(A Conversation…)
You can’t do that.
What?
You can’t disappoint God.
What do you mean I can’t disappoint God?
Just what I said.
Well I don’t think He’s too pleased!
I didn’t say you can’t displease Him. That’s a different conversation. I said you can’t disappoint Him.
Okay, why do you say that?
Because to be able to disappoint Him, you’d have to be able to surprise Him. And whatever else He is, He is not surprised.
He knew this would happen?
Yep.
He let this happen?
He gave you a choice. And you made it happen. But none of it caught Him by surprise.
(Silence… wheels turning…) [click to continue…]
A few months ago I was having a conversation with someone who was going through a recovery process. He sounded really healthy on the phone – sober in the best sense of the word. Then he said something really curious about his life.
“I’m so ready to get things back to normal.”
“Normal,” I told him, “was what got you in trouble in the first place. You’re ‘normal’ is being redefined, and that takes time. And as much as you want that, you are going to need to give it time to form.”
I was talking to a couple a few weeks after their first baby was born. I asked how things were going and got a predictable answer. “We love being parents, but we’re exhausted from lack of sleep,” Mom said.
Then Dad chimed in… “Yeah, we’re so ready to get back to normal.”
I guess I was a little rude, but I just laughed. In their face.
“You want what? Good luck with that.” [click to continue…]
Have you ever felt as though you were good – really good – at something? I don’t mean false pride or arrogance. I mean being a person with faith. Faith in God. And almost as important, faith in yourself, at least in certain circumstances.
The word for that is confidence, and without it, you’re toast.
Have you ever moved confidently into a situation and blown it? I’m not talking about giving in to your weaknesses. I mean digging deep into the well of your greatest talent, knowledge, or skillset and serving up what they call “gopher balls” in baseball.
All of us can shrug off those areas of weakness. We know we won’t be perfect at everything. (You do know that, don’t you?)
But it’s hard to know where to go or what to do when we get hammered for what we think we’re good at.
I’ve seen a lot of that lately. I’ve had a few of those experiences myself, but I’ve also come across a variety of other people who’ve faced the same thing. Their confidence has been rattled, and they’re not quite sure what to do next. [click to continue…]
We’ve seen and heard it described in myriad ways. Some are actually in the Bible. It’s a place where the streets are paved with precious metal. A place of purity and timelessness. A place of extraordinary worship and togetherness. A place where nobody worries about the safety of their children and nobody nervously waits for lab results.
Yes, I’m talking about heaven. And like the uber-hit song says, I can only imagine what it will be like. But like you, I have imagined quite a bit… some in earnest, some in fun fantasy before the Lord.
But there was one thing about heaven I had overlooked until a couple of days ago. I had read and actually preached from this verse many times and passed right over it. I’ve read this verse at gravesides and church houses countless times and never quite got it. But I think it’s an important thing to get… [click to continue…]
Imagine you are going into an office that has two points of entry. Either door leads into the same large area. It’s during office hours, so you know both doors are unlocked. The first door you come to is closed. The second, a little further down the hall, is open. Which door do you go in?
I actually had that conversation with someone who challenged me. We were going down the hallway and I passed the first door – the closed one, and walked in through the open door.
“Why did you do that?” Krista asked.
“Do what?”
“You walked past a perfectly good door to go through the second.”
“Because the second one was open,” I said, a little baffled that someone would actually question that.
“But the first one was closer,” Krista said. Krista was a high school senior, our next door neighbor, and wonderful babysitter. She was also literally a genius. We had lots of deep conversations like this back in the day.
Then I blurted out this little gem of wisdom that revealed a lot more than I planned: [click to continue…]
Turns out there was something almost as satisfying Monday night as watching Eddie Lacy, A. J. McCarron and company put looks of futility and bewilderment on yet another BCS opponent – a game, by the way, I have waited since 1966 to witness.
It was a commercial. For Dr. Pepper, of all things. Now as long as I’ve known anything about Dr. Pepper and commercials, they have always had some kind of big song and dance production. And this commercial was no exception.
What was exceptional was the song in the commercial. It sort of stopped me in my tracks. I actually hit rewind to see the thing again. (If you know anything about me and commercials, you will know this rarely happens.) If you’d like to see the commercial, it’s already on YouTube, and you can watch it here.
I didn’t run out and buy Dr. Pepper. But I did hurry to iTunes and found the song. I just discovered it was released on iTunes on January 7, the day the commercial ran.
The song is by the Nashville group Vinyl Hearts, and it’s called, “I Am.” You can hear it in its entirety by clicking below. Please, hear the song in its entirety. [click to continue…]
A few years ago Mike Ashcraft came up with a revolutionary idea. In considering what we all intuitively know – that New Year’s resolutions are inherently powerless to produce real life change – Mike proposed capturing the essence of the person we want to become, or what we most want God to do for us in one simple word.
“My One Word,” he called it.
The idea caught fire, and his web site, myoneword.org, became a gathering place for people all over the world to share their core essential idea for that particular year.
I arrived late to that party when a LifeVesting reader pointed me to the site a couple of years ago. I was captivated by the idea, and landed on the word, Finish! as my word for that year.
I revisited the idea when I wrote this post about things to do before the end of the year. I learned in the process that Mike, along with Rachel Olsen, has since written a book that is now available to guide you through the process.
In prayerfully considering what my one word could and should be for this year, I began searching for the themes the Lord seems to have been playing out in my life recently – what I call the Descants of the Soul. Those themes have a way of ebbing and flowing. And it didn’t take me long at all to land on what my one word should be… [click to continue…]
In his book, Living Above the Level of Mediocrity, Chuck Swindoll tells of two young women from Southern California who spent the day doing some last-minute Christmas shopping in Tijuana. After a successful day of bargain hunting, they returned to their car. One of the ladies glanced down in the gutter and noticed something squirming, as if in pain. On closer examination, they saw what appeared to be a dog – a tiny Chihuahua – struggling for its life. It was breathing heavily, shivering, and barely able to move. Their hearts went out to the pathetic little animal. Their compassion wouldn’t let them drive off and leave it there to die.
The friends decided to take it home with them and do their best to nurse it back to health. Afraid of being stopped and having the little creature detected by border patrol officers, they carefully placed it on some papers among their packages in the trunk of their car. Within minutes they were back in California and only a couple of hours from home. One of the women held the sick little Chihuahua the rest of the way. [click to continue…]
On this cold December night, when life, relationships and future hope seem more complicated than ever, I pray that that the Father of lights would give you the joy of His presence and the gift of simple happiness throughout the coming year, with the light of every new sunrise.
I pray that he would remind you often of how deeply you are loved, unforgettably engraved in the palm of His hand, steadfastly held by His grace day and night.
I pray that in an age where nothing seems to last, that the One who promised us a home with Him forever would keep the language and love of forever dancing in your heart and mine as long as you and I have breath. [click to continue…]
“The earth is degenerating these days. Bribery and corruption abound. Children no longer mind their parents. Every man wants to write a book, and it is evident that the end of the world is fast approaching.”
Wow. Not sure how the author of that actual little quotation made the logical leap, but leap he did. Yes, some dishonest people have their pockets lined to serve the interests of a powerful few. Do you doubt that?
Yes, children have a mind of their own. That apple didn’t just fall from the tree and knock us on the head this morning.
Yes, everybody seems to want to write a book these days. Here’s mine. You can get it for three bucks. Please buy it.
But are those our “Shocking Signs of the End of the World?”
Hardly.
Anyway, those pearls of wisdom came from an Assyrian tablet, dated 2,800 B.C.E.
How about this one? [click to continue…]
You can’t do that.