Could I Have Some Outrage, Please, With Extra Salt?

by Andy Wood on February 7, 2009

in Life Currency, Love, Tense Truths

salt-and-light-2(Note:  This is out of sequence, but I couldn’t pass this by.  I’d like to know your thoughts.)

First, read this:

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.  If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit. Let us not become boastful, challenging one another, envying one another.  (Galatians 5:22-26, NASU)

Then read this:  A Botched Abortion in Mother’s Own Words

Then read this again:

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.  If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit. Let us not become boastful, challenging one another, envying one another.  (Galatians 5:22-26, NASU)

Please tell me you feel at least a little outrage.

Please tell me that you haven’t lived so long in a culture of death that this leaves you untouched.

But while you’re at it, please give me something better than violence or political rhetoric. [click to continue…]

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

Bringing Hope to the Land of Nod

by Andy Wood on February 5, 2009

in Enlarging Your Capacity, Esteem, Leadership, Life Currency, Love, LV Cycle

communityJan is a mother of four, two each from two failed marriages.  This morning, her 19-year-old lost his temper and verbally crushed his mother with a flurry of profanity and rage.  Jan wanted to die, literally. I got the call.

Last year, at the tender age of 44, Bruce became a husband for the first time.  Less than a month later, his bride, this time blushing with anger, ordered Bruce out of the house.  Their divorce was final last week.

Larry introduced himself to me by telling me how he was betrayed and fired by his corporate board.  Then he faced the most insidious wound of all – the church wound.  After months of being ostracized, the victim of church politics, Larry finally realized the need for a change. “When your wife has to take a tranquilizer on Sunday mornings just to go to church,” he said, “it’s time to do something different.”

All these people share two things in common.  First, they’re living in the Land of Nod (see the previous post).  The age that’s given us instant gratification, disposable everything, and technology-on-demand has elevated revolving door relationships to an art form.  The people I just introduced you to are Exhibit A.

Second, on Sundays they’re in our church.  [click to continue…]

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

Are You Living in the Land of Nod?

by Andy Wood on February 4, 2009

in Life Currency, Love

broken-homePreston is about 14 months old; his future is literally wide open in front of him.  But even as young as he is, he already is feeling the effects of a broken home.  He didn’t ask for it, but for the rest of his life he’ll be living in the Land of Nod.

Gina grew up in the perfect family – at least that’s what everyone believed.  But they didn’t hear the verbal and occasional physical abuse Gina suffered growing up.  Very few understand the strange combination of anger and shyness that marks her personality today.  But the long trail of disrupted friendships and broken romances tell the painful story.  Gina is living in the land of Nod.

In the aftermath of history’s first broken relationship, the Bible says that Cain “went out from the presence of the Lord and dwelt in the Land of Nod, on the East of Eden” (Genesis 4:16).  As a race, we’ve been living in the aftermath of broken relationships – in the Land of Nod – ever since.

Are We Still That Clueless?

It’s amazing.  Thousands of years of history have passed, and we’ve learned an awful lot.  These days the knowledge available to the world doubles at rates we measure by minutes rather than centuries.  What’s more amazing to me, however, is what we have yet to learn. [click to continue…]

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

An Open Letter to a Wounded Church Member

by Andy Wood on February 2, 2009

in Esteem, Five LV Laws, Life Currency, Love, Principle of Freedom

rejectionDear Daniel,

Thank you for taking the time to share your heart and concerns with me last week.  I respect your honesty, and am frustrated that you have experienced so many disappointments and hurts in your church relationships.  While I can relate to many of them, only you know how savagely this has impacted your life and the life of your family members.

I know it has to be a bit surreal to always feel as though, in your words, “you kept missing the memo” about what was expected beyond a simple faith in Christ.  And to be caught in between two conflicting women “leaders” had to have felt like a no-win situation.

I still don’t understand what the whole turf war stuff was all about.  But I do understand the tension between trying to show grace and love to someone in deliberate sin and yet not approving the lifestyle.  I guess until Jesus comes, we’ll still be arguing about that one. [click to continue…]

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

Why I Haven’t Given Up on the Church

by Andy Wood on January 30, 2009

in Allocating Your Resources, Consumers, Life Currency, Love, LV Alter-egos, LV Cycle, Tense Truths

xmma-00145News Flash!  This just in…  In a shocking reversal of public opinion, somebody thinks something’s wrong with the church.

Here’s a blast from the past from an old B.C. Cartoon.  Picture the anthill, and the Dad ant poking his head out the top.  His teenaged son is coming back from the movies.

Dad:  “How was the disaster movie, son?”

Son:  “A disaster.”

Son:  “Why do they make so many disaster movies, Dad?”

Dad:  “So when Armageddon comes, we can all go back to sleep and say we’ve seen it already.”

I can see a 2009 update:

Dad:  “How was the disaster movie, son?”

Son:  “A disaster.”

Son:  “I thought we’d see a bunch of explosions, death and mayhem.”

Dad:  “Let me guess – you saw the Ted Haggard documentary instead.”

Pick your spot – inside the church or outside.  Mainline, sideline, or no-line.  House churches and megachurches.  Political and “news” organizations.  Cultural elitists and preachers.  Gay rights advocates and Fred Phelps.  Everybody seems to converge on one common opinion:

The church sucks. [click to continue…]

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

What if Your Biggest Hindrance to Abundance Was God?

by Andy Wood on January 28, 2009

in Five LV Laws, Principle of Abundance

loving-fatherGod wants us to get it.  We typically don’t.

We want to have it.  We often won’t.

God says, if you don’t get it, you won’t have it.  And you can’t have it just by going out and getting it.  You have to… well, get it, first.

Get it?

I think I’ll start over.

Jesus told a variety of stories that present God as a wealthy landowner with servants.  These include the laborers in the vineyard, the wheat and the tares, the talents, the landowner, and the vine-growers. The common theme that runs through each story is that humans fail to understand the heart of the One who owns it all.  To God, the relationship always is more important than the “stuff.”

Get it?

The laborers in the vineyard didn’t.  Our friend the hoarder didn’t.  The vine-growers sure didn’t get it.  And while we’re keeping score, neither did the Prodigal Son or his pouting older sibling.

They all missed it.

Somehow they all got it in their head that God was holding back, unfair, mean, scary, selfish, whatever.  They became so hung up in the grapes and the goats, they missed it.

And lost it.

Because they didn’t get it. [click to continue…]

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

The Resurrection Army

by Andy Wood on January 26, 2009

in Enlarging Your Capacity, Life Currency, Love, LV Cycle, Tense Truths

Tense Truth: If you are a follower of Jesus, you are a citizen of a kingdom that is always one generation from extinction, and you are that generation. On the other hand, you are part of a kingdom that will never die. Armed with the most relevant, life-giving message ever known to mankind, we reach out with urgency to a dying generation, yet with confidence in a living God.

angel-prayerBorn on the first Easter and commissioned forty days later, the history and destiny of the world has been forever changed and shaped by an army sent forth by the Lord Jesus Himself. You are now part of that army.

Conceived in the eternal heart of God, nurtured in the womb of a rich man’s grave, this army entered the world with very little fanfare. There were no parades. No marches. No legions of soldiers with their pomp and circumstance.

Rome hardly noticed; most of Jerusalem heaved a sigh of relief. The Rabble-rouser was dead, His disciples terrorized, His followers shocked numb. The Armies of Death had won again, and life(!) would go on as usual.

Then came Sunday. Oh, then came Sunday!

Then rolled the stone.

Then fell the guardians of the grave.

Then rose the Lamb, the Lion, the Prince of Peace!

Out came the cry, at first as hoarse as a whisper: “He’s alive! And He’s calling for you.”

From everywhere they came: Jews and Gentiles, rich and poor, male and female, the religious and the rebels. They saw for themselves the difference a risen Savior would make. And true to the prophecies of Daniel, out of the kingdom of Rome there rose a kingdom that would never, never die – one that would subdue all other kingdoms and fill the world. And true to God’s promise, that kingdom and its Resurrection Army – your Resurrection Army – is still alive and well today.

What gives this Resurrection Army its power to overcome? [click to continue…]

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

Speaking the Truth, Speaking in Love, Speaking Nothing at All

by Andy Wood on January 22, 2009

in Life Currency, Love, LV Alter-egos, Pleasers, Words

truth-loveThis is about the difference between creeds and deeds.  Action and diction.  Your words and your walk.

I’m assuming if you’re reading this that you want to be known and respected as a man or woman of truth.  That may be a big assumption, of course, since it’s possible that you went to bed last night with the happy memory of somebody you conned.

But if you’re a believer, God has placed a desire in your heart to please Him, and truth is one of the things that does that.  So is love.  So it’s no surprise that the Bible describes spiritual maturity as the fine art of “speaking the truth in love.”

And it is a fine art.  What do you do when words and wishes collide?  What do you say when your honest thoughts and feelings aren’t very loving?

Years ago I was sitting in a therapy group, where a couple of people were talking about their “inner child” and their “inner adolescent.”  It was a poignant discussion by some people who were sincerely seeking healing and growth.  But I couldn’t help but think, “My problem isn’t my inner child, or my inner adolescent.  My problem is with my inner jackass.”

I figured it would be better to stay quiet.  Love?  Maybe.  Self-protection?  No doubt about it.  I said it best when I said nothing at all.

The greatest love tends to show up in the fewest words.  [click to continue…]

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

Obamawood Meets Andywood

by Andy Wood on January 21, 2009

in Five LV Laws, Gamblers, LV Alter-egos, Pleasers, Principle of Freedom, Principle of Legacy

inaugurationOkay, surely this is just a coincidence.

During the days of the Carter administration, “Carter Country” was a popular sitcom.  Reagan’s presidency produced a number of “this-guy’s-gonna-get-us-killed” movies about nuclear war, including “The Day After.”  The Clinton years gave us record numbers of movies made about the U.S. President – including “Dave,”  “Wag the Dog,” and “Primary Colors.”  And the Bush years produced a mixed bag of spiritual themes (“Chronicles of Narnia,” “Lord of the Rings Trilogy,” and “The Passion of the Christ”) and war-on-terrorism flicks and shows like “The Unit.”

So President Obama takes the oath yesterday.  And what’s the first new TV rollout, starting tonight?

“Lie to Me.”

No relation whatsoever, I’m sure.

Here are my favorite two quotes from yesterday: [click to continue…]

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

I Gave God Time

by Andy Wood on January 19, 2009

in Life Currency, LV Cycle, LV Stories, Time, Waiting

(For once.  Sort of.  Actually, I didn’t have much of a choice.)

The house was quiet, as it usually is at 4:30 a.m.  I was awake, stretched out on my face on the living room floor.  I’d been studying the life of Abraham.  I’d been studying my life, too.  It was Fall 1997.

Two years earlier, I’d been through a “crash and burn” experience, followed by a difficult, but amazing healing and restoration process.  Through it all, I had a more intimate relationship with the Lord, a greater marriage than ever, and an awesome relationship with my kids.  I was serving on the staff of an exciting, dynamic church.  Just one thing was missing.

“Lord,” I asked.  “When will I get to be a senior pastor again?”

There as I prayed, Abraham’s faith became mine, and I received the freedom and faith to enter into new territory with the Lord.

“You haven’t told me what kind of church you want,” I heard Him say.

The faith began to rise, and I began to write: [click to continue…]

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

← Previous Entries

Next Entries →