Way past the appearances and impressions we try to leave,
Behind the masks and attempts to please the critical and excite the vain –
Beyond the insiders’ lingo and bless-to-impress,
There rests a true heart.
Your heart. My heart.
Authentic, insofar as we can know it without being deceived by it.
Wiser, it seems, than we often give it credit for being.
More terrified at times than we would ever let on.
More prayerful than we often realize…
More ruthlessly demanding that we care to admit in polite company.
Gloriously free from what we used to be – yet humbly aware of how far we have to go. [click to continue…]
Lord, what are mortals, that you notice them;
mere mortals, that you pay attention to us?
We are like a puff of wind;
our days are like a passing shadow (Psalm 144:3-4).
As this shadow passes across another year, what’s obvious on the playground becomes clearer in life: the further away from that initial push, the shorter the passes are.
So… [click to continue…]
Do you think God still speaks to people through dreams?
He did in the Bible.
I know a lot of people who don’t think He does that anymore because we have the Bible now. I know a lot of other people who say, “So what? The Bible we have shows God speaking to people through dreams. So if the Bible is inerrant, infallible and all that, why would it say that God gave people dreams back in the day if He’s not supposed to speak through dreams now?”
I gotta admit, that makes sense to me. But I should hasten to say that not every dream comes from God. One time I dreamed that I hauled off and slugged this British guy. I know he was British because when he prepared to slug me back he said something really ugly in a very lovely British accent.
I don’t think that dream was from God. Unless He was telling me to avoid hauling off and slugging guys from Great Britain.
But I have had dreams that I very much believe were prophetic. Like this one. And probably this one.
And I think I may have had another one last week.
I don’t know what you do with your possible alerts from the Almighty in your sleep, but I have sort of an ad hoc committee I run them by, just to test it out. Think of it as my Prophetic Testers of Supposed Dreams team (PTSD for short). [click to continue…]
Years ago Ken Medema told the story of an experience he had at a youth function in Atlanta. He had been invited to play for a youth party after church one night, and he entertained the kids with some of his old 50s love songs. After his part was over, somebody fired up the record player (yes, record player) and started playing some other music, and these church kids started to dance.
Ken remained off to the side; he had been raised in a home that forbade dancing.
Soon, however, what he called “this wallflower of a girl” approached him shyly and asked, “Would you like to dance?”
I should mention at this point that Ken is completely blind. He was horrified at the thought of being laughed out of the room for trying something so completely risky and foreign to him, and he tried to beg off.
But Miss Wallflower wasn’t taking no for an answer. [click to continue…]
You probably never knew Lillian Hearst. But she sent you a gift, and I wanted to share it with you. It won’t be necessary to send a thank-you note – just pay it forward by sharing her gift with someone else. Oh, and of course, use the gift yourself.
Lillian lived to be 92 years old. I was honored to serve for a time as her pastor. She was highly respected in our community – a “lady of the old school,” with a heart for people and a love for the Lord.
A few days after her funeral, I was visiting at the Magnolia Retirement Center, where Lillian lived. There someone told me that for as long as they had known her, up until the time of the stroke that ultimately took her life, Mrs. Hearst always had something planned to do the next day. There was always tomorrow – something to look forward to, something to prepare for, a reason to get out of bed in the morning. It sounds rather simple, but it struck me as very profound. Maybe that’s one of the reasons Mrs. Hearst lived so long.
Tomorrow. What a charming word! [click to continue…]
(The further adventures of Eugene Davis, Sophomore Christian)
“What would be s good time to come by your office?”
The voice on the other end of the phone was none other than Eugene Davis, Sophomore Christian and resident expert on all things spiritually enormous.
Normally Eugene would pop in, sort of like the Allies dropped by to pay the Germans a visit at Normandy. But this was different. It had the air of urgency. Eugene Davis was always serious and everything was important. But this was a step beyond. It was deliberate. Ruggedly precise. Appointment-worthy.
“I’m free about 3:00,” I said. ”What’s up?” (To this day I don’t like ambushes in meetings.)
“I think the Lord has given me a vision.”
“Well,” said I, ”I’ll be here. Come on by.”
Apparently I didn’t send the right signal. Didn’t catch the gravy of the situation. This was a vision. From God! [click to continue…]
If your paychecks came from Ford Motor Company in the 1970s, you lived in an ugly time. Morale was low. Sales were taking a beating. Quality was “job none.” And the company operated from an entrenched system of rules and regulations. Into that demoralized environment, Donald Peterson became Ford’s CEO in 1980.
Peterson showed up tossing words around like “teamwork” and “upward communication.” But words mean nothing to entrenched bureaucracies. So Peterson tried something radical – he left his office. He would walk into the offices of designers and ask simple questions like:
- Do you like these cars?
- Do you feel proud of them?
- Would you park one in your driveway?
I think you can guess the answer he received.
Your job, Peterson said, is to come up with the cars you think will sell – cars you can be proud of. The results were stunning and quick, by auto industry standards. The first significant product was the 1983 Thunderbird, followed quickly by the wildly successful Taurus, which became the best-selling midsized car in America.
That was just for starters. During the 1980s, Ford reversed its dismal previous performance to record then-record-breaking profits. Peterson was chosen by his fellow CEOs as the nation’s most effective leader, surpassing even Lee Iacocca.
What made the difference? Donald Peterson was a Side-by-Side Leader. In the words of Robert Richardson and Katherine Thayer, “Peterson didn’t accomplish all this by sitting behind a desk and telling people what he wanted done. He rolled up his shirt sleeves and jumped in. He provided a direction and goal and then participated in making them reality.”
Your Worst Skydiving Fear
Imagine you are an inexperienced skydiver. You’ve been on a few jumps, but still think of yourself as a rookie. It’s a beautiful day for flying and jumping out of airplanes, so up you go. You reach the point where it’s time to pull the ripcord, and it malfunctions. To your horror, so does the backup chute.
Suddenly it’s not such a good day for jumping out of airplanes. [click to continue…]
I hate sleep. I’m afraid I may miss something.
Yeah, yeah, I know. I “get it” and I get it.
I know that, too. God’s design and all that. It just chaps me a little that somebody who lives to be 90 will spend 30 years of their lives physically unconscious… and then talk about “sleeping in” as if it’s a life goal.
What’s even more disturbing, though, is how easy it is to be asleep when our eyes are open. Spiritually oblivious to a world of life and movement and transformation and possibilities – all ready and waiting… for the awakened spirit.
Snapshots of Awakening
February 3, 1970. In a small Kentucky Christian college, students showed up for what they thought was a routine chapel service. It was anything but. What was supposed to be an hour-long service lasted for 185 hours round the clock. And the lights never went off in the chapel until Ju [click to continue…]
What would you do if you were Jimmy? You’re caught in a dilemma because your best friend is a hood. Riff-raff. Wrong side of the tracks. Your parents say you can’t visit him. And he’d do just as well to stay on his side of town, too. But there’s something special about him; that’s why he’s your best friend. He doesn’t have much, but he does have heart and passion.
And a cheap, second-hand guitar he doesn’t even know how to tune.
You come from a good family, with something of a pedigree. You live in one of the music capitals of America, and your cousin is a famous country musician.
Maybe you can still be his friend – this kid some people called “white trash.”
Maybe you can introduce your friend to your cousin. Maybe your cousin can cross the tracks in your place.
That’s what Jimmy did. [click to continue…]
How’s this for a welcome to a pastor’s study?
NOTICE
The Pastor of Calvary Church Receives Sinners and Eats With Them.
Any Questions?
Now there’s a guy who’s either long on courage or short on brains! But he knows his New Testament. And if he does it in the right spirit, he also understands something about the searching heart of God.
In answer to the question hanging on the pastor’s door, Jesus once told a story. [click to continue…]
Way past the appearances and impressions we try to leave,
