{"id":100,"date":"2007-12-05T06:00:09","date_gmt":"2007-12-05T13:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/devonline.us\/dailyevotional\/archives\/100"},"modified":"2007-12-05T16:34:58","modified_gmt":"2007-12-05T23:34:58","slug":"a-leaky-bucket","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dailyevotional.com\/prior2020\/a-leaky-bucket\/","title":{"rendered":"“A LEAKY BUCKET!”"},"content":{"rendered":"

II Corinthians 4:5-7<\/strong><\/p>\n

“For we do not preach ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord, and ourselves your bondservants for Jesus’ sake.\u00a0 For it is the God who commanded light to shine out of darkness, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.\u00a0 But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Somewhere in my distant past I heard an illustration that has stuck with me.\u00a0 It seems that an elderly man lived in a small cabin near a beautiful pristine lake.\u00a0 There was no water in his small cabin, so it was a daily task for him to take two buckets and walk to the edge of the lake and fill them.
\n\u00a0
\nNow it so happened that a young man was spending time with the old man and volunteered to take on the task of getting the water.\u00a0 When he arrived back at the cabin on his first trip, he noticed that one of the buckets was almost empty.\u00a0 He mentioned it to his host, but the old man simply smiled and said, “It is no problem.”
\n\u00a0
\nDay after day this pattern repeated itself.\u00a0 After a few days the young man found a new bucket to replace the one that leaked.\u00a0 He mentioned nothing to the old man, but was quite proud of himself.\u00a0 After a week the old man said that he noticed that he was not carrying the leaky bucket.\u00a0 The young man proudly boasted that he had found a new one.\u00a0
\n\u00a0
\nHe had taken care to not let the old man know what he had done.\u00a0 He asked him how he knew about the new bucket.\u00a0 The old man said that he knew what he was doing because the flowers were dying.\u00a0 The young man was at a loss to know what his new bucket had to do with the flowers dying.
\n\u00a0
\nIt was then that the old man revealed that he intentionally used the old leaky bucket because as he carried it along the path back to the cabin, water leaked out and watered the flowers that grew along the path.\u00a0 The old bucket was a tool used to bring life along the path.
\n\u00a0
\nSometimes we have the idea that God uses only wonderful new buckets to do His work.\u00a0 LISTEN!\u00a0 It is not the bucket (us) that matters.\u00a0 It is the precious Lord which is in us that counts.\u00a0 Some of the ugliest and most unsightly buckets allow the beauty of Jesus to shine through.
\n\u00a0
\nThat reminds me of an inspirational hymn:\u00a0
\n\u00a0
\n“Let the beauty of Jesus be seen in me;
\nAll His wonderful passion and purity.
\nOh, Thou Spirit divine; All my nature refine.
\nTill the beauty of Jesus be seen in me.”
\n<\/em>\u00a0
\nBlessings dear hearts.\u00a0 Walk with God today, trust Him completely and be a blessing.
\n\u00a0
\n— Pastor Cecil<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

II Corinthians 4:5-7 “For we do not preach ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord, and ourselves your bondservants for Jesus’ sake.\u00a0 For it is the God who commanded light to shine out of darkness, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-e-votionals"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyevotional.com\/prior2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyevotional.com\/prior2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyevotional.com\/prior2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyevotional.com\/prior2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyevotional.com\/prior2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyevotional.com\/prior2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyevotional.com\/prior2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyevotional.com\/prior2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyevotional.com\/prior2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}