Why Bad Things Happen to Good People
A husband comes home from a late day at work expecting to see his smiling wife, but instead he is greeted with a house full of silence. As he makes his way through the house, he begins to hear the sobbing sounds of his wife in the bedroom. There is news, it is not good, and the next words she will utter will shatter the calm of the world he thought he knew. All of us know stories of devastation. All of us know someone who has suffered greatly, and some of us have stories of our own that would sunder the hardest heart. In the moments of great despair, there is no greater problem in the world at that moment than the one we face, precisely because of its proximity and nearness to us, because its effects are immediate in our lives, and because for the rest of...
F3 The FLOUNDERING Christian Life
This is the third article in a four-part series . . . Learning to swim was pretty traumatic when I look back on it. Jumping, or getting thrown, into the water for the first time, and the successive times after that, were horrible events. I remember lots of movement, desperate movement, trying to keep my God-given breathing apparatus above water . . . and failing that, trying to learn to breathe water. It never worked. Coughing and belching what felt like gallons of water was unpleasant to say the least, and not something I really wanted to repeat. Everything that starts something new flounders. Baby birds flounder to the ground, a newborn colt braces unsure legs trying to take its first steps, and even babies go through a “toddler” phase...
Better Late Than Never?
It has been a crazy week, and it is only Tuesday. The rest of the week doesn’t look good either as the sky seems to be falling on my secular job. Good thing it cannot start any sooner than 8:AM and cannot last any later than 5:PM because I simply won’t allow it! However, it does exhaust me, and quite simply, I forgot to post yesterday at all. However, whatever I was going to write about probably would not have been as meaningful (to me anyway) as the post I am going to write now. Last Sunday night, I preached on prayer for the end of the AWANA year service. It is something God has really been working on me about. For so long, I have had issues I have been dealing with on a personal level, and never felt like I could really talk with God until...
God is Pounding on my Pride
The past couple weeks, God has really been showing me how privileged I am and how much of it has so little to do with my performance and so much to do with his immeasurable grace. It has led me to confession and even a bit of weeping. Here are the points that hit home - The movie Precious – Wow I only made it through about 20 minutes of this movie. The movie gives a view into the life of a young, overweight African American teenage girl that is truly horrific. To describe the depth of despair, her mother let her father rape her so that the teenager could keep giving birth to children so that the mother can get more welfare money. The fact that I was born to 2 white middle class parents who loved me thoroughly has way more to do with my current...
Humility – the prerequisite of grace offered and received.
As I ended up my talk at the Men’s Bible Study almost a week ago, the progression of a study on pride naturally lends itself to a study on humility. Suddenly, there was a conclusion staring me in the face, that pride must be sacrificed if anything good is ever to come out of or into my life. Because Christ humbled Himself, the greatest good of salvation was made available to me. Philippians 2:5 “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: 6 Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: 7 But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: 8 And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the...
Sin Addiction
Whether you struggle with lust, food, adrenalin, pride or coveting other peoples stuff, you know the addictive power of sin. You also know that if you have struggled with a particular sin in you life that it didn’t start where it is now. For example food, I haven’t always eaten a whole pizza when I went to CiCi’s (please note this is just an example…. I actually normally eat more then that). No I started eating less then a piece many many years ago but that’s the way sinful nature and addiction is. I start small and the more I live in the struggle the more I just accept the little sins. I down play the seriousness of the sin by saying hey its only one piece (I’ve moved on from pizza now), but these little sins hold me captive...