Barney Fife- Realtor

" …be content with what you have" - Heb. 13:5 Nothing fills our souls like the love of Jesus. Unfortunately, that doesn't keep most of us from trying to replace God with substitutes. But they all fall short. Nothing fills our souls like the love of Jesus. I have an experiment for you to try today: go to the kitchen sink in your house and fill up one side of the sink half way with water. Now, begin to grab the water with your hands and move it to the other side of the sink. Time yourself, and after 5 minutes, see how much water you've moved. You probably won't move very much. The truth is, grabbing water doesn't work very well. Looking to anything other than God for our significance doesn't work very well either. It will always produce frustration because it always slips through our fingers. Deep inside, it keeps us empty. It satisfies temporarily. The Bible challenges us to "be content with what we have" - if God is not at the center of it all, we'll always be looking for more. The house could always be bigger, our health could always be better, the car could always be newer, the kids could always live closer, and the savings account could always be fuller. The list goes on and on. If we're not filled up with Jesus, we will never be satisfied. Enter Barney Fife, the deputy on the Andy Griffith Show. We laugh at him because we see so much of ourselves in him. In season five, episode sixteen, Barney has grown discontent with his deputy job (once again). After speaking to the local real estate agent, Barney Fife decides that selling houses would be the perfect sideline for him. Being the deputy isn't enough. He starts by targeting some of the families in Mayberry who may want to change houses and soon has a chain of four buyers and sellers lined up. Even Andy has gotten involved. But Barney grows frustrated when the buyers and sellers aren't moving their homes quickly enough for Barney to share the profit. Having recently admonished Opie for trying to sell his bicycle without revealing the problem with the brakes, Andy finds himself being less than honest with the the prospective buyer of his house about the leaky roof or the noisy pipes. Opie practices what his father preaches and mentions these things to an interested buyer, much to Andy's annoyance. When Andy visits the house he's interested in buying, he finds that it may not be perfect either. So Andy tells the truth and, much to Barney's displeasure, decides that his current home is just fine, after all. At the end of the episode, every one is right back where they started. Andy realizes that the house they live in is home, leaky roof and all. And apparently, Barney realizes that his job is fine, even though they don't have machine guns and crime waves in Mayberry. They grew "content with what they had." Are you content with what you have today? It's okay to buy new cars and go on vacations, but if you're looking to those things for true peace, it's not there. In the 1600's, the famous French mathematician Blaise Pascal said, "there is a God-shaped hollow in the human heart that nothing else can fill." And the thing is, God is more than willing and capable of filling it to the very top, if we'll let Him. If I confess my reluctance and ask Him to be my peace, He is faithful to fill the void. You can let the water drain out of the sink now- let it be a reminder that anything we substitute for God always slips through our fingers. God is our all in all, whether we're selling houses or fighting crime in Mayberry. By Eric Joseph Staples © www.parentingyourteen101.com