We are told to forgive. We are also told in the Lord’s prayer that God will forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. It’s not optional in the life of Abba’s children.

“But”, you say, “you don’t know what he said to me. You don’t know what she did to me.”

That’s right. I don’t know. No one else can truly know the wounds and hurt that you carry except for you and God. But God has set forgiving as the standard.

Is it easy? No. Is it possible? Yes, but only with God’s help and in God’s strength. Is there any other way? No.

Remember that Jesus forgave His murderers while they were in the very act of killing Him. That’s the ultimate impossible standard that only becomes possible when Jesus is living inside of you and me. Then we can forgive the unforgivable in others because we know we have been forgiven the unforgivable in ourselves by none other than God Himself.

It takes pride to hold a grudge. Anyone can do that. It takes humility to forgive. Not everyone will do that, but those who do choose the better way. They choose God’s way. Plus, in humility is liberty.

“Authority and obedience can never be divided, with some people having all the authority while others only have to obey. This separation causes authoritarian behaviour on the one side and doormat behaviour on the other. It perverts authority as well as obedience. A person with great authority who has nobody to be obedient to is in great spiritual danger. A very obedient person who has no authority over anyone is equally in danger.

Jesus spoke with great authority, but his whole life was complete obedience to his Father, and Jesus, who said to his Father, ‘Let it be as you, not I, would have it’ (Matthew 26:39), has been given all authority in heaven and on earth (see Matthew 28:18). Let us ask ourselves: Do we live our authority in obedience and do we live our obedience with authority?” (Henri Nouwen)

I know of too many examples where authority without obedience or accountability led to ruin. Too many times it has led into moral decay and spiritual drift. Obedience without discernment or authority has led to the perpetuation of abuses and power in places where Jesus said the first shall be last.

The authority is not to lord it over people but to serve them. The obedience is not a path leading to being a doormat but is the clearest picture of leadership as strength harnessed and under control like the bit in a horse’s mouth. Also, authority is never something we as believers should seek out but only receive with humility.

May we seek to both serve and lead well, to seek obedience and authority as two sides of the same coin. Above all, may we seek to be like Jesus, who thought equality with God wasn’t a thing to be grasped but made Himself nothing and emptied Himself to a slave’s death on a cross and by so doing took the name that is above every name and at which every knee will bow in heaven and on earth.

Today is when the Church celebrates the Sunday when Jesus made His triumphal entry into Jerusalem, riding on a donkey. Today we wave palm branches around and sing songs about Hosanna to the coming King, much like the people did on that day.

We in present day know what’s coming. We know that in five short days, Jesus will go from hero to accused. He will go from riding victoriously into Jerusalem to being led to a criminal’s execution outside the city. In five days, Jesus will be dead.

I also remember that when I was younger, I went to a youth conference led by a well-known speaker and author. He went into graphic detail about every step of the journey that took Jesus from the trials to the cross, including the whips, the crown of thorns, the robes, and every gory detail of what happened on that cross. Then he told us that it was us who killed Jesus. Specifically, it was our sin that killed Jesus. A lot of students made decisions for Jesus, and while some did it out of true faith, a lot did it out of guilt and manipulation.

I’ve heard a lot about who’s to blame for killing Jesus. Was it the Jewish leaders who demanded that He be crucified and Barabbas released? Was it it the Romans who actually nailed Jesus to the wooden cross? Was it you and me and our sin that put Jesus to death?

Ultimately, it wasn’t any of these who killed Jesus. It was Jesus who made the sacrifice and willingly gave up His life. In John 10:17-18. Jesus said, “For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from my Father.”

My sin didn’t have the power to kill Jesus. Neither did the Jewish leaders or the Romans. If Jesus had wanted to, He could have easily overcome all of them, but He chose the way of Calvary. He chose the whips and the crown of thorns and the nails. He chose it all for you and me.

It’s wasn’t sin that kept Jesus on that cross. It was love that held Him there. The cross wasn’t the result of defeat at the hands of the Jews or Romans. The cross was the ultimate victory that made it possible for you and I to know true and abiding life that lasts forever. While you do see in the book of Acts where Peter said that those Jewish leaders were responsible for Jesus being crucified, it was Jesus who allowed it to happen and who became the perfect Passover sacrifice, once and for all.

I honestly can’t think of any memes that are more accurate than this one. Coffee helps me stay awake and do all the adulting. Without coffee, I’m not responsible for any of my actions, which for me basically means I’d be at work slumped over my keyboard, fast asleep.

Even if the coffee I drink has lots of creamer and sugar in it, it also still has caffeine. That’s what I drink the coffee in the morning for. Also, when it’s cold out, I drink it for the warmth. But mostly for the caffeine.

So the moral of the story is this: hooray for coffee and caffeine!

You know you’re old when you use phrases that are at least 30 years out of date. Phrases like . . . I don’t know . . . maybe, my jam? When was the last time you heard anyone listening to a good song and say, “That’s my jam”?

Now that we’ve established that I’m elderly and unhip, I’d like to tell you about an internet radio station I’ve grown to love over the last few months. It’s Classic Christian Rock Radio, playing everything all the way from the late 60s to the 90s.

I can’t tell you how many times I will hear a song that’s like a blast from my past. I may not have heard the song in years — decades even — but I immediately go back to when I first heard it and what I was thinking and feeling. Music more than any other medium has the power to do that.

Not all the music will be for everybody all the time. They play a fair amount of holy hair metal from the 80s that may or may not have aged well. But there are a lots of great songs that trigger lots of great memories for me.

Also, they’re having their annual fundraiser, so if you feel so inclined (and you like what you hear), you can donate to keep the music going. Shameless plug.

But if you grew up on Christian music like I did, check out classicchristianrock.net for a little nostalgia back to when the music didn’t suck. But that’s just my opinion. Check it out.

Yes, there really is a prayer for going to the bathroom. I suppose it seems a bit silly and childish, but when you think about it, even those embarrassing bodily functions that we try not to talk about in mixed company are gifts from God. Without these, we would die.

So many things that we take for granted are tiny blessings from God if we can only see them through the lens of gratitude. So many details that we often neglect to be thankful for wouldn’t seem so small if suddenly they were missing. Like the ability to go to the bathroom regularly.

The questions remains: if all you had left over from yesterday were those things that you were grateful for and thanked God for, what would you have left? Who would you have left? After all, sometimes what you take for granted can be taken away.

So give thanks even when you go potty.

I heard this today and my mind is still in the process of being blown by how simple yet profound this statement is:

“There are three stages to every great work of God; first, it is impossible, then it is difficult, then it is done” (Hudson Taylor).

I think that just about says it all.

I’ve been revisiting the wonderful world of Jan Karon and Mitford lately. Listening to the books in my car makes the commute much more bearable, especially on afternoons when the traffic is more annoying than usual.

The setting is an aging Episcopal priest who presides over a small congregation in a tiny village named Mitford. The books aren’t groundbreaking by any means, but they have a kind of charm in the way they depict small town life amidst a plethora of characters who seem like people you might have known growing up.

The main character, Father Tim, always refers to “the prayer that never fails” when difficult circumstances arise. That prayer in a nutshell is “Thy will be done.”

A prayer for God’s will to prevail is one that God can’t help but honor. It’s saying that I’m surrendering any idea or illusion of control that I might have had and surrendering the outcome completely to God. It’s saying that God can handle my problems better than I can and that He sees a bigger picture than I can see and thus has a better future in mind than I could ask for or even imagine.

That prayer can never fail. I suppose that no prayer ever truly fails, but sometimes when we pray for our outcome, we often fail to appreciate or see what God is doing when it doesn’t line up with our expectations. The failure is that we pray too small and with too much tunnel vision and don’t take into consideration God’s bigger plan not just for us but for the whole world.

So the next time you feel stuck or hopeless or helpless, it never hurts to pray that God’s will be done. You can never go wrong by asking God to have His way. It’s when God gets the most glory and you get the most blessing.

“Worship is the submission of all our nature to God. It is the quickening of conscience by His holiness; the nourishment of mind with His truth; the purifying of imagination by His Beauty; the opening of the heart to His love; the surrender of will to His purpose – and all of this gathered up in adoration, the most selfless emotion of which our nature is capable and therefore the chief remedy for that self-centeredness which is our original sin and the source of all actual sin. . . . To worship is to quicken the conscience by the holiness of God, to feed the mind with the truth of God, to purge the imagination by the beauty of God, to open the heart to the love of God, to devote the will to the purpose of God” (William Temple).

I heard once that worship comes from the words “worth” and “ship.” Basically, to worship is to declare the glory and the worth of God, not just in singing on Sunday mornings, but in every avenue of life in everything we do wherever we go for as long as we live. But there’s something special that happens on Tuesdays at 7 pm at the Brentwood Baptist campus in Hudson Hall.

Kairos Eve is the night before Kairos just as Christmas Eve is the night before Christmas. It’s not really significant to the story; I just thought it sounded cool. But what happens at Kairos is very real and very significant. We teach and preach and sing and declare the whole gospel for the whole person and that Jesus is powerful enough to save anybody anywhere at any time.

You can check out past Kairos services at kairosnashville.com in either audio or video form. Or you can show up in person at 7777 Concord Road in Brentwood, Tennessee. Either way I promise that you will be blessed.

But you know that these were crafted with loving care. They weren’t mass-produced at some factory. Someone actually took the time to crochet these blankets by hand, one at a time, over long periods of time.

I’m a little bit sad that with the new age of tech and instant gratification, a lot of the old way has gone away. A lot of what I knew as a kid no longer exists. But if you can find one of these old blankets, you just about have yourself a time machine that takes you back to a simpler time. Plus, you can take a really good nap.