Okay, let’s start an argument. What would you say are the two most important words in the Bible?
You’re wrong.
I know because my two words are (probably) different, and I know I’m right.
Yeah, yeah, I know, they’re all important. But the way I figure it, if the Lord took the time to repeat something over and over and over, He must be getting at something.
Now I have to admit, it took me about 40 years to realize this. Which is about how long it took Moses to figure some things out, too, but I digress. The reason I took so long is because I let my brain check out when it should have been sitting up and taking notice. [click to continue…]
You may be wondering if anybody sees, anybody knows, anybody cares. I wanted you to know someone does. And I am praying for you.
Especially on this day, as you pour yourself out in love, I pray you experience a return – not just in the world of faith, but even in the realm of sight – that others would give back to you as you have so faithfully given to them.
As you laugh today, I pray that others laugh with you. As you sing, I pray that others sing along. As you labor, I pray that others work beside you. As you dance for joy, I pray that even there you delight in the company you keep. [click to continue…]
CNN had an interesting story yesterday. The headline: “When Christians Become a Hated Minority.” Like so many other current cultural debates, it assumes that Christ followers are camped out on one issue. Maybe that’s because that issue is the one place, seemingly, where the world has managed to join forces with the tide of popular opinion. Now anybody who speaks out against homosexual behavior or gay marriage is a hate-filled bigot.
The article fairly raises the question of whether Christian-haters are the new bigots. It points out that many believers avoid saying anything about, well, anything for fear of the backlash.
This raises a painful question for Christians: Why are we being trampled on? It sure seems that anywhere you turn anybody and everybody has the right to say whatever they want, do whatever pleases them, and demand to be accepted. But let somebody mention Jesus or the word “Christian” and the arrows fly from all sides.
Here’s the problem: We’re asking the wrong people. [click to continue…]
(Sort-of-random thoughts at the end of a very long day in a very crazy week… and I DO mean crazy)
Even though I know all the reasons it’s supposed to be a bad idea, a bowl of cereal at 11:30 at night is probably the closest thing we have today to manna.
It’s been so long since I’ve heard my mother or grandmothers’ voices, yet lately for some reason I’ve found myself hearing them in my heart at random times. In fact, so random and fleeting it hardly ever becomes a point a conversation. But is it odd to wonder if their love for me is still somehow living, even though they aren’t?
You never know how you may hear that still, small voice of God. But if an idea or a person keeps coming and going in your thoughts, pay attention. That may be a whisper from heaven for you to stand strong in prayer on their behalf, or maybe to sit still and listen to them.
I remember one of the things that swore I’d never do is be a teacher. Or go back to school after I finished my master’s. In the words of the GPS system in your car… “Recalculating!” Be careful what you vow you’ll never do. That’s why lately I’ve tended to swear off vowing. Well, except for that one thing… I vow I’ll never make a whole buncha money! Never, never I say!
We used to play this game with the kids at restaurants, especially at a cafeteria or buffet. [click to continue…]
In a slumbering, snoring world, always far away in some other place…
Dreaming of another time like tomorrow or yesterday…
Can you be the one who stays awake
To the rhythms and breathing of the here and now?
Could you stay here in this moment?
Could you rest here in His love?
In a tenacious, tight-fisted tribe of self will run riot…
Demanding life on its own terms as if it were theirs to demand…
Can you be the one who joyfully lets go
And surrenders to the sweetness of His way and truth?
Could you stay here in this moment?
Could you rest here in His love? [click to continue…]
These days I make a trip to the bank just about every day. I’m on a first name basis with most of the tellers, which feels good. And most days it’s a pretty straightforward deal – one or two deposits, mostly business. Even a left-handed guy like me can get that right. About the worst mistake I ever made was driving around in a cluttered truck and realizing that beneath all that clutter was a deposit I forgot to make. For about a week.
Then came Friday. Four deposits. Three different accounts. And one of those was a check I’d written to myself to deposit in our personal account.
I pulled up to the window and realized I hadn’t endorsed the check I’d written to myself, so while the probie teller waited for me patiently, I paused to do that.
I’d venture to guess there was about a six-inch gap between the deposit drawer and my truck window. And somewhere in that six inches, as I reached for the drawer with a pile of bank bid-ness, that freshly-endorsed check was sucked away. Weird even for the dusty plains, the drive-through lanes had formed a wind tunnel. And the wind tunnel took my check.
My assumption: Oh. This is frustrating. I’ll have to get out of the truck and pick it up off the ground.
My reality: Y’all, it was gone. Vaporized. On its way to Amarillo, I suppose. I always fuss because Amarillo gets all the rain (out here we refer to it as “moisture”). Now they got my check. [click to continue…]
You were made to wear a crown. And you were made to give crowns away. But this is no token symbol or forgotten relic from a bygone era. It’s a choice you have every day. Either wear your crown or someone else will. And choose well who you give your crowns to.
Crowns. They’re a rare commodity in our culture, unless somebody is playing checkers, crying at the end of the beauty pageant, or eating at Burger King with the kids. Presidents, judges and governors take oaths. Congress takes your money. Modern Olympians bring home the gold, but nobody gets a head full of garland any more.
That said, we give and receive crowns all the time. Check out the dictionary for the verb form of “crown” and you’ll find language like:
- To invest with regal power; enthrone.
- To confer honor, dignity, or reward upon.
- To surmount or be the highest part of.
- To bring to completion or successful conclusion; to consummate.
Have you done any crowning lately? I daresay you have. The only question is, who is wearing the crowns you are offering? [click to continue…]
Brandi is a student in upstate New York. She introduced herself by saying, “I am a little bit of a new health nut, and love exercise, hiking and biking… I also have a serious love for candy, totally in contradiction to my healthy side.”
Then she adds this pearl: “But hey, everyone has to have something they irrationally love.”
I love it! And I think she’s on to something. When everything in your life is reduced to what you can fit inside a logical, predictable box, it’s time to check some vital signs.
Charge to 20… Clear!
Sure, integrity and authenticity have their places – hugely important places. But if there isn’t something that drives you on, keeps you up at night, fills your conversations, or fires your passion to the point that people think you’re just a little stubborn, obsessed or crazy, you need CPR (That’s Cardio-Passion Resuscitation). [click to continue…]
Way back in the day, Chuck Bolte and the Jeremiah People did a hilarious skit called “The Service” about five people sitting on a church pew waiting for the service to start. There was an older couple, a younger couple who had it all together and knew it, and a young wife who in tears admits that her husband has left her and moved into a hotel.
Out come the clichés. In one place, Chuck who played the younger man, said something like, “You see, Julie, as Christians we’re on God’s winning team. We make our baskets, we sink our putts, we cross the goal line!” Then he asks that penetrating question: “Julie, have you made Christ the center of your marriage.”
“Look,” she says. “I don’t know how to make Christ the center of our marriage. I come here for help and all I get are words… words I’ve said to myself a thousand times.”
Ouch. But hey, at least she got some words. Sometimes church people don’t even do that.
In 35 years of some sort of ministry, I’ve been blessed to receive a lot of gritty grace. Sure, some people got it wrong. But I’ve seen enough people get it right to dismiss my own “inner Pharisee” and pay it forward. They taught me how to run to the spiritually wounded, not away from them. Here are a few lessons I’ve learned along the way. [click to continue…]
Remember, You said with broken bread and common cup held high.
Believe… not just once sometime years ago, but today, in this day’s sound and fury
That the gift that You gave for lost hearts of stone (like mine)
Hasn’t gone anywhere – it’s still as alive today as You are.
So never let me forget the supreme price, the steadfast love, the faithful offering
That forever changed my heart of stone to gold… to joy… to peace.
And oh… [click to continue…]
