I saw a post that said what I wanted to say better than I could have ever said it, so instead of trying to paraphrase it or recreated it, I’m doing the old copy and paste bit and letting you read the original for yourself. It’s worth the read:

“Without the Gospel This Is Laughable.

‘Do everything in love.’ 1 Cor. 16:14

Heavenly Father, “Do everything in love?… seriously? There’s only one reason to take this admonition seriously. We love because you first loved us and gave Jesus as our perfect and complete Savior (1 John 4:19). We won’t love perfectly till heaven, but we are already loved perfectly by you. Now and forever, you love us without conditions, limits, qualifiers, or disqualifiers. It’s only because of your great love for us in Jesus we can risk loving when it’s not easy, won’t be reciprocated, and requires more than we want to give. Help us, Father.

• Help us love well when we’re tired, frustrated, and sleep-deprived.

• Help us love well when we get triggered by past wounds and broken trust.

• Help us love well when conflict is inevitable and necessary—like a boil-lancing.

• Help us love well by remembering the Gospel—more so than real hurts.

• Help us love well by taking back the power we gave people to shame us.

• Help us love well—not using kindness and politeness to get something.

• Help us love well during Thanksgiving. Holidays can be fun, tricky, and messy.

• Help us love well, releasing control, outcomes, and our fears to you.

• Help us love well—by giving grace, not getting even.

Father, keep our hearts alive to your tenacious, wild, outrageous, joyful, transforming love for us in Jesus. That will make all the difference in the world. So very Amen we pray, in Jesus’ merciful and mighty name” (Scotty Smith).

Tonight, Mike Harder spoke from 1 Samuel 3 about how to hear the voice of God. I often forget that Samuel was a young boy when he had his first real encounter with the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. At first, he thought it was Eli calling him, but eventually Eli recognized that it was in fact God calling Samuel’s name.

Eli instructed Samuel to go back to his room and to wait for God to speak. Then he was to answer, “Speak Lord, for Your servant is listening.”

To be able to hear God’s voice, you must be near to God. It’s not a nearness of proximity and distance, for God is omnipresent and omniscient. It’s about a drawing near that happens when you silence your thoughts and prepare your heart to receive the words of God.

I wonder if we don’t hear God’s voice more often because we don’t stay long enough in God’s presence. We’re too much in a hurry to make time and space for God. We want to fit God in among our other activities and priorities, squeezing Him in if there’s room enough in our schedule.

But the question remains: “How badly do you and I want to hear from God?” How much do you need to listen to His voice? Is your desire for God greater than your desire for sleep? Is it more than your desire to watch Netflix? Is it enough for you to eliminate some events from your calendar and to learn to say no to certain people and plans, even good ones, in order to create margin and space in your day to hear from God?

I think when you seek God not in a half-hearted haphazard way but with a whole-heartedness and an intentionality, you will hear Him. When you are committed as Jacob was to wrestle with God and not let go until He speaks, then you will recognize His voice.

Speak, Lord, for Your servants are listening.

I did something that I rarely do these days — I went to an actual movie in an actual movie theater. It’s been a while.

Normally, I like to wait for it to hit streaming services because few films are worth paying the current price of movie tickets. But in this case, I made an exception. I wanted to support a faith-based film from a group that I’ve grown to respect as I’ve gotten to know about them, the Fellowship for Performing Arts, led by one Max McLean.

The film is centered around the story of C. S. Lewis’ 10-year journey from atheism to Christianity. Without giving away too much, the narrative device they use to tell the story is unique and compelling. I feel like Mr. McLean masterfully portrayed the title character and the filming locations gave the production a note of authenticity.

But what captivated me most was the way the movie used Lewis’ own words. I believe a lot of the narrative came directly from his autobiography Surprised by Joy. For once, it’s a faith-based film that actually succeeds at being a good film first, and without being preachy or didactic.

It will make you want to dive deep into the writings of C. S. Lewis, both apologetic and fiction, as well as possibly leading you to check out some of writers who inspired him such as George MacDonald and G. K. Chesterton. I can’t recommend it highly enough for anyone who wants a quality movie about the nuances of faith and intellect.

It always happens. No matter how many times I go away on vacation and no matter how many times I think I’m prepared to accept once more the return to the reality of every day life, there’s always a bit of a letdown. Tomorrow, the real world resumes. And I’m just not ready for it.

I don’t necessarily want to stay in vacation mode forever. Even a great vacation at an ideal destination can get old after a while. There’s only so much you can see and do, plus I would end up gaining about 100 pounds from all the vacation eating.

But the idea of getting up at 5 am to trek 21 miles to a job isn’t my idea of a welcome back.

Still, I think it’s all about perception.

I know of someone who was bedridden from a stroke who would have given just about anything to get to go to work. He said that if he could have gone back to having a job again, he’d never complain about it ever again. Ouch.

Being an adult is sometimes doing the stuff you don’t want to so that you can enjoy the fun stuff later. It’s about appreciating stuff more once you’ve had the satisfaction of having worked for it and earned it.

Then there’s grace. That’s the stuff you get that you don’t deserve. I truly believe that me waking up this morning in good health and having a job that allows me to take vacations is ultimately grace. That’s the goodness of God that I can never earn or get but only receive and be thankful for it.

So yes, I’m grateful for my job. I’m grateful for my life. I’m grateful for mercies that are new every morning — even on Mondays.

Jesus said that He didn’t come for the healthy and the righteous, but for the sinners and the sick. In today’s terms, the church isn’t supposed to be a kind of exclusive country club for the holier than thou set, but a hospital for broken sinners, including the ones whom Jesus has redeemed.

If any church loses its purpose of sharing the whole gospel with the whole person, it should probably close its doors for good. If any body of believers fails to seek out the same ones Jesus came to seek and to save, it should cease to exist.

Jesus also said that churches that have lost their first love need to repent and return to their biblical roots before they lose their anointing. Churches that have made politics, whether left or right, conservative or liberal, their main focus need to get on their knees and repent.

My prayer is that the American church can become like the early church found in the book of Acts. Anything less is not worthy of being called the body of Christ.

No matter where I go, I know I can depend on coffee being there at some point. I know I get to have that magic potion made with beans and hot water that perks (pun intended) me right up and gets me going.

I don’t pretend to be a purist when it comes to coffee. I usually add my fair share of creamer and/or sugar. The day you see me drinking my coffee black, you know that a) I’ve been taken over by one of those alien pods, b) it’s my evil twin, or c) I fell down and hit my head and no longer know who or where I am.

But yes, I love my coffee. Or as you purists might call it, my coffee-flavored sugar milk, it’s fantastic.

So far, my vacation has gone well. I used the first three days as a sort of stay-cation and piddled around the town. Today I went with my family to Gatlinburg, a place I’ve been countless times before but always takes me to my happy place.

We stopped by Rugby, a tiny little town in East Tennessee with a unique history, which I recommend you check out if you’re not already familiar with it. Then we ate at Huck Finn’s, another favorite of mine, for dinner. Last, we ended up at the Glenstone Lodge, where I stayed as a kid back in the 80s. Yes, the 1980s, not the 1880s.

There’s something comforting about going back to a familiar place. While I’m a fan of branching out and trying new things, I occasionally like to go back and revisit places that hold good memories for me. it’s almost like traveling back to a simpler time. At the same time, it’s a reminder to me that I’m not the same person who originally made those memories so long ago. I can see how much I’ve grown.

So far, so good.

“Jesus didn’t wait until Joseph and Mary were comfortably settled in the suburbs to come into the world. He came to them when they were staying in a barn. He’s not waiting for me to get my act together; He has met me in my poverty of spirit in this moment.”

We’re right on the cusp of the holiday season. Thanksgiving is two weeks away from tomorrow, then follows my personal favorites, the season of Advent and Christmas. The season of God becoming incarnate in the form of an infant, becoming like us so that we could one day become like Him.

I love the idea that Jesus didn’t wait until the world was ready. He didn’t wait until Joseph and Mary had their act together and had established a middle class existence in some fashionable neighborhood. He came to a couple of peasants in the middle of the night in a place where cattle ate out of a feeding trough. He came with no fanfare or applause or worldwide announcements. The first to hear of His arrival were some smelly shepherds tending their flocks in the middle of nowhere.

In the same way, Jesus comes to you and me not when we’ve finally got it all together and are living our best lives, but in the moments where we are the least deserving and most in need of a Savior. He came to those who were — and are — poor in spirit. That is, to those who are aware that they in and of themselves have nothing to offer to God but a deep need and a desperate hunger for Something More in their heart of hearts.

Even now, we can begin to prepare our hearts for Advent. Even now, we can reorient our focus away from the consumeristic to the contemplative, from the giving and receiving of presents to the adoration of the infant King in the manger. Even now, we can enter into His courts with thanksgiving.

“Speak up for the people who have no voice,
    for the rights of all the misfits.
Speak out for justice!
    Stand up for the poor and destitute!” (Proverbs 31:8-9, The Message)

May we remember that God chose the weak to shame the strong, the outcasts to shame the in-crowd, and the nobodies to shame the who’s who. And in case you and I have forgotten, we were the weak and the outcasts and the nobodies before we met God. Now we’re a royal priesthood, sons and daughters of the living God, and living stones built into a temple of the Almighty.

God has appointed us to speak for those who have no voice just as Jesus was our advocate when we had no one else to speak for us. We intercede for the outcast as Jesus intercedes for us before the Father in heaven. Jesus came to seek and save the lost, and now we who were lost are to continue to seek out those who fall through the cracks and who no one else sees but who are precious to the God who made them.

‘An ordinary simple Christian kneels down to say his prayers. He is trying to get into touch with God. But if he is a Christian he knows that what is prompting him to pray is also God: God, so to speak, inside him. But he also knows that all his real knowledge of God comes through Christ, the Man who was God—that Christ is standing beside him, helping him to pray, praying for him. You see what is happening. God is the thing to which he is praying—the goal he is trying to reach. God is also the thing inside him which is pushing him on—the motive power. God is also the road or bridge along which he is being pushed to that goal. So that the whole threefold life of the three-personal Being is actually going on in that ordinary little bed- room where an ordinary man is saying his prayers. The man is being caught up into the higher kinds of life—what I called Zoe or spiritual life: he is being pulled into God, by God, while still remaining himself” (C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity).

I’ve noticed that most of the prayers that God hears are really the ones that God prompted me to pray. Even more, I sense that when I can’t find the right words — or even words at all — I can rely on the Holy Spirit to interpret what I want to say, what I long to say, what I’m unable to say and put it in words that God can answer.

So basically I’m praying to God the Father from God the Holy Spirit within based on the finished work of God the Son, who lives and pleads for me before God the Father. That concept makes my brain hurt, but at the same time, I’m eternally grateful that it works.