Camping on the Wrong Side of the Jordan
“Early in the morning Joshua and all the Israelites set out from Shittim and went to the Jordan, where they camped before crossing over …. 5 Joshua told the people, “Consecrate yourselves, for tomorrow the LORD will do amazing things among you.” Joshua 3: 1, 5 The leader of the women’s ministry at my new church talked about this verse at a Bible study last weekend, and what she said has stuck with me. We can’t know the frame of mind of the Israelites as they camped their last few nights in the wilderness. But peppered throughout the book of Joshua are the instructions “Be strong and courageous.” You don’t need to be admonished to do those things if you’re not in the least afraid or uncertain. So chances are, they...
Aborting Providence
Decisions, even small ones, can have vast and unintended consequences. Like a secret agent on a mission, one errant decision can cause the whole plan to unravel calling for everyone involved to “abort the mission” because circumstances have changed and success is no longer possible. My daughter has been given a few responsibilities around the house. For this she gets an allowance of $1.25 per week, and included in these responsibilities is the daily task of feeding the dogs and checking to make sure they have water. Should she fail to feed the dogs even once during the week, she forfeits her allowance for the entire week. Some may see this as a bit heavy handed, but I am trying to teach her consistency in self-discipline, and the idea that...
Being a speed bump to the Gospel
So I have had the great pleasure / heavy responsibility of teaching my first adult Sunday School class this spring, and it has been eye-opening to say the least. First, as an aside, I have so much more respect and honor for pastors that prepare sermons every week. It is a fairly stressful ordeal of realizing that you are putting words around the truth of Scripture and the Gospel. <church comedy start> I mean honestly pastors should get 5 to 10 mulligans a year where they say, “Look other than the Scripture of this sermon, the rest is likely to suck and I am sorry. I am claiming one of my mulligans” <church comedy end>. So this leads me to think about my class. I am teaching on Heaven which is a subject that I am wildly passionate...
Humility
For Christmas I got myself a book on humility, because I figured it was something I really needed. It will be a slow and difficult read, but a good one. Here is the opening paragraph: “In Paradise there are many Saints who never gave alms on earth; their poverty justified them. There are many Saints who never mortified their bodies by fasting or wearing hair shirts; their bodily infirmities excused them. There are many Saints too who were not virgins; their vocation was otherwise. But in Paradise there is no Saint who was not Humble.” (from Humility of Hear by Fr. Cajetan Mary da Bergamo Whether or not I learn much from the rest of this book, I suppose I would do well to reflect on this paragraph every little while.
What fruit?
I read this today: Luke 3 And he told this parable: “A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard, and he came seeking fruit on it and found none.7 And he said to the vinedresser, ‘Look, for three years now I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and I find none. Cut it down. Why should it use up the ground?’ 8 And he answered him, ‘Sir, let it alone this year also, until I dig around it and put on manure. 9 Then if it should bear fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.’” (ESV) As I was reading this parable a couple of things occurred to me. The first is that the tree isn’t expected to bear fruit without the work of the vinedresser. The second is that there seems to be a limit to how long the master...
A Hope-full Future
I heard last night on the news that 2012 brings with it a lot of hope, if only because it isn’t 2011. It was a reminder of what the future always seems to represent – hope. Hope for what exactly though? Hope for change? Most people don’t like change. Hope for something better? We’d do well to be careful in what we wish for. No, the kind of new hope I’m talking about comes from an understanding of who you are as a born again warrior of God. My wife and I have been having some very serious discussions about some die-hard beliefs we have held to for a long time without any real understanding about why we feel that way. For some of those long-held beliefs, we have discarded them simply because they were not Biblical and...