on. When he explained to her it would cost the company far more money than for her to just make the machine give him back his quarter so he can make his next phone call. And she's finally reiterating how we can't do that. This is how it's done. And then she said have you pushed the plunger, the coin return plunger? And he said no that he hadn't, he reached up and he pulled it down and $4 worth of quarter's fell out of the machine. I mean, it's raining quarters. It's like a slot machine paid off. Quarters pourung down on the on the floor of the phone booth.
The operator says, sir, I'm gonna need you to put those coins back in, return those coins into the phones coin slot. He said give me your name and address and I'll send the quarters to you. When the cancer patients heard the funny line, the payoff to it, they roared with laughter and cheered and, and then after he was done, the doctors, the physicians got up and asked them how many of you really enjoyed this and really laughed when Norman was telling you about the quarter story and they raised their hand then he said, How many of you experienced little pain or no pain while he was telling the story and they raised their hands almost unanimously. That laughter gave them pain relief, a little bit of laughter can give you 15 minutes pain free. I don't know if it's endorphins or what, I don't know the biological process of it, But laughter is indeed medicine to your soul, medicine to your body. You and I need to learn To have joy again.
l I'm in the last quarter of my life, the last half that for sure. I'm going to be holy, I'm determined that I'm going to live a life that's well pleasing to God. And I want to live well, I want to finish Well, I don't just want to have started well, I want to finish well, but beyond that, I want to be happy. I want to be ridiculously, joyfully, full of the Spirit of God. You know the word enthusiasm. It's "en theos," it means to be filled with God. There should be nobody more filled with joy and filled with God than you and I who are born again. Blood bought, spirit filled, believers who've had our eternal destiny settled forever by Jesus Christ and His work on the cross. All we had to do to enter into it was give him the mess that was our sins, and received from him the gift of eternal life.
The joy of the Lord is our strength. You and I, we've got lost, unsaved friends and family members, we're probably not going to win them, by browbeating them, you know we're going to win them is by demonstrating what the joy the Lord looks like and inviting them to come into that relationship so that they too can have the joy of the Lord in their life. So that they can have their eternal destiny settled forever. Well, guys, we need to close our time together and prayer. Let's pray. Dear Lord God, I thank you for this day and I thank you for the truth that indeed a merry heart doeth good like
Medicine. It is a medicine to our soul, our distressed soul, because of our sin God, we need to know that we can get forgiveness and we can have cleansing and we can have joy that flows from your throne, restore unto us, The joy of our salvation as King David said. Allow us God, to have a happy heart as we enter into these last days, help us to be a winsome witness to those that are around about what the benefits are of being a blood bought Born Again, spirit filled believer in Jesus. We ask this in the most holy, precious and powerful name, of Jesus amen.
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