This just in, in case you missed it. Christmas is less than a month away.
True confession: Yesterday I snarled in my journal, “I’ll just be glad when it’s over.”
But today, in honor of the late Zig Ziglar, who passed away yesterday, I’m “doing a checkup from the neck up.”
Every year, we have the same choice when it comes to the enchantment and the challenges of the holidays. Do we hunker down, sit tight, and hope for the best? Or do we seek to flourish? To make the most of our relationships, our worship, and even our painful experiences?
Survive or Thrive? It’s up to you. It’s up to me.
When it comes to being a thriver, here are five suggestions, for how you can come out of the bunker and actually have a season of delight:
[click to continue…]
Old friend called yesterday. It had been a while.
“I’m calling to ask you to pray,” she began. “I’ve just had a bombshell dropped in my lap.”
Like you would do, I’m sure, my mind started racing at the possibilities. Family? Finances? Health? It could be anything.
I won’t tell you what hers was, but it really doesn’t matter. What matters is that she was handed some bad news she didn’t see coming.
Kabloom!
What matters more is that she was really making some progress in some areas of her life, and this jeopardizes all that.
Kabloom again!
And what matters to you is that next time it could be you.
Have you ever noticed that when you start moving in a positive direction, life has a way of testing you out of center field with alarming or disarming stuff? And it comes dressed in any number of ugly outfits. [click to continue…]
Christmas 2004. I’m pretty sure it was the last time I made the trek to Deer Bluff. Pictures were the thing this year, and one day Joel wanted to go to Deer Bluff to take some. It was nice to be back there, this place near the family farm that has always captured my imagination.
At one point I was up on top of the bluff and Joel was down below taking pictures of the initials carved in the stone near the small cave. Meandering through the volcanic rock and fallen branches, I tripped over a log and fell with a thud on my stomach and shoulder. I also hit some sort of piece of wood, and cut a couple of plugs out of my fingers.
The fingers were the ugliest, but the shoulder was the greatest concern. Lying there, I wondered if something had been broken. Later, my biggest fear was that I had torn my rotator cuff. Finally, a year later, the MRI showed I had shredded the tendons in my shoulder and yes, I would need surgery.
Awesome. So that’s what a stumbling block is. And I was right in the middle of a stumbling zone. [click to continue…]
Jesus got himself in some pretty interesting predicaments. Seems strange to me – He could walk on water and command the winds and rain, but He never could satisfy a bunch of legalists about why He performed miracles (miracles!) on the Sabbath.
“This can’t be from God. He didn’t keep our rules.”
Sigh… I just wish somehow… oh, never mind.
Anyway, on one occasion, Jesus healed a man who hadn’t walked in 38 years. It took place at the Pool of Bethesda and yes, it was on the Sabbath.
And yes, Jesus had to account for his tawdry behavior. Here’s what He said: [click to continue…]
If He carried the weight of the world upon His shoulder,
I know my brother that He will carry you.
-Scott Wesley Brown
It was on an old four-propeller Lockheed Constellation airplane, on an 18-hour-long flight from Tokyo to San Francisco. It was the mid-1950s. Carol Willis was just a baby and had a severe earache. To try to comfort her, her dad walked her up and down the aisle of that old plane throughout that long night. If you’ve ever traveled with ear-sensitive children, you know exactly what I’m talking about.
Over the years the family nightmare became something of the family joke. Harlan – my father-in-law – would say, “I walked all the way across the Pacific Ocean carrying you in my arms.”
But the family joke also became the family prophecy and the family legacy, and it was a part of Carol’s emotional DNA. Carol spent her growing up years in Thailand, where she and her family traveled across that ocean again to take the gospel of Jesus Christ to a nation they love to this day. [click to continue…]
“Until now you have asked for nothing in My name; ask and you will receive, so that your joy may be made full” (John 16:24).
They’re called game changers. New players. New rules or rulings. New technologies. New rays of understanding. But sometimes we’re so adjusted, so acclimated to the game changer, it’s easy to lose the significance of it.
In the verse above, Jesus introduces a game changer. In fact, He rewrites the entire playbook for prayer. “Until now,” He says, “you have asked for nothing in My name. Up until now, you have prayed, but you haven’t taken on My identity or authority. You haven’t prayed ‘as if’ it were Me doing the asking”
Now… time to change the game. And that’s what praying in His name produces.
Praying “as if” – that’s what it means to pray in His name. It’s a whole lot more than using a tired old phrase at the end of a prayer. Praying in His name seizes the handle of the greatest cosmic weapon in the universe.
Take a look at any situation. A personal need, a friend in need, whatever… [click to continue…]
Where can I go to get away from your Spirit?
Where can I run to get away from you?
If I go up to heaven, you are there.
If I make my bed in hell, you are there.
If I climb upward on the rays of the morning sun
or land on the most distant shore of the sea where the sun sets,
even there your hand would guide me
and your right hand would hold on to me (Ps 139:7-10, GW)
It’s the fundamental reality – the primal fact on which all else we know is built. The immortal, invisible, only-wise God, not made with hands, eternal in the heavens, knows no limits of time or space. For those who have experienced the kindness of His grace, the implications of that are profound. Simply put, wherever you are, there He already was, is, and shall be. [click to continue…]
Be the fly on the wall for this conversation…
It’s not that life here is so bad right now.
Okay.
It’s that life is so busy. Urgent all the time.
I can relate to that.
And not even that it’s urgent, but that I don’t feel as though I am responding well to the urgency I do have.
What do you mean?
Nothing ever gets completely done. Or so it feels. My weekly schedule is pretty busy as it is. Then factor in anything else that has been added to the schedule lately, and I’m having a hard time breathing.
I think I know what the problem is.
You do?
Yep. Your Urgency Response Index is low.
My what?
Your Urgency Response Index.
Sounds serious.
It can be. [click to continue…]
What do you do when you come to the edge of something you want but can’t get there? How do you handle it when you have a clear sense of who you want to be, what you want to be able to do, or what you want to have… but only come away frustrated and defeated? What do you do when you want so badly to push past your limitations and weaknesses, but can’t ever seem to find a way?
You do the one thing you actually can do. And if you’re like most people, you probably won’t, because it sounds so simple.
Check out this snippet of conversation: [click to continue…]
Something changed that night. And you are the beneficiary. But so many things changed in and around that night that this sometimes gets lost in the shuffle and scuffle.
For three-plus years, Jesus-the-Master had been leading a band of twelve full-time followers. “Disciples,” He called them. And they did what disciples do. Listen. Learn. Serve. Make mistakes. Listen. Lean some more. Serve some more. There were teachable moments and forgettable moments. Fighting times and healing times.
But just before His death, Jesus was giving these loyal men (Judas had already left) a final round of teaching. One guy calls this, “Jesus’ Cram for the Final Exam.” I love it.
Tucked in between these massive concepts about vines and branches and the coming Holy Spirit, Jesus rewrote the contract between Him and those who follow. Read this carefully: [click to continue…]
This just in, in case you missed it. Christmas is less than a month away.
