I think this one gets an “Amen” and an “Oof” from me at the same time. It’s powerful and convicting.
I do think this culture has taught us to focus on what’s wrong with our lives. So much of our advertising has been training us to compare our lives and our stuff with our neighbor’s bigger house and better car. Those are the proverbial Joneses we’ve been taught to keep up with . . . or else we’re failing at life.
But the result is that we focus on trials and blessings get minimalized or forgotten. I know I can get hyper-focused on my latest hardship enough to forget five blessings within the same week.
The cure is to give thanks as often as we are blessed. I did a thing a few years ago where I wrote down one thousand blessings. Actually, I started with a goal of 1,000 and ended up going way over. It’s easy once you get going.
The Apostle Paul basically says that the will of God is for you to pray unceasingly and to give thanks. That’s it, because once your whole life is an offering to God and your whole attitude is gratitude, then you see your world differently. You see God where you didn’t see Him before. You see Him everywhere.
So speak your blessings. Write them down. Engrave them in marble instead of sand. Let sand be for your trials, because the writing will be as transitory as your trials.
“Having Christian convictions can’t ever negate having Christ’s compassion” (Ann Voskamp).
It’s not a case of either/or. It’s both.
In today’s culture, there are those on one side who let their compassion override their convictions. They preach tolerance (except for those who happen to disagree with them) and teach that loving people means loving their sin.
On the other side of the fence, there are people whose convictions have turned them into people who not only need to be proven right but everyone else must have their faces rubbed in the fact that they’re wrong.
If you truly follow Jesus, you’ll have both. Jesus said to the woman caught in adultery “Neither do I condemn you” with compassion, but He also told her “Go and sin no more” with conviction. Yes, Jesus loved sinners and ate with tax collectors and prostitutes, but He loved them into repentance and transformation. When He ascended into heaven, they weren’t sinners, tax collectors, and prostitutes anymore. They were devoted disciples living a new way of justice and holiness.
Remember, it’s not either/or. It’s both/and. God was compassionate toward you while you were a sinner far from grace but He still calls you through conviction to repent and turn to Jesus in faith.
Yesterday was a hot one. Today was also a hot one. Tomorrow will most likely be a hot one. Are you sensing a trend yet?
It’s called summer. It’s like stepping out the front door into an oven. Except in my case living in Tennessee, it’s like an exceptionally moist oven. That’s because it’s very humid.
If it were 100 degrees with no humidity, I could adjust. I could learn to live with heat. But humidity is just not fair. It’s especially unfair to people (like me) with curly hair who just want to look normal and not like an alpaca who stuck its finger in an electrical socket.
But there is still a lot of summer to go. Officially, we have until September 21, but as everyone in Tennessee knows, hot weather is here until at least October. Maybe longer.
So my advice is to drink lots of water, wear sunscreen, and stay inside from 2 pm until November 2 (or maybe longer depending on the outcome of the election).
I see people in the heat wearing hoodies and jackets and long sleeves. I’m not judging, but why? It’s already heat stroke weather. There’s a heat advisory. If it’s me, I’m not adding to the risk. I mean you can wear all the layers and polyester you want. It’s a free country, but just know I will be sweating all the more when I see you bundled up in 95 degree heat.
But fall is coming. My favorite season because it’s not too hot, not too cold. Plus, you can legitimately wear hoodies and flannel and not die.
By the way, I get equally annoyed when I see people in t-shirts and gym shorts in the middle of winter. That’s just as dumb in my humble opinion.
But because we all made it through another week of living in a sauna, I brought you a joke to enjoy. Hope you like it.
“Our Father in heaven, Reveal who you are. Set the world right; Do what’s best— as above, so below. Keep us alive with three square meals. Keep us forgiven with you and forgiving others. Keep us safe from ourselves and the Devil. You’re in charge! You can do anything you want! You’re ablaze in beauty! Yes. Yes. Yes” (Matthew 6:9-13, The Message).
Recently, I subscribed to yet another email list. This one I think I’ll like. It’s daily prayers and devotionals from one Charles Spurgeon, the late great preacher and theologian from the 19th century. Here’s one that caught my attention:
“Lord, you have heard our prayers, even when we have hardly thought they could be answered. We have been unbelieving, but you have been faithful. We have been undeserving, but your grace has never failed. There are many of us who have known you now as long as Israel knew you in the wilderness, these forty years, and never once have you failed to keep your promise or to remember your people for good.
May our faith grow exceedingly. May we that have had experience of your goodness, feel ashamed to ever entertain a doubt, and when the dark thought ever crosses our mind which would make us mistrust, may we chase it as a strange and vain thought, which must not even lodge, much less dwell, within our hearts.
Amen.“
May that be the prayer of your heart to remind you that God is always faithful even when we’re not. God is still a promise keeper.
I typically will say that I am a fan of change until it happens, then I want it to go back to the way it was before. There are a few instances where I prefer the new over the old, but mostly I just want the old, maybe because I am old.
I think the kind of change I really like is the shiny kind with pictures of dead presidents on it. At least periodically you can take that kind of change to the bank and get cash or make a deposit.
These days more than ever I am thankful for a changeless God. With the culture becoming increasingly chaotic and volatile, I yearn for stability and sameness. I know in this life change is inevitable, but still I want some kind of anchor or cornerstone that won’t move with the shifting sands or turning tides.
I fall back often on the promise that Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever. I pray that often to remind myself that I still have a firm foundation when everything else seems to give way. That’s my hope and stay as I look to a day when all will be unending joy and peace and love and rest.
I heard that in the opening ceremony for the 2024 Summer Olympic games in Paris, France, they made a mockery of Christianity. Apparently, people are all offended.
Maybe I should be as well, but it seems to me that means believers are doing something right. At least according to Jesus, they are.
Jesus said that if they hated Him, they will hate us. Jesus’ message was one that got Him crucified. And His message wasn’t merely love God, love people. That wasn’t enough to get Him killed. He claimed the title of Messiah. He said He was the Son of God, equal to God. He even said, “I AM” claiming the divinity as one of the trinity.
Jesus called people to a new way. He called us to live a new way. He said that people would not understand. Not only that, they would hate us. He said to rejoice when we are persecuted and mocked and belittled because our reward is coming.
I don’t think we get credit for being hated when we are obnoxious or arrogant. I don’t think we should rejoice for being persecuted when we’re seeking to make politics the ultimate goal and getting “our” candidate elected takes precedence over preaching the gospel to every nation, tribe, and tongue.
We are not better than anyone else. We of all people know the depth of our depravity, the full wages of what our sins deserve, and what we would have been apart from the grace of God. We know more than anyone how dependent we are on God for anything in this life and for any hope of a next life in heaven.
If people only say nice things about us as Christians, we’re doing something wrong. Or we’re not doing the right things loud enough like loving our enemies, blessing those who curse us, and being salt and light. Jesus said woe to those when all people speak well of you because they did the same for the false prophets. The world says it will only applaud what we say when we sound just like them, but really then we will have zero reason to exist.
I love how the disciples didn’t get offended when they were persecuted and mocked. Even when they were beaten and thrown in prison for preaching about Jesus, they chose to count it all joy. They rejoiced that they had been counted worthy to suffer for the Name. They knew that ultimately nothing could stand against the message of the Cross and that the power of Jesus would prevail as it had at Golgotha over sin, death, and hell.
May we rejoice when people mock us not for being jerks but for being faithful witnesses. May we count it all joy when people mistreat us not for how we shame those who think differently than us but for how we love those whom Jesus loved.
Is it possible that God can speak through an aptly-timed social media meme? If I had to answer that question right now, I’d lean toward yes. I seem to get memes like this one that remind me that gratitude is always appropriate even in seasons of anxiety.
There’s always something to be thankful for. I am most definitely living inside of multiple answered prayers (both from me and from others) while I am waiting on other prayers to be answered. One obvious example that practically stares at me every day is Clifford the Big Red Jeep, the car I prayed for.
So basically while I pray for God’s provision for a job, I am literally driving the answer to a previous prayer. After that, you’d think I’d be all done with questioning God’s timing or wondering if He will really provide this time, but I still do. I identify with those Israelites wandering in the desert who seem to have short-term memories when it comes to the blessings of God and long-term memories when it comes to every hardship.
Even the basic gifts like waking up every morning and having reasonably good health are answered prayers. So is having good eyesight and hearing. So is being able to walk anywhere I want. I am living in all these answered prayers that I routinely take for granted.
God, forgive my doubt and my entitlement. Thank you that you are way more patient with me than I am with you. Even as I pray for You to grant my petitions, grant me to see with Your eyes so that I can trust Your heart and Your timing and not lose heart. Amen.
“A saint is not someone who is good but who experiences the goodness of God” (Brennan Manning).
Has it really been 14 years? It doesn’t seem like it’s been that long, but this is my 5101st blog post.
I understand more as I get older how time really does fly by. These days, I turn around and it’s 2 months away from fall. The next time I turn around, it will be Christmas (hopefully without the bugs and humidity).
I am humbled and in awe that God has allowed me to write these for all these years. I honestly can’t think of too many other things that I’ve done for that long (with the obvious examples of living and breathing). I hope to communicate this in the right way, but there is a kind of pride in being disciplined to write something down every day for 14 years.
But without people to read it, these words don’t mean much. Well, for me they are a kind of therapy, so I guess in that way even if it’s just me reading my own words it’s worth it. But I can’t get over how other people still want to read what I write. That blows my mind and makes me want to keep going.
Here’s to another 14 years (and beyond hopefully). I only know they will continue to get better the more I see and understand the goodness of God on display in my life and in the lives of those around me. God is good.
I was not expecting to not have a job at this point. I honestly wasn’t thinking that far ahead. I loved where I worked. I didn’t always love everything about my job, but I was grateful to be employed (even if it felt like I was driving halfway around the world sometimes).
But here we are. This is one of those seasons that I won’t be able to fully appreciate until it has passed. It reminds me of those disciples who never fully grasped who Jesus was and what He was about until after He departed from them back into heaven.
I’m not one of those people who believe that God’s main goal is to make me wealthy and happy with no struggles or issues in my life. I do think that suffering and hardships are a part of God’s plan that He uses to refine me and conform me into the image of Jesus.
I do believe that in this case my job ended so that something better could begin. Something where I get to utilizes my gifts and passions. Something where I leave work every day feeling I’ve made a difference for the Kingdom. Somewhere where I don’t have to drive as far to get to.
I’m also reminded of the verse about how God’s ways are not mine, nor are God’s thoughts like mine. My mind is very finite (and sometimes more closed than I would like to admit), but God’s is infinite and omniscient. I read today that God chooses for me what I would choose if I knew what He knew and saw the big picture the way He does.
Right now, I want that next thing to be tomorrow. I want it right now. In my own finite humanness, I am sensing my own anxiety and impatience. But I never want to get ahead of God or presume to receive His gifts before I’m ready to receive them or mature enough to handle the responsibilities that come with them.
My prayer is still that of Jehoshaphat of ancient times: “I don’t know what to do, but my eyes are on You.”
God, I trust You with my life, my hopes, my career, and my future. I am still in good Hands.
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