Lessons from Lizards

By John Stallings


A lizard can be caught with the hand yet it is found in king’s palaces. Proverbs 30:28. NIV

Larry the cable guy was recently on The Tonight Show & made a funny joke about Geico insurance. He said he had an insurance claim & they sent a Lizard adjuster over to check it out.

Solomon the wise man said there was much we can learn from a lizard. These little lizards we have in Florida are something else. I got interested in the little fellows recently & Googled them. They’re called Anole lizards & only live a couple of years. They hibernate in cold weather. They are extremely territorial.

Solomon tells us we can learn from lizards. So if the wise man says it, let’s see what we can learn.

1. LIZARDS LIVE BEYOND LIMITS.

Even thousands of years ago it was said of them, “They can be caught with the hand but can be found in king’s palaces.”

What is it about these creatures? They are so fragile & don’t seem to have much of a brain, & can be caught by hand, [if you’re fast enough,] but are downright uncanny.

We have a glass sliding back door at our house & when the weathers’ warm small lizards call this area home. They’ve never asked permission & don’t seem to care whether we like it or not. Here’s the problem; the small ones seem to be able to wish themselves inside the house.

Really. They are outside the glass doors-- then we blink & one will be inside & what happens to them then isn’t pretty. We don’t like reptiles or anything that resembles them. Juda says they are so small they can squeeze in the tiny cracks in the doors but for the life of me I don’t see it. It has to be some sort of magical trick they play because all at once, voila, one will be crawling on the glass door- on the inside.

These guys are unbelievable. I read somewhere that lizards have been found on the top floors of huge skyscrapers, & no one knows exactly how they got there.

No matter where it is, lizards will find a way to get there. Period. They’re not born there & don’t really belong there but that doesn’t stop the lizard.

They put no limits on themselves & even though they’re trespassing, they look at you as if they have as much right to be there as you do. They assume perfect liberty to go anywhere they want to go.

Have you set limits on yourself? Have you decided there are limits on what you can do & where you can go? Some people are limited by their;

PAST

Psychologists in their study of the human psyche usually study the first five years of life, thinking everything important to our development is in those early years. Many of them seem not to be able to get past our childhood.

This is wrong on many levels & this emphasis has caused many to be stuck in the past. While the formative years are important, I don’t believe we should place too much importance on whether our mothers buttoned our sweaters too tight or not.

In Isaiah 43:18-19 God said,

Remember ye not the former things, neither consider the things of old.
Behold I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.

God put our eyes in front of our head & He isn’t pleased with our living our lives looking in the rear view mirror, reveling in the dead past when each day can be new & fresh. To some folk the past is more real than the present & they seem to like living that way.

But living in the past limits us. There has to be a point when we stop rehearsing what has happened to us, & move on to what’s next in our lives.

In Acts 3 there was a man sitting in front of The Gate Beautiful who’d been lame from his mother’s womb. Think about that. He wasn’t hurt in an accident or disabled in his youth; he’d never known what it was like to walk. He had no frame of reference of any kind for mobility without the aide of others.

The man’s history was affecting his present condition but when God got involved none of that mattered, he was changed in a moment of time. The man, lame from his mother’s womb was miraculously healed & went walking & leaping into the temple. You & I don’t have to be limited by our past; our God is a “now God” & wants to do a new thing in our lives.

Then some people are stuck in the;

PRESENT

Some are stuck demographically, some are stuck geographically & some are stuck financially. They don’t see any options for themselves.

We need to stop being so accepting of things as they are & start seeing things as they can be. We don’t have to leave everything like it is in our lives.

The greatest revival we’ve seen in the last half-century has been the Civil Rights revival. Yes, revival is exactly what happened under the leadership of Dr. Martin Luther King. He looked at things as they were & refused to accept them that way.

Dr. King changed society. You see, that’s what a revival is. A spiritual revival wouldn’t be one that happened within the four walls of churches. A real spiritual revival would be one that would escape the four walls of churches to spill out into society & change the status quo. Dr. King went to Washington D.C & gave the “I have a dream” speech & the world took notice.

Do you have a dream that extends beyond your past & your present? If not ask God to give you one. With the help & grace of God let’s get rid of the limits we’ve imposed on ourselves & look to new vistas ahead. Next;


2. THE LIZARD ADAPTS TO NEW CIRCUMSTANCES.

In order to survive & thrive, a lizard can change colors when & if necessary, especially the Chameleon. This creature adapts. Did you hear about the lizard that landed on a box of crayons & exploded? The lizard can change, adapt & adjust.

Change seems to come easier for some folk than it does for others. Changing when necessary doesn’t mean being wishy-washy, compromising or accommodating to make people accept us. Nor does it mean tailoring the Christian message to make it more palatable to the masses. What it means is we don’t live in a static world. Change is a normal process & if we can’t adapt & change we become irrelevant.

We live in a world of change. I recently read that scientists say more than 98% of the atoms in our bodies were not present a year ago today. You are really a new person. Our thinking changes, our attitudes change, our position in life changes, our actions change, & our relationships to God & others change.

More than 200 years ago when George Washington traveled from Virginia to Washington by horseback it took him 10 days of traveling at the speed of 25 miles a day. Today that trip would only be a few hours by car.

The problem we face isn’t just that things are changing; it’s the rapid rate of change. There’s a knowledge explosion in progress.

I know you’ve noticed the 8-tracks are gone. Not only that, cassettes are gone, & evidently Cd's & DVDs are on the way out. Now days the young folk are working with digital downloads & there are millions of songs on I tunes, plus movies that can even be digitally downloaded.

Recently we needed more memory on our computer & were shown a device half the size of a ball-point pen that plugs into the front of a P.C that will hold the equivalent of several lengthy books. Most of the young folk in your life & mine probably haven’t ever seen an old-fashioned typewriter & don’t remember Leave it to Beaver.

We are in a day of exponential change & are drowning in a sea of data. Its been estimated that a weeks worth of a large newspaper like The New York Times contains more information than a person in the 1800s was likely to come across in a lifetime.

More than 3000 books are published every day. For a student in a technical college starting a four year program, half of what they learn in the first year will be outdated in their third year of study.

When Jesus came to walk this earth His message was change. He said in Mark 2:22;

And no man putteth new wine in old wine bottles; else the new wine doth burst the bottles….

The message Christ brought was that His death on the cross would turn the religious world on its head & change everything.

Paul said in 2 Corinthians 4:16;

.though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day.

One of the most awesome things God built into us is the marvelous ability to change & adapt.

Paul said in 1 Cor.9:22;

..I am made all things to all men that I might by all means win some.

Notice, Paul said; I am made ALL things to ALL men that I might by ALL means win some.

Both Jesus & the apostle Paul are saying…..Change, Change, Change.

Did you know that change helps reverse the aging process? It does. Do something different. Go to a different restaurant. Drive to work a different route. If you have hair, try a different hair style. It makes a difference. If you’ve been on the computer too much, get off of it & read. Don’t always email your friends, make a call now & then. It will help keep you young.

If The Rolling Stones can keep going at almost nearly 70, so can we. CHANGE. The magic of the lizard is the power to change.

DON’T LET AGE BLUFF YOU.

Have you noticed that the younger generation isn’t impressed with age as much as the older generation? My generation thinks that you have to start acting old at 65. Nowadays people aren’t retiring at 65 & that’s good. Coaches like Joe Perterno have stayed active into their eighties.

DON’T LET YOUTH BLUFF YOU EITHER.

Look at what people like the three Hebrew boys, Daniel & Esther did when placed in extenuating circumstances. They thrived because they wouldn’t allow their surroundings, no matter how foreboding to cause them to give up.

Paul told young Timothy in 1 Timothy 4:12;

Let no man despise thy youth but be thou an example of the believers……

The third thing we can learn from lizards is;


3. THEY GROW BACK WHAT THEY’VE LOST.

Some lizards can grow back tails & limbs. Isn’t that amazing? I realize that human beings can’t grow back body parts but there are many things we can lose & grow back.

Many times people go through things & in the process they lose their confidence & self-esteem. They also lose their faith. But these things we can grow back. We can’t get everything back but many things we can get back.

We shouldn’t be so accepting of our losses taking a lackadaisical attitude as if it were all mean to be. If we are God’s children we have powers of regeneration inside us.

God’s promise in Joel in 2:25 is;

And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten; the canker worm & the caterpillar & the palmerworm…..


EVERYBODY LOVES COMEBACKS

Many famous comebacks are in the realm of sports. I’m reminded of a Little League team that was getting walloped. It was 15-0 & just at the top of the first inning. A man who was watching the debacle commented to one of the boys on the losing team who was in the dugout & obviously unconcerned, “Aren’t you worried about the game?” “Oh no sir” he said, “We haven’t even come to bat yet!”

I’ve been privileged to visit Hawaii twice & both times I’ve been drawn to the Pearl Harbor site where on December 7, 1941 the Japanese launched a surprise attack on our Pacific naval fleet. They show a 45 minute film at the memorial that allows you to experience with chilling reality what happened on that fateful day.

Within a few moments, five of our eight battleships were sunk & the rest damaged. 2,400 American military personnel were dead. America was shocked & crippled. But, oh, what a comeback was staged. The brutal attack rallied the Americans to enter WW2 & thus the Allied forces won the day.

I was amazed to learn that two of our ships that were sunk by the Japanese during the attack on Pearl Harbor were raised by the dry docks & refurbished in time to get back into the war. Amazingly, these two ships later were responsible for the sinking of several of the ships that participated in the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. As a matter of fact, the one big mistake [mistake for them that is] the Japanese made was in their not destroying our ship rebuilding capabilities. A monument to comebacks!!

THE BIBLE IS FILLED WITH GREAT COMEBACKS

There are great stories of people who should have failed but came back from oblivion to be changed into vessels God could use.

There is Moses, who when he was forty had his picture in all the Egyptian post offices because he’d killed an Egyptian taskmaster. Forty years later he made a comeback & was instrumental in emancipating the nation of Israel.

Daniel was thrown into a lion’s den for refusing to deny his God but the next day he made a comeback & his accusers fed the lions in his place.

Simon Peter who miserably failed on the night of Jesus’ arrest & denied the Lord 3 times, later after Jesus sat him down on the beach came back to become one of the greatest preachers of the church.

SAMSON

No sadder story exists in the holy record than that of Samson. He failed God miserably because he didn’t take his anointing seriously. But his life actually ended in victory.

Judges 16 tells the story of how Samson played with Delilah & finally told her the secret of his strength, his seven locks of hair. He played the fool for he must have known Delilah was up to no good. Samson sealed his fate when he did this.

Then his enemies, the Philistines came in & gouged out his eyes & made sport of him by making him grind at the mill like an animal.

The Philistines took Samson to Gaza but this was a big mistake. It was like taking a ticking time-bomb into the city. Though Samson hadn’t fulfilled the most & best God wanted for him in life, God still loved him & was going to give him a great comeback in his death.

It would be easy to look at Samson’s life & think it a failure but we can hardly do that when God loved Samson & esteemed him highly at the end of his life. God saw something in this man at the end that impressed Him, & if we look at his final prayer we can see why.

In Judges 16:28……And Samson called unto the Lord and said, O Lord remember me I pray thee and strengthen me I pray thee only this once O God that I may be at once avenged of the Philistines for my two eyes.”

And Samson took hold of the two middle pillars upon which the house stood and on which it was borne up- of the one his right hand & of the other his left.

And Samson said; Let me die with the Philistines. And he bowed himself with all his might and the house fell upon the lords & upon all the people that were therein. So the dead which he slew at his death were more than they which he slew in his life.

Judges 16:22 tells us that Samson’s hair, the source & symbol of his strength had begun to grow back. What have you lost that you need to grow back?


Is it your faith? GROW IT BACK!

Is it your self-esteem? GROW IT BACK!

Is it your prayer life? GROW IT BACK!

Is it your joy? GROW IT BACK!

Is it your sensitivity to God? GROW IT BACK!

Is it your ministry? GROW IT BACK!


We might think that because of the failures Samson made, God would forgive him --but not allow him to be restored back into a place of genuine respect & honor in His sight & ours. If it were left up to man, that would have happened. We do away with people like Samson & put in them in life’s “fire sales.”


But not so with God! We only have to look in Faith’s Hall of Fame, Hebrews 11, to see Samson’s name mentioned as a great person of faith. Why? Because he never failed? No! Because he by the grace of God was able to GROW BACK what he’d lost in the final hours of his life.


If you were to ask what gives me the most hope that life’s insurmountable odds may be overcome & victory won, my answer would be one word,

JESUS!

Though I enjoyed Mel Gibson’s film The Passion, the one negative about it to me was-- though it depicts accurately the sufferings of Jesus, for almost two intense hours, I’d have liked to have seen more of the resurrection. Without the resurrection the sufferings of Jesus are just an abject tragedy. But with the resurrection His sufferings are transformed from tragedy to triumph.

The resurrection of Jesus Christ is histories greatest comeback.


LOW IN THE GRAVE HE LAY, JESUS MY SAVIOR,
HE ROLLED THE STONE AWAY, JESUS MY LORD,
UP FROM THE GRAVE HE AROSE WITH A MIGHTY TRIUMPH ORE HIS FOES,

HE AROSE A VICTOR FROM THE DARK DOMAIN,
AND HE LIVES FOREVER WITH HIS SAINTS TO REIGN.
HE AROSE. HE AROSE. HALLELUJAH CHRIST AROSE.

Jesus said because He lives we also shall live. But not only did Jesus purchase for us victory over death, He also came that we might have life, & that we might have it more abundantly.

Jesus came back to offer new hope for shattered lives & He still offers comebacks for those who are willing to give their lives to him.

IF GOD HAS THE POWER TO RAISE JESUS FROM THE DEAD…..WHAT DO YOU SUPPOSE HE CAN DO IN YOUR LIFE?


Blessings,


John