God, you’re such a safe and powerful place to find refuge!
    You’re a proven help in time of trouble—
    more than enough and always available whenever I need you.
So we will never fear
    even if every structure of support were to crumble away.
    We will not fear even when the earth quakes and shakes,
    moving mountains and casting them into the sea.
For the raging roar of stormy winds and crashing waves
    cannot erode our faith in you.
Pause in his presence
God has a constantly flowing river whose sparkling streams
    bring joy and delight to his people.
    His river flows right through the city of God Most High,
    into his holy dwelling places.
God is in the midst of his city, secure and never shaken.
    At daybreak his help will be seen with the appearing of the dawn.
When the nations are in uproar with their tottering kingdoms,
    God simply raises his voice,
    and the earth begins to disintegrate before him.
Here he comes!
    The Commander!
    The mighty Lord of Angel Armies is on our side!
    The God of Jacob fights for us!
Pause in his presence
Everyone look!
    Come and see the breathtaking wonders of our God.
    For he brings both ruin and revival.
    He’s the one who makes conflicts end
    throughout the earth,
    breaking and burning every weapon of war.
Surrender your anxiety.
    Be still and realize that I am God.
    I am God above all the nations,
    and I am exalted throughout the whole earth.
Here he stands!
    The Commander!
    The mighty Lord of Angel Armies is on our side!
    The God of Jacob fights for us!
Pause in his presence (from The Passion Translation).

Recently, I discovered as I was en route to work in the wee hours of the morning that my speedometer had quit working. It was a bit disconcerting to not be able to gauge what speed you’re going, especially when you’re on the interstate. My modus operandi was to try and keep up with the cars around me and hope and pray that they were driving reasonably close to the speed limit.

Then a friend of mine told me about an app that works as a speedometer. That’s when I came to the realization that they really do have an app for everything.

I have an app that turns my phone into a leveler tool. Not that I ever use it, but it’s there just in case. I also have an app that can identify types of plants and flowers. I love the apps that allow you to skip the long lines at places like Chick-fil-A and Chipotle and order from your phone.

This is where I play my age card. I can really say that back in my day, all cell phones did was make phone calls. True story. Oh, and you could play this weird kind of snake game, but otherwise, the mobile phone was for making phone calls. Period. And we liked it.

Honestly, I do like all the technology on my phone. But I miss when life didn’t revolve around iPhones and social media and the interwebs. I miss walking into a coffee shop or a restaurant and seeing people having actual face-to-face conversations instead of texting and Facebooking and Instagramming each other. And yes, there’s probably an app for that, too.

To me, there’s nothing more powerful than the testimony of a soul set free. I heard once that you can argue semantics and theology and doctrines all day long, but you can never dispute a life that’s been transformed. You can’t argue with a miracle.

Tonight at my church’s Room in the Inn Monday night outreach, I got the privilege to hear from a man named Bobby Hayden, Jr., a successful music entertainer who went from the heights of success to the depths of drug addiction and homelessness to eventual recovery and salvation found in Jesus. His was a powerful testimony of God working the miraculous impossible in the life of someone who was destined for an overdose.

One thing Bobby said that stuck out was this: “You don’t do good to be good. You do good because you are good, and you are good because Jesus makes you good.”

Another way of saying that is change doesn’t start with behavior modification that works its way inward, but in spiritual transformation that begins within and works its way out. Romans 12:2 says this: “Stop imitating the ideals and opinions of the culture around you, but be inwardly transformed by the Holy Spirit through a total reformation of how you think. This will empower you to discern God’s will as you live a beautiful life, satisfying and perfect in his eyes.”

Only the power of God can explain a 180 degree turnaround from death to life, from addiction to freedom, from sin to holiness. And when a life is transformed, it’s just as much of a miracle whether the person was a lifelong drug addict or a outwardly moral upstanding citizen. The Bible says that we are all equally sinners in the eyes of God and equally in need of a Savior. The good news of the gospel isn’t that you can get to God, but that God in Jesus comes to you and meets you where you are.

“There is no fear in love, so we draw near;
Thy perfect love, O Lord, has cast out fear.

As wheat before the wind bends all one way,
So would we bow before Thy wind today….

Our several choices, Lord, we would forgo;
Breath of the living God, O great Wind, blow” (Amy Carmichael, “All One Way”, Toward Jerusalem).

That’s the key. God’s perfect love casts out all fear. It’s not that we will never be afraid again or that we will never be anxious, but that every time we are afraid, we take that anxious thought captive and bring it to the One whose perfect love continues to cast out fear. Then we trust not in or fearful feelings, but in the Prince of Peace.

“He is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose” (Jim Elliott).

I’m sure that many of you are aware that today marks the anniversary of Elvis Presley’s birth. He would have been 87 years old today, if I did my math right. But I wonder how many know about another anniversary that falls on this day.

Today in 1956, Jim Elliott and four other missionaries were killed while attempting to reach the Huaorani people of Ecuador for Christ. I doubt you will hear about that in any of tonight’s news broadcasts or see it on any news website. In the eyes of the world, they didn’t amount to much. But the legacy they left is still ongoing.

His wife, Elisabeth Elliott, went on to become a famous Christian author and speaker. Because of her outreach, the lives of many are different. They’ve been changed for the better by the power of God.

She later went back to that same people that had killed her husband and those other missionaries two years earlier. This time, they listened. This time, these people gave their lives to Christ and trusted Him as Lord and Savior. It all happened because not because of infallible superheroes of the faith, but because of flawed human beings who put their finite trust in an infinite God who specializes in the impossible.

You can’t tell from this picture, but Peanut was bird watching. All the birds are off screen frolicking in the snow. This is Peanut’s idea of must-see TV. None of that major network stuff. She just wants to chill and watch birds.

Who knows why? Maybe she thinks they’d taste like chicken. Maybe she just likes watching all those little birds get all puffy in the cold, snowy weather. Whatever the reason, this little feline was captivated by the avian activity. That is until a bug flew by and she got distracted.

What is the way of Jesus? What are those who follow Him called to be and to do?

The answer is simple. Repent and forgive.

Self-righteous finger pointing has no place in the Kingdom of God. Neither does condemning those who sin differently than I do. While we are called to speak in love against people when their actions don’t match their faith, neither you nor I get the right to judge their motives or intentions. Neither you nor I get to decide.

Jesus never said, “You make sure everyone else is living right.”

What He said was, “You live right,” or better yet, “You repent. You seek to serve the least of these. You be holy.”

The Kingdom of God isn’t about a political party or platform. It’s not an ideology, either left or right, conservative or liberal.

It’s about the God’s love breaking into the world, one heart at a time.

You might say to Jesus, “But what about these people over there not doing right? What about those people flaunting their freedoms over and above any responsibility?”

Jesus says to you, “But what about you? You repent. You make peace and live in peace with others as much as it’s in your power to do so.

At the end of the day, the question to you and me will be how well we loved. How well we served and ministered to the least of them. How well we made visible the invisible grace of God.

Jesus also said to forgive.

That becomes possible when you and I understand that the kind of inhumanity and evil we’re capable of apart from the grace of God. Also, we need to embrace the fact that those we deem our enemies are still created in the image of God and loved by God.

When we grasp how much we’re forgiven by God, we can in turn forgive others.

“One of their religion scholars spoke for them, posing a question they hoped would show him up: ‘Teacher, which command in God’s Law is the most important?’ Jesus said, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence.’ This is the most important, the first on any list. But there is a second to set alongside it: ‘Love others as well as you love yourself.’ These two commands are pegs; everything in God’s Law and the Prophets hangs from them (Matthew 22:34-40, The Message).'”

Last night at Kairos, Pastor Mike talked about emotional resilience in the context of the story in Genesis 37 of Joseph. This is the Joseph who had God-given dreams about his destiny. Throughout his story, it seems that poor old Joseph keeps getting punched in the face by life. He was thrown into a pit and later sold into slavery by jealous brothers, he was falsely accused of sexual misconduct by his master’s wife, and he spent two years in prison for the crime he didn’t commit.

Yet the key phrase that defines Joseph in the midst of his troubles was that “God was with him.” Whatever anyone else meant for evil and for harm, God turned to good. Spoiler alert: In fact, God used Joseph’s story to bring about the redemption of a whole race of people who later became Israel.

Two things from Mike’s sermon stood out to me. One was that Joseph trusted in the Dream-giver more than he trusted in his dreams. Even when his circumstances didn’t match his calling, Joseph clung to faith in the God of his great-grandfather Abraham, his grandfather Isaac, and his father Jacob.

Also, he was able to frame his story within the context of God’s greater story. He grew up hearing all about how God had led Abraham to leave a comfortable existence and follow Him without knowing the destination. Joseph heard all the stories time and time again of how God was faithful to fulfill all His covenant promises.

As a wise pastor once said, what you think and what you feel will sometimes lie to you, so you trust in what you know to be true. You trust in the same God who was with Joseph and who is still able to deliver you today.

“To wait upon God is not to sit with folded hands and do nothing, but to wait as men who wait for the harvest. The farmer does not wait idly but with intense activity; he keeps industriously ‘at it’ until the harvest. To wait upon God is the perfection of activity. We are told to ‘rest in the Lord,’ not to rust.” (Oswald Chambers, The Place of Help).

Waiting on God is not a passive sport. It’s like the farmer cultivating his field, preparing it to receive the rains that will come. It’s you and I cultivating our lives, preparing our hearts, and removing anything in our lives that might hinder our usefulness to God. It’s being obedient to what God has already revealed to you. It’s being faithful in small things, wisely stewarding the talents God has given you, so that God will be able to trust you with bigger things.

Ultimately, waiting the right way means that you trust the Giver more than the gifts. You trust that God is good whether you receive what you’ve prayed for and longed for or not. In God’s economy, if God withholds your desire from you, it is only to give you something better — something that you would have asked for in the first place if you knew then what God knows.

May we learn to wait well in 2022.

I think if you had to pick just one resolution for the new year, this would be a good one.

Even if you have other goals for 2022, you can make knowing Christ the foundation for all the rest. As I’ve learned, anything else won’t last. Any other goal outside of knowing Jesus and being found in Him won’t satisfy. Any other aim will ultimately fall short.

“To truly know him meant letting go of everything from my past and throwing all my boasting on the garbage heap. It’s all like a pile of manure to me now, so that I may be enriched in the reality of knowing Jesus Christ and embrace him as Lord in all of his greatness.

My passion is to be consumed with him and not cling to my own “righteousness” based in keeping the written Law. My only ‘righteousness’ will be his, based on the faithfulness of Jesus Christ—the very righteousness that comes from God. And I continually long to know the wonders of Jesus and to experience the overflowing power of his resurrection working in me. I will be one with him in his sufferings and become like him in his death. Only then will I be able to experience complete oneness with him in his resurrection from the realm of death.

I admit that I haven’t yet acquired the absolute fullness that I’m pursuing, but I run with passion into his abundance so that I may reach the purpose for which Christ Jesus laid hold of me to make me his own. I don’t depend on my own strength to accomplish this; however I do have one compelling focus: I forget all of the past as I fasten my heart to the future instead. I run straight for the divine invitation of reaching the heavenly goal and gaining the victory-prize through the anointing of Jesus” (Philippians 3:8-14).