I’m thankful that Jesus was God spelling Himself out in a language I could understand. I’m grateful that He didn’t wait until I could understand things like premillennialism and supralapsarianism and transubstantiation before He made Himself known to me (which I probably still couldn’t tell you what any of those mean). He didn’t ask me to get my life together perfectly before I could approach Him.

As the saying goes, all other religions are about us getting to God, while Christianity is about God coming down to us. He came not when we were most deserving but when we were least deserving and most in need of a Savior. He came at just the right moment.

As I’ve read recently, God is not just “up there” out in the Heavens and beyond our reach. The question isn’t “Are You up there?” He’s down here with us in the daily grind. He’s Emmanuel, God with us.

Jesus is God speaking a language I can understand. Jesus as fully God and fully man is able to fully identify with me in all my weaknesses in His humanity and yet is able to do something about them in His divinity. He intercedes for me like no one else can because He’s been where I am and yet He didn’t ever sin when I sin more often than not. He is the only one who could ever save me.

Sometimes, I feel like I want to cancel my subscription to adulthood. I’ve done the 30-day free trial and thanks but no thanks this is not for me.

So until further notice, I will be in my blanket fort, eating cheez-its and coloring. You may join me if you wish (and if you know the secret password).

That is all. Carry on. Good night.

“Feelings are great liars. If Christians worshipped only when they felt like it, there would be precious little worship. We think that if we don’t feel something there can be no authenticity in doing it. But the wisdom of God says something different: that we can act ourselves into a new way of feeling much quicker than we can feel ourselves into a new way of acting. Worship is an act that develops feelings for God, not a feeling for God that is expressed in an act of worship” (Eugene Peterson).

I once heard that your feelings can lie to you. I’ve learned that truth the hard way. You can’t always trust how you feel because so many random things affect your feelings. If you’re tired or stressed or hungry, you tend more toward negative emotions. On the other hand, if I’ve just had coffee, then sometimes my feelings are inflated above what they normally would be.

I’ve also heard that if you lose the feelings of love in a relationship, the way to restore them is to do the acts of love. Even if they’re rote and without feeling at first, eventually the feelings will come. You can’t act in a genuine loving way without coming to a point where you feel love. Jesus in His humanity experienced all the same emotions and you and I face, but He was perfectly obedient to His Father because He did the acts of obedience when He may not have felt obedient.

Faith isn’t a feeling. Love isn’t a feeling. Both are acts of the will. Both are choices that we make, regardless of whether they are accompanied by feelings or not. Choosing to act when you don’t feel like it isn’t inauthentic; it’s called maturity and discipline. Choosing to believe when you don’t feel it is called faith.

“In a world where success is the measure and justification of all things the figure of Him who was sentenced and crucified remains a stranger and is at best the object of pity. The world will allow itself to be subdued only by success. It is not ideas or opinions which decide, but deeds. Success alone justifies wrongs done. . . . With a frankness and off-handedness which no other earthly power could permit itself, history appeals in its own cause to the dictum that the end justifies the means. . . . The figure of the Crucified invalidates all thought which take success for its standard” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer).

I believe the Bible talks about how the first shall be last, and the last shall be first. It also says that if you seek to save your life, you’ll lose it, but if you seek to give your life away, you’ll save it. The Apostle Paul speaks to how God chose the foolish to shame the wise, and the nobodies to shame the VIPs (or something to that effect). The mentality of the Kingdom of God is an upside down kind of thinking that doesn’t make sense to most of the world.

In fact, the very same Bible say that the message of the cross is foolishness to the world, but it is life and salvation to all who take it on faith and believe in it with everything they are. I guess you could say that it’s the world’s kind of thinking that is upside down, and the message of Christ and the cross is really turning things right-side up again.

Sometimes, you need to thank God for a provision He has yet to give. I mean that before the prayer gets answered, you thank God in advance for that answer. Thanksgiving isn’t just celebrating when you get what you wanted, but declaring that God is good no matter what. You can choose to be grateful whether the healing comes or not, whether deliverance comes or not. Your circumstances may not allow you to be happy, but joy is still an act of the will that you can grasp no matter how your circumstances play out.

Praise God if the good thing comes, but also remember that if it seems like a bad thing comes, God can work that bad thing into something good, sometimes sooner and sometimes later but always guaranteed. I think the saying goes that when a door closes and until another door opens, you can praise God in the hallway — in the midst of your waiting and uncertainty. Your gratitude might not change your world right then, but it can and will change you and how you see your world in that moment. Then you can thank God whose promises are as good as done.

If you’re not familiar with Amy Carmichael, I recommend the book A Chance to Die: The Life and Legacy of Amy Carmichael by Elisabeth Elliott. I also recommend Amy’s book, Gold by Moonlight, which deals with abiding under chronic illness and pain.

“Let us end on a very simple note: Let us listen to simple words; our Lord speak simply: “Trust Me, My child,” He says. “Trust Me with a humbler heart and a fuller abandon to My will than ever thou didst before. Trust Me to pour My love through thee, as minute succeeds minute. And if thou shouldst be conscious of anything hindering that flow, do not hurt My love by going away from Me in discouragement, for nothing can hurt so much as that. Draw all the closer to Me; come, flee unto Me to hide thee, even from thyself. Tell Me about the trouble. Trust Me to turn My hand upon thee and thoroughly to remove the boulder that has choked they river-bed, and take away all the sand that has silted up the channel. I will not leave thee until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of. I will perfect that which concerneth thee. Fear thou not, O child of My love; fear not.

And now…to gather all in one page:

Beloved, let us love.Lord, what is love?

Love is that which inspired My life, and led Me to My Cross, and held Me on My Cross. Love is that which will make it thy joy to lay down thy life for thy brethren.

Lord, evermore give me this love.

Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after love, for they shall be filled.”

I’m still not a vinyl purist, but I’m understanding the love of what we used to call records a little more. There’s just something magical about putting a record on the turntable and carefully placing the needle on the right groove. It’s an experience that you don’t get by turning on Spotify. I think my new favorite pastime will be laying in bed listening to records.

All i have to do is put on some good vinyl, drop the needle, and let all my cares go. I can get lost in the music and not think about anything else. If I can ever figure out how to connect my wireless headphones, I’ll be in heaven.

It’s nice to know that once in a rare blue moon, something old becomes something new. Something from back in the day comes back for a bit and is cool again. Even if the price of vinyl is ridiculous, it does my heart good to see stores carrying records again. I hear even cassette tapes are making a comeback of sorts. I’m not holding my breath for 8-tracks.

“It is no good giving me a play like Hamlet or King Lear, and telling me to write a play like that. Shakespeare could do it — I can’t. And it is no good showing me a life like the life of Jesus and telling me to live a life like that. Jesus could do it — I can’t. But if the genius of Shakespeare could come and live in me, then I could write plays like this. And if the Spirit of Jesus could come into me, then I could live a life like that. This is the secret of Christian sanctity. It is not that we should strive to live like Jesus, but that he by his Spirit should come and live in us. To have him as our example is not enough; we need him as our Saviour” (John R. W. Stott).

That’s the key, isn’t it? It’s not me trying harder, but Jesus living inside of me. It’s Jesus living the same kind of life He lived almost 2,000 years ago, but this time through my hands and feet. Will it ever be perfectly played out this side of heaven? No, because my flesh will always get in the way. Still, my life will still be much, much better than it would have been apart from Christ. And the closer I get to hreaven, the more my life will look like Christ’s life and the more I will look like Jesus.

“How can we forgive those who do not want to be forgiven? Our deepest desire is that the forgiveness we offer will be received. This mutuality between giving and receiving is what creates peace and harmony. But if our condition for giving forgiveness is that it will be received, we seldom will forgive! Forgiving the other is first and foremost an inner movement. It is an act that removes anger, bitterness, and the desire for revenge from our hearts and helps us to reclaim our human dignity. We cannot force those we want to forgive into accepting our forgiveness. They might not be able or willing do so. They may not even know or feel that they have wounded us.

The only people we can really change are ourselves. Forgiving others is first and foremost healing our own hearts” (Henri Nouwen).

If bitterness is drinking poison and expecting the other person to die, then forgiveness is the antidote. You have probably heard that forgiveness is like unlocking the door to a prison cell to let the prisoner out only to discover that the one inside was you. The other may or may not be aware of any harm done, but you are the one carrying the burden of bitterness and anger. You are the one stuck in the place where you were wounded, unable to move forward.

Jesus doesn’t make forgiveness easy but possible. He also doesn’t give you an excuse to avoid it. We are to forgive as we have been forgiven. In fact, the Lord’s prayer asks God to forgive us just as we have forgiven others. But whatever the price, the freedom that comes with forgiveness is completely worth it.

It seems lately that cancel culture has overtaken everything. I look at actors and singers whose careers have ended practically overnight because of misdeeds and bad behavior anywhere from recently to decades ago. I think for me, I am not a fan of cancel culture.

Don’t get me wrong. I think that wrong behavior, especially criminal behavior, should have real consequences.

But I’m don’t think that negates everything good that a person has ever done. I definitely don’t think that we should write off people who make mistakes and poor decisions. I’ve said before many times that I am not into karma because I know what I deserve if I had it coming to me.

I’m a fan of grace for me and for others because I know there are times when I’ve been in a place where I deserved judgment and received mercy instead. I still believe that no one is beyond the saving grace of God. No one. And I don’t intend to denigrate someone who is created in the image of God.

If we judged people by their pasts — and solely by the wrongs they’ve done in the past — then we wouldn’t have a New Testament. In cancelling the Apostle Paul, we’d lose all those wonderful epistles. Paul himself even admits that he’s the least worthy of all the apostles and calls himself the chief of sinners.

Again, I believe that sin has consequences, but I also believe that there can be forgiveness and second chances. Just because you were reprobate once doesn’t mean that you always have to be that way. The same Apostle Paul said that for those who are in Christ, the old has passed away and a new way has come. Who you were no longer exists, and the new you is being transformed into the likeness of Christ.

Jesus didn’t come into the world to condemn it and cancel it but to save it.