I ran across something I wrote 13 years ago when I was in a different place spiritually and mentally than I am now. It’s interesting to look back and see so much growth but yet see how some things remain the same. The one constant through these 13 years has been the God whose faithfulness and steadfast love have carried me along beyond my fears and doubts to grace upon grace. Here’s the poem I wrote back then:

“When I am alone and nobody seems to care,
Lord, You know my name.
When I am ignored in a crowd,
Lord, You know my name.
When I am screaming inside with a smile on my face,
Lord, You know my name.
When I have one more step left in me before I quit,
Lord, You know my name.
When I have all that I want and am still empty,
Lord, You know my name.
When I forget You and walk away from Your promises,
Lord, You know my name.
When I get to heaven and see You waiting for me there,
Lord, You know my name.
For it is written in stone and on Your heart.”

I don’t know how, but every year that daylight savings always manages to sneak up on me. Especially the part where we spring forward and I lose that precious hour of sleep. To be fair, even when we fall back, I still stay up later than usual and still manage to lose an hour of sleep. It’s my spiritual gift.

But there’s talk of making daylight savings permanent. That means no more springing forward and falling back. No more fears of being either an hour early or an hour late to everything. No more adjusting to new patterns.

I for one am all for it.

I get that daylight savings served a purpose back in the day for farmers who needed the extra daylight for work. But now we have tractors with headlights and stuff like that. Basically, daylight savings doesn’t really serve a useful purpose any longer except to annoy those of us who have to manually change our clocks twice a year.

It’s not a hill I’m really willing to die on. I’m not disparaging those of you who still hold to your cherished daylight savings ways. I’m not the biggest fan, but if changing those clocks every March and November is the worst thing that happens to me, I’m doing alright.

Still, I would like that extra hour of sleep back.

Within the last year or so, I have become addicted to Audible, an app which allows you to listen to audiobooks. For me, it’s a helpful way to pass the time I spend commuting to and from work, as well as for all the other driving I do during the week.

I am still a fan of actual books with actual pages. There’s still almost nothing like the smell of a hardback book and the feel of it in your hand and the texture of the pages as you flip from one to the next. But for this season of my life, audiobooks seem to work better.

My latest audio adventure has been Becoming Mrs. Lewis by Patti Callahan. It’s a novel based on the real life account of Joy Davidman and C. S. Lewis and how they met and went down the long and winding road from friendship to true love. It’s like stepping back in time to a world that doesn’t really exist anymore in 1950s London and Oxford and Cambridge.

I can almost see myself walking down the path that lead to the Kilns, the home of C. S. Lewis and his brother Warnie. I can feel the crisp autumn air and smell the odor of tobacco smoke coming out of a pipe.

Even though I know the gist of the story from having seen the movie Shadowlands, there are so many facets of the story that I am discovering anew. It makes slow Nashville traffic bearable, especially in those maddening afternoon traffic jams that always seem to pop up.

If you want the actual book, you can check it out below:

“So don’t be embarrassed to speak up for our Master or for me, his prisoner. Take your share of suffering for the Message along with the rest of us. We can only keep on going, after all, by the power of God, who first saved us and then called us to this holy work. We had nothing to do with it. It was all his idea, a gift prepared for us in Jesus long before we knew anything about it. But we know it now. Since the appearance of our Savior, nothing could be plainer: death defeated, life vindicated in a steady blaze of light, all through the work of Jesus” (2 Tim. 1:8-10).

A station that I listen to occasionally has something called Today’s Word on the Way, which is basically the verse for the day. I decided to borrow that concept and offer up a fresh take on some verses that many are probably familiar with. It’s from the Apostle Paul’s very last letter shortly before he made the ultimate sacrifice of his life for the cause of Christ.

Even facing execution, Paul could be confident and optimistic because of the hope he had in a certain future. I think that no matter what our days bring us or what the week ahead looks like, we can rest in a secure outcome based on the last chapter of the last book in the Bible. In other words, we can know that instead of fighting for victory, we fight from victory. Our labors and faith are not in vain but are based on promises that are as good as done.

I’ve found that you can endure just about any circumstance if you know it’s temporary and that something better is coming. Pain and suffering become more bearable when they serve a purpose of making us more like Jesus and leading to a glory that far outweighs any sacrifice or losses we endure.

One of my favorite songwriters of all time left this world over 25 years ago. I can’t tell you how much of an impact the songs of Rich Mullins had on my formative years, as well as how the words he sang continue to resonate in my soul decades later.

One particular song that I only recently was able to fully appreciate is called “We Are Not as Strong as We Think We Are.” There is a vulnerability and a raw honesty that is missing in what I hear in a lot of the current music that gets played on Christian radio stations. There’s an authentic longing for restoration and hope in these words:

“Well, it took the hand of God Almighty 
To part the waters of the sea 
But it only took one little lie 
To separate you and me 
Oh, we are not as strong as we think we are 

And they say that one day Joshua 
Made the sun stand still in the sky 
But I can’t even keep these thoughts of you from passing by 
Oh, we are not as strong as we think we are 

We are frail, we are fearfully and wonderfully made 
Forged in the fires of human passion 
Choking on the fumes of selfish rage 
And with these our hells and our heavens 
So few inches apart 
We must be awfully small 
And not as strong as we think we are 

And the Master said their faith was 
Gonna make them mountains move 
But me, I tremble like a hill on a fault line 
Just at the thought of how I lost you 
Oh, we are not as strong as we think we are 

We are frail, we are fearfully and wonderfully made 
Forged in the fires of human passion 
Choking on the fumes of selfish rage 
And with these our hells and our heavens 
So few inches apart 
We must be awfully small 
And not as strong as we think we are 

And if you make me laugh 
I know I could make you like me 
‘Cause when I laugh I can be a lot of fun 
But we can’t do that I know that it is frightening 
What I don’t know is why we can’t hold on 
We can’t hold on 

It took the hand of God Almighty 
To part the waters of the sea 
But it only took one little lie 
To separate you and me 
Oh, we are not as strong as we think we are 

When you love you walk on the water 
Just don’t stumble on the waves 
We all want to go there somethin’ awful 
But to stand there takes some grace.”

I believe the Bible speaks of choosing to please God rather than people because only one opinion ultimately matters in the end. God won’t commend you for your popularity or for your appeasement of others but for your faithfulness and obedience. There is no merit to compromising away your convictions and beliefs in order to gain a crowd if you lose the very gospel that is the only power to save in the first place.

As a recovering approval addict, I can vouch that much of the time I want nothing more than to be accepted, no matter what. It’s easy to keep silent on divisive issues, and especially on matters of faith, if it means I keep myself in good standing. But that’s not being faithful to the gospel.

We’re called to tell the truth in love, but tell the truth. We’re called to love the sinners without loving their sin but pointing them to a Redeemer who can save them from their sins. We’re called above all to live for an audience not of many but of one — God.

My plan was to get to bed at a reasonably hour. I was all set to look at a YouTube video or two, write my nightly blog post, do my nightly Bible reading plan, and be in bed before 10 pm. Ha ha.

It all started going wrong when my cute little tortie decided to plant herself on my lap and fall asleep. She does make for a very cute excuse for me sitting on the couch and watching more than a few YouTube videos.

It’s the ready-made excuse for every cat owner not to move. After all, said cat is ensconced in said lap, so it would be rude and upsetting to said cat to move and disturb said cat. So, “getting to bed before 10” is looking more like “hey, let’s shoot for 10:30 and see what happens.”

Thank God there’s coffee to make up for my lack of nightly discipline. And I use coffee in the plural sense to indicate multiple cups of coffee. And then at the end of tomorrow, we repeat the process of cat, YouTube, and procrastination . . . or should I say pro-cat-stination?

As far as I understand, the plans for my church to renovate our new building hinges on one rubber stamp on one piece of paper. Literally all we need is the approval from one department. But we’ve been waiting since we turned in all the necessary paperwork in October. That’s five months of waiting.

It’s easy to get discouraged when hope gets delayed. I’ve been in seasons when I thought I would pull my hair out waiting for a day or for an event. Back in my childhood, I could hardly stand the wait for Christmas Day to arrive. It seemed to take forever plus a few days. Now, it comes and goes before I can even get mentally prepared.

But waiting is hard sometimes. Especially when you know it’s for a good thing. Why does God delay? Why doesn’t God act sooner? If God is truly sovereign, then shouldn’t He expedite the matter?

I’ve learned that waiting always comes with a reward. Typically, God makes me wait until I am ready to receive the gift. He knows that in my current state I could not handle it. Or maybe He’s preparing something much grander than my imagination and dreams can conceive.

I forget sometimes that I only see a small part of the big picture. God has a grand design that is so much bigger than my desires and dreams. I also tend to forget that I’ve never ever waited in vain in my entire life. Every time, the promise fulfilled has been more than I could have hoped or dreamed or dared to think.

So I wait. I don’t just sit by with folded hands waiting on the proverbial phone to ring. I need to prepare myself to receive the gift, much as a farmer prepares his field to receive the rain. I can’t know God’s whole plan from beginning to end, but I can be obedient to what I do know.

In the mean time, I’m praying for favor with the city. I’m praying for the houses on the street where our new location is situated that God would already be at work in the hearts of all those who live there, awakening a desire in their hearts for Him. And I am confident that I will see God acting to make good His promises in His good time.

“Love through me, Love of God.
Make me like Thy clear air
Through which unhindered, colors pass
As though it were not there.

Powers of the love of Good,
Depths of the heart Divine,
O Love that faileth not, break forth,
And flood this world of Thine” (Amy Carmichael).

I read one time that it’s amazing what you can do when you don’t care who gets the credit. Imagine what the people of God could do if they got out of the way and let God get in the way? Just think how we could revolutionize the world if we were willing vessels through which God’s love could reach the world?

On my own, my love is weak and selfish. I can barely love myself, much less other people. But when I accept and receive God’s love for me, when it moves from head knowledge to heart reality, then I become a conduit through which others can witness true unconditional love that is able to redeem and transform anybody anywhere at any time.

“God is love. When we take up permanent residence in a life of love, we live in God and God lives in us. This way, love has the run of the house, becomes at home and mature in us, so that we’re free of worry on Judgment Day—our standing in the world is identical with Christ’s. There is no room in love for fear. Well-formed love banishes fear. Since fear is crippling, a fearful life—fear of death, fear of judgment—is one not yet fully formed in love.

We, though, are going to love—love and be loved. First we were loved, now we love. He loved us first” (1 John 4:17-19, The Message).

I can’t tell you how much the music of Rich Mullins has meant to me over the years. I’d even say that if I had to pick my top three favorite Christian artists who influenced who I am as a believer, those would be Keith Green, Mark Heard, and Rich Mullins. And I might even go so far as to make Rich Mullins the top artist.

It follows that when I discovered about The Bellsburg Sessions, I was overjoyed. These recordings are some of the stalwarts of Christian music such as Amy Grant, Kevin Max, Andrew Peterson, Carolyn Arends, and others who gathered at Rich’s old homestead in the unincorporated town of Bellsburg in Dickson County, Tennessee to record covers of some of Rich’s most revered songs.

I was not disappointed. Hearing these songs from different voices in different settings really brought out the beauty of the words. My two favorites have been Hold Me Jesus and We Are Not As Strong As We Think We Are. There are even two Rich songs that I had never heard before that sound like he recorded them as demos on a tape recorder.

Rich Mullins had a unique confessional style of writing with an honesty and authenticity that is missing in a lot of what I hear on Christian radio. Sometimes, it felt like he was reading my diary when he wrote these songs because they often hit so close to home. But as the saying goes, when you are faithful to tell your story, other people will hear their stories as well, even though the specifics may not be the same.

I almost want to drive up to Bellsburg and see Rich’s old house, although I’m sure someone else lives there now and might not be so appreciative to see me showing up in their driveway. But at least I have the musical legacy of one Rich Mullins.

'Bellsburg' – Deluxe CD + Download