Insight for Today
A Daily Devotional by Pastor Chuck Swindoll

Your response to the heading of today's reading is probably: "Uh, oh—another money plea!" or "Here we go again . . . some Christian ministry trying to get into my wallet." If that's your response, I hate to disappoint you, but you're wrong.

Believe it or not, your personal testimony is one of the most powerful and compelling tools God has given you in reaching nonbelievers with the gospel. Now, I'm not talking about the common, garden-variety, churchy "braggamony."

One time-honored and effective method of evangelism is the giving of your personal testimony. The skeptic may deny your doctrine or attack your church, but he or she cannot honestly ignore the fact that your life has been changed.

Question: Judging yourself on this matter of keeping your word, are you bridging or widening the credibility gap? Are you encouraging or discouraging others? Let me help you answer that by using four familiar situations.

March 11, 1942, was a dark, desperate day at Corregidor. The Pacific theater of war was threatening and bleak. One island after another had been buffeted into submission. The enemy was now marching into the Philippines.

The history of great civilizations reminds me of a giant revolving door. It turns on the axis of human depravity as its movement is marked by the perimeter of time. With monotonous repetition each civilization has completed the same cycle.

It's a cartoon I've smiled at again and again. There are two Eskimos sitting on chairs, fishing through holes in the ice. The fella on the right has draped his line through your typical disk-like opening . . . about the size of a small manhole.

In Part One, I presented you with your own (round) tuit—the solution to those procrastination problems you've been having. Yep, no longer will you need to say: "I should take care of that—and I will as soon as I get a (round) tuit."

Whatever you do, don't lose this. . . . I strongly suggest that you stop right now, print it, cut it out, and save it. It is your own special "tuit." Because they are rare, you should lock yours up in a safe place. "Tuits" are not easy to obtain—especially the round ones.

During the reign of Oliver Cromwell, the British government began to run low on silver for coins. Lord Cromwell sent his men on an investigation of the local cathedral to see if they could find any precious metal there.

Yesterday I told you about my days in a Marine Corps Quonset hut in Okinawa in 1958. It was an intense time living among those whose lifestyle I found nauseating and empty. I can trace the acceptance of my circumstance and the shift of my focus to a single verse of Scripture.

I remember it well. Almost as clearly as if it happened last month. But it didn't. It happened deep in the summer of '58. I was a Marine. Almost eight thousand miles of ocean between me and my wife. One-word descriptions of my condition? Disillusioned.

Okay, are you ready to have your mind boggled? If not, better shove this aside until you can handle it. It's too stretching to pass over with a yawn. The germ thought struck me when I was deep in the redwoods some time ago. I lay back and looked up.

Yesterday, we talked about innovative people, and I mentioned that there are a whole lot more innovative people around than any of us can imagine. Could you be one of them? Let's take a little test and see.

It takes guts to innovate, because it requires creative thinking. Thinking is hard enough, but creative thinking—ah, that's work! To get the juices squirting, you have to be dissatisfied with the status quo.

We've been talking about what I'm calling "witch hunting," the phenomenon affecting our world in which people are eager to find the Devil in every nook and cranny and to blame him for just about everything.

Flip Wilson's line, "The Devil made me do it," was designed to be funny, not phony. Whether the comedian believed in an actual Satan is, for the moment, immaterial. All he was interested in was getting a laugh.

Who hasn't felt himself standing on tiptoe, straining to see what lies ahead? Even the writers of a weekly news magazine tried to look beyond today. They didn't try many predictions but they did ask some tough, sweeping questions.

You've heard of "too little and too late." How about "too many and too much"? That's the way I'd describe our times. In a society overrun with overstatements, I find an occasional "not quite enough" a sheer delight. Too much empty talk.

Yesterday we talked about how the Israelites began to worship what started out as a good thing but became too much of a good thing: a bronze serpent they called "Nehushtan." We can make an idol out of anything or anyone in life.