I know a little about knots in my mind, my heart, and my life (although for me they tend to end up in my gut). I know what it’s like to be kept awake at night by thoughts that will not lie down. It’s like a never-ending upset stomach.

But I also know the Prince of Peace. I know He said to cast my cares on Him. I know He said to take up His yoke because it is light and easy to carry. I know He said to seek first His kingdom and everything else would work itself out.

I sometimes forget and think that I have to be enough and do enough and say enough to make everything right and good in my world. But Jesus said that He is enough, and my job is simply to trust Him with the future and simply to obey and take the next step in faith.

The words to the old hymn still apply: trust and obey, for there’s no other way. Just trust and obey.

Tonight, I went to an incredible concert at Schermerhorn Symphony Center with Richard Marx, thanks to a very generous neighbor. It was great to hear all the old songs, along with a few newer ones, that took me back to my high school days and awakened all sorts of feelings and memories within me.

One song in particular brought back vivid memories of a band trip to Oklahoma and a girl I had a major crush on as a freshman. I remember buying the cassette tape and wearing it out in my Sony Walkman back in 1988. I even persuaded the girl to listen to that song.

I never could bring myself to let the girl know my feelings for her. I’m pretty sure she’s married now with kids and possibly grandkids. But that song still takes me back. I can almost smell the hotel rooms and swimming pool and the diesel exhaust from the band bus.

I love how music over and above any other form of art can act as a kind of time machine to take you to a tangible moment in your life where you go back to the exact feelings and memories you had then. The song becomes a part of the soundtrack to your life and the memory becomes etched in your heart and in your mind forever.

“The problem of reconciling human suffering with the existence of a God who loves, is only insoluble so long as we attach a trivial meaning to the word ‘love’, and look on things as if man were the centre of them. Man is not the centre. God does not exist for the sake of man. Man does not exist for his own sake. ‘Thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created’ [Revelation 4:11]. We were made not primarily that we may love God (though we were made for that too) but that God may love us, that we may become objects in which the Divine love may rest ‘well pleased’. To ask that God’s love should be content with us as we are is to ask that God should cease to be God: because He is what He is, His love must, in the nature of things, be impeded and repelled, by certain stains in our present character, and because He already loves us He must labour to make us lovable. We cannot even wish, in our better moments, that He could reconcile Himself to our present impurities—no more than the beggar maid could wish that King Cophetua should be content with her rags and dirt, or a dog, once having learned to love man, could wish that man were such as to tolerate in his house the snapping, verminous, polluting creature of the wild pack. What we would here and now call our ‘happiness’ is not the end God chiefly has in view: but when we are such as He can love without impediment, we shall in fact be happy” (C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain).

I think George MacDonald said that the love of God is like a refiner’s fire that takes gold and burns away any impurities in it until the refiner can see his face in it. In the same way, God in His love refines us, burning away anything that is not of Him until He can see His face in us and until we look like Him.

It is true that Jesus loves us as we are, but He does not leave us that way. He meets us where we are, but doesn’t leave us there. He makes us lovable and loving, so we can both love God and others in the same way He has loved us. It is a holy love.

“Honest? Sometimes we just want to find the rewind button — find our way back to where we’ve been so we can live better, love realer, feel safer.

And You whisper, “Look ahead with joy… everything’s going to work out. I promise it’s all working out for good…Look to Me” Isa:65:17, Ps20:6, Ro.8:28, Matt10:38MSG

And You are up ahead!

“There are far better things ahead — than any we leave behind.”

The best is never behind us; You save the *best* for up ahead — more of You!

and the end will be the *best*… and it will only be the *beginning*.

Believe it — and rest well tonight.

#PrayingEachOtherThrough” (Ann Voskamp).

Sometimes, you’re just tired of being tired. You can’t get away from all the bad news coming at you from all sides and wonder when it’s ever going to finally end.

Then you read the last chapter of the last book of the Bible and remember that one day it will end. One day, God will wipe away every tear from our eyes. One day, we will see the new city coming out of heaven. One day, we will see the new heaven and the new earth, and it will be the way God made it in the beginning with only joy and no sin. And the best part is that Jesus will be there.

One day soon.

So tonight in Kairos, the speaker talked about the Lord’s Prayer. It’s one of those Bible passages that everyone who has grown up in or around the Church has heard at least once, whether the famous musical adaptation or in the familiar King James. Most of us have heard it so many times that it can almost become rote and lose any meaning because we’ve heard the words so often.

But it is really acknowledging who is in control — His name, His kingdom, His will. When we really believe and live out this prayer, we are reorienting our lives from being about us to being about the things of God.

Then we confess our daily needs before God and also confess our debts. It’s interesting based on this verse that God forgives us as we have forgiven others. The mark of someone who has experienced the forgiveness of God is that they always forgive others, no matter what. And that is not excusing or enabling what they did, but releasing them from the expectation that they can fix what they did.

It ends with a summary that brings it all back to God being the supreme authority over every part of our lives. The more we align ourselves with the Lord’s prayer, the more we grant Jesus Lordship over our lives until He has it all with no exceptions.

The last word is Amen. It’s more than just a neat way of ending our prayers or something nice to say to a good point in a sermon. It’s basically agreeing with God. It’s saying “So be it” to God. I love the way The Message translates Amen as an emphatic YES! YES! YES! It’s not a half-hearted assent but a resounding yes that we say not just with our words but our lives, not just one time but over and over every single day.

“We talk about ‘circumstances over which we have no control.’ None of us have control over our circumstances, but we are responsible for the way we pilot ourselves in the midst of things as they are. Two boats can sail in opposite directions in the same wind, according to the skill of the pilot. The pilot who conducts his vessel on to the rocks says he could not help it, the wind was in that direction; the one who took his vessel into the harbour had the same wind, but he knew how to trim his sails so that the wind conducted him in the direction he wanted. The power of the peace of God will enable you to steer your course in the mix-up of ordinary life.

O Lord, unto You do I turn, unto You. I am but a homeless waif until You touch me with the security of Your peace, the sweet sense of Your love” (Oswald Chambers).

Oswald Chambers has to be in my top five favorite Christian writers ever. It’s a bit ironic, considering he himself only ever wrote one book. All the others (including My Utmost for His Highest) came from his wife writing down his sermons and talks word for word and putting them down on paper.

You don’t really hear much about him these days. At least I don’t. In fact, you don’t really hear much about the old writers from a century ago or more. Yet those are the ones who have the solid theology and wise insights that most of us need right now. When you pick up a book like My Utmost for His Highest, you know you’re getting something scriptural.

For someone who lived a long time ago and died relatively young, Mr. Chambers sure did leave a legacy that continues to impact millions around the world for Christ in books that have never gone out of print. May we seek a legacy not of our own but of making Christ known and making Him famous.

“Prayer is either a sheer illusion or a personal contact between embryonic, incomplete persons (ourselves) and the utterly concrete Person. Prayer, in the sense of petition, asking for things, is a small part of it; confession and penitence are its threshold, adoration its sanctuary, the presence and vision and enjoyment of God its bread and wine. In it God shows Himself to us” (C. S. Lewis, The World’s Last Night).

I love the idea of prayer connected with worship and communion. It really does help me visualize the real meaning and goal of prayer.

Most of the time, we stop short of entering into the sanctuary of prayer when all we do is make petitions before God. It can almost become like a child sitting in Santa’s lap laying out a long list of what he or she wants for Christmas.

We get further in when we make confession before God. It’s more than just saying sorry for our sins. It’s agreeing with God not just that we sinned but about God being God and us not being God. It’s about agreeing not just with the bad we’ve done but also the good God has done to make it right. That leads to repenting, which is more than feeling bad. It’s a change of mind that leads to a change of behavior. It’s doing a 180 from going my own way to going God’s way.

The best part of prayer that we often neglect the most is adoration — not so much thanking God for what He’s done for us but mostly for who He is. It’s saying He’s worthy of worship and praise even if He never did one thing more for us because of who He is and what He’s already done for us.

I confess that my prayers often start and end with me. It’s more of my laundry list of wishes and wants to God where I’m in too much of a hurry to wait for a response. But when it becomes more than that, it’s less about me trying to change God’s mind and more about God changing me to want what He wants. That’s when the best kind of prayer happens.

I always get a bit annoyed by the old trope that goes along the lines of “If I’ve only learned one thing in this life . . . .” Of course you’ve learned more than just one thing. Or at least I hope you have.

But I will say one of the main themes that I have learned time and time again is the goodness of God.

God is good. Period.

The danger is making my experiences and my feelings the litmus test of God’s goodness to me. If I base how good I perceive God to be based on what I see and how I feel, I will get a very narrow and me-centered view of God.

So many people walk away from God because they make themselves the standard for how God has to act. His goodness is based on how they’ve felt Him or seem Him, and when they can’t feel Him or see Him, He must be absent or uncaring.

The real test is God’s Word. The test is every one of God’s promises that He has ever made. And do you know that God is batting 1.000? For all the non-baseball readers, that means God has kept every single one of the promises He has ever made.

God is good even when I don’t see it. God is good even when I don’t feel it. I don’t see the big picture — more like about 5-10% of it. If I could somehow see it all, then I would never doubt. Then again, I’d never need faith. And my brain would probably explode from information overload.

So faith tells me God is good when my senses and my feelings tell me otherwise. And if my memory were better, it would tell me the same. God is good.

I’ve been known to say before that I don’t really mind the hot weather — to a point. What really zaps my energy and drains my joy is humidity. You walk outside and instantly turn into a sweat puddle.

And my hair? Let’s not even go there.

As long as the temperatures stay below 90 and with low humidity, I will survive. But once we hit 90+ with all the steamy humidity, I start praying for fall.

“Buy the lie that your life is supposed to be heaven on earth, and suffering can be a torturous hell. But life is suffering, and suffering is but the cross to bear, part of earth’s topography to cross on our way to heaven. The question isn’t ‘Why is there suffering in my life?’ But ‘Why wouldn’t there be suffering?’ Because such is life in a broken world. The question is ‘What WAY will you bear your suffering?’” (Ann Voscamp #waymakerbook)

I think it was the singer Nightbirde who said that the question shouldn’t be why bad things happen to good people, but why do good things happen to us at all? I catch myself at times with a kind of entitlement mentality where I expect only good to happen to me, only comfort and never any suffering of any kind.

But transformation only happens through suffering. You know about the caterpillar struggling to become a butterfly, and how if you were to cut open the cocoon, the butterfly would have no strength to fly.

If we were truly good and had no sin nature, our growth could be easy and painless. But since we are living with that sin nature and our natural bent is not toward good and God, then the process is painful and slow, like constantly swimming against the current.

Ultimately, Jesus suffered, so why should we expect to find an easy life? Why should we automatically seek comfort as the main goal of life? Also, seeking pain and suffering is not a healthy mentality. We should seek God and accept what that path brings us, whether joy or sorrow, comfort or pain.

Even in the worst of suffering, we can know that God is with us in the midst of it just as He was with Shadrach, Abednego, and Mishach in the middle of the fiery furnace. To go through pain with God is so much better than to walk through all the comforts and pleasures without Him, because He is the ultimate source of all our hearts desire.