I once heard a man say, "For the Christian, all ground is holy ground; every bush a burning bush."

Now, imagine yourself at a Johnny Cash concert. Can't you just hear his sonorous voice as he sings . . .

"I keep a close watch on this heart of mine
I keep my eyes wide open all the time
I keep the ends out for the tie that binds
Because you're mine, I walk the line"

I hear it, every sweet note, in my head. And if I wanted to, I could listen to a recording. Mr. Cash, often described as the "man in black" lived a rough life before he found Christ and his life was profoundly changed.

I love my life as a follower of Jesus Christ. I have loved it every day now for sixty--five years. In that time, never once have I regretted becoming a Christian. For me, when it came, it came like a freight train. My spiritual roots go back to a strong evangelicalism. I may have moved a little toward the center in my old age, but the basics of my conversion still hold as certain today as they did then.

There is an issue, however, . . . or, perhaps it is better called a tension. There is indeed a line a believer must walk between the values of our faith and the values of the world of secularism in which we live. I think that every believer feels this tension at some level. We hear Jesus tell us, "Go into all the world," and Paul tell us to "Come out from among them and be separate."

Tension.

The apostle Paul told his young disciple, Timothy, "For every creation of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving." ---- I Timothy 4:4

Indeed all things may be received with thanksgiving, except – that which turns my heart away from God.

"Heart?" This word seems to be employed in a thousand different ways. Let me define it for this piece you're reading: It refers to all that which constitutes you, or for want of a better model, me. Specifically it refers to the mind (emotions and intellect), the soul (personality) and the spirit, all of that stuff we use to connect with and engage our Creator.

No matter how benign something may be intrinsically, if it provokes hiccups in my communion with Jesus, it is not a good thing. It is worse than not a good thing. A cockroach comes to mind.

Bad stuff is self--destructive stuff and it can be anything. It can be everything.

The issue becomes how we approach these things, not the things in themselves.

If you know that Satan is real, then you know he is out to give you a world of hurt. Even if you don't know Satan is real, he is still out to give you a world of hurt. In your lifetime, it's probable that you've bumped into him several times already. Another source of hurt is evil people, and to wrap it all up, you -- yourself -- may be your own worst enemy. You bring grief to yourself that has nothing to do with Satan or anyone else.

God does not give us warts. They grow just to annoy us. But for these non--corporeal warts that grow in our lives, is it possible to receive them with gratitude as from the hand of God? God never gives us anything but good things.

That is because God is good. That is because God loves us. See, the amazing thing is this: that when something in our lives does go bad, whether from Satan, others, or ourselves, God has an incredible way of turning it into something good for the Kingdom. And that usually means a special and uniquely formed blessing for us.

For King David, that "peeping Tom," aka known as the "friend of God," the warts would have been his lust for Bathsheba, and the murder of her husband.

By the way, if you were God, would you want a peeping Tom for a friend? Me neither.

Yet it is David that we credit for most of the Psalms. For you and me, it may not be murder and lust, but if it succeeds in supplanting God in our hearts, it is beyond destructive. Yet it was through the ancestral line of David and Bathsheba, that gave us Jesus. So, are we surprised when God takes the stupid things we do and turns them into wine?