I am a fan of bargains. Specifically, I am a fan of frequenting thrift stores in a never-ending quest for that elusive find. I call it thrifting and yes, it is an addiction.

You never know what you’ll find when you hit up a thrift store. Sometimes, you won’t find anything worth a second look, much less taking home. Sometimes, you might find one or two things that catch your eye. Every now and then you hit the proverbial jackpot, like that one time I found a first edition signed copy of Gregg Allman’s autobiography or when I found the complete DVD set of Ken Burn’s Jazz documentary.

I find it’s better to go during the week since that’s when they typically will have the new arrivals. Again, there’s no guarantee that you’ll find anything, but the hunt is part of the fun. Plus, you’ll see some odd items that you won’t see in any other kind of store. And it’s a great place to people watch if you’re not finding anything.

My go-to thrift store is Goodwill, but I like any thrift store that’s relatively close to where I live. I’m always looking for new places to check out.

Thrifting isn’t for everybody, but those who have discovered the art of the thrift know the adrenaline rush of a good find. Really, it’s about finding what brings you joy and makes your weird little heart happy.

I found another blast from the past — a post I wrote 13 years ago pre-Wordpress. It’s funny how the words are the same but the way I look at them now is different. It was me attempting to write from God’s point of view on how He sees each of His children:

“You don’t ever have to be ashamed of who I made you to be. You don’t have to apologize for being you. You are special. I created you exactly the way I wanted you to be and when you were hopelessly lost in sin and misery I redeemed you for My own. You have a purpose, a reason, something that makes you come alive. Even if no one else thinks you matter, I DO! Believe that I love you, not because I have to, but because I choose to. Hear the sound of my Voice singing over you tonight and know how deep that love goes. I will never change and My love for you will never change, so you can rest in it. I will not leave you as you are, but will through trial and tribulations make you who you were always meant to be– My perfect image-bearer.”

If you take away nothing else from this, rest in the knowledge that God loves you as you are and not as you should be (with much gratitude to Brennan Manning for coming up with that one). His love is redeeming, refining, restoring kind of love that brings out all the beauty and splendor of what God had in mind when He made you and me. His love stops at nothing short of us looking like Jesus and being every bit of who He created us to be.

I was a huge fan of The Wonder Years back in the day, so I knew that Jesus Revolution would be right up my alley. I absolutely love just about any movie or series set in the 50s, 60s or 70s that has a quaint nostalgic vibe to it. Plus, Jesus Revolution is all about a spiritual awakening that pretty much birthed the Christian music industry as we know it.

My biggest takeaway from the film is that God uses complicated and flawed people to accomplish His purposes. You can basically open your Bible to any page and to any chapter to find that those God chose to use more often got things wrong as much as they got things right. They were alternately egotistical and cowardly, worldly and spiritual.

God didn’t choose them — or any of us — because we were more special or charming or good-looking than any of the rest. In fact, God often chooses the weak and despised to shame those who think they are strong and powerful. So to say that you and I are chosen by God is both honoring and humbling.

But in Jesus Revolution, the movie centers around Lonnie Frisbee, a hippie who found Jesus and brought the message of salvation, as well as a whole mess of personal issues and baggage from a complicated past. We see that he becomes enamored of the spotlight and forgets the true power behind this spiritual movement.

But we also see that people are coming to faith in Christ because of Lonnie, flawed as he is. The message, not the man, is what matters most when it comes to the gospel and salvation. While God expects our lives to align with our words, He doesn’t expect us to be perfect in our lifestyles or our theology.

This is a a movie that needs to be seen on a big screen. You need a larger than life canvas for a larger than life story. Plus, there’s a clear presentation of the gospel running throughout the movie. I hope that the success of this film will lead to more like it down the road.

In the mean time, go see it!

I ran across something I wrote 13 years ago when I was in a different place spiritually and mentally than I am now. It’s interesting to look back and see so much growth but yet see how some things remain the same. The one constant through these 13 years has been the God whose faithfulness and steadfast love have carried me along beyond my fears and doubts to grace upon grace. Here’s the poem I wrote back then:

“When I am alone and nobody seems to care,
Lord, You know my name.
When I am ignored in a crowd,
Lord, You know my name.
When I am screaming inside with a smile on my face,
Lord, You know my name.
When I have one more step left in me before I quit,
Lord, You know my name.
When I have all that I want and am still empty,
Lord, You know my name.
When I forget You and walk away from Your promises,
Lord, You know my name.
When I get to heaven and see You waiting for me there,
Lord, You know my name.
For it is written in stone and on Your heart.”

I don’t know how, but every year that daylight savings always manages to sneak up on me. Especially the part where we spring forward and I lose that precious hour of sleep. To be fair, even when we fall back, I still stay up later than usual and still manage to lose an hour of sleep. It’s my spiritual gift.

But there’s talk of making daylight savings permanent. That means no more springing forward and falling back. No more fears of being either an hour early or an hour late to everything. No more adjusting to new patterns.

I for one am all for it.

I get that daylight savings served a purpose back in the day for farmers who needed the extra daylight for work. But now we have tractors with headlights and stuff like that. Basically, daylight savings doesn’t really serve a useful purpose any longer except to annoy those of us who have to manually change our clocks twice a year.

It’s not a hill I’m really willing to die on. I’m not disparaging those of you who still hold to your cherished daylight savings ways. I’m not the biggest fan, but if changing those clocks every March and November is the worst thing that happens to me, I’m doing alright.

Still, I would like that extra hour of sleep back.

Within the last year or so, I have become addicted to Audible, an app which allows you to listen to audiobooks. For me, it’s a helpful way to pass the time I spend commuting to and from work, as well as for all the other driving I do during the week.

I am still a fan of actual books with actual pages. There’s still almost nothing like the smell of a hardback book and the feel of it in your hand and the texture of the pages as you flip from one to the next. But for this season of my life, audiobooks seem to work better.

My latest audio adventure has been Becoming Mrs. Lewis by Patti Callahan. It’s a novel based on the real life account of Joy Davidman and C. S. Lewis and how they met and went down the long and winding road from friendship to true love. It’s like stepping back in time to a world that doesn’t really exist anymore in 1950s London and Oxford and Cambridge.

I can almost see myself walking down the path that lead to the Kilns, the home of C. S. Lewis and his brother Warnie. I can feel the crisp autumn air and smell the odor of tobacco smoke coming out of a pipe.

Even though I know the gist of the story from having seen the movie Shadowlands, there are so many facets of the story that I am discovering anew. It makes slow Nashville traffic bearable, especially in those maddening afternoon traffic jams that always seem to pop up.

If you want the actual book, you can check it out below:

“So don’t be embarrassed to speak up for our Master or for me, his prisoner. Take your share of suffering for the Message along with the rest of us. We can only keep on going, after all, by the power of God, who first saved us and then called us to this holy work. We had nothing to do with it. It was all his idea, a gift prepared for us in Jesus long before we knew anything about it. But we know it now. Since the appearance of our Savior, nothing could be plainer: death defeated, life vindicated in a steady blaze of light, all through the work of Jesus” (2 Tim. 1:8-10).

A station that I listen to occasionally has something called Today’s Word on the Way, which is basically the verse for the day. I decided to borrow that concept and offer up a fresh take on some verses that many are probably familiar with. It’s from the Apostle Paul’s very last letter shortly before he made the ultimate sacrifice of his life for the cause of Christ.

Even facing execution, Paul could be confident and optimistic because of the hope he had in a certain future. I think that no matter what our days bring us or what the week ahead looks like, we can rest in a secure outcome based on the last chapter of the last book in the Bible. In other words, we can know that instead of fighting for victory, we fight from victory. Our labors and faith are not in vain but are based on promises that are as good as done.

I’ve found that you can endure just about any circumstance if you know it’s temporary and that something better is coming. Pain and suffering become more bearable when they serve a purpose of making us more like Jesus and leading to a glory that far outweighs any sacrifice or losses we endure.

One of my favorite songwriters of all time left this world over 25 years ago. I can’t tell you how much of an impact the songs of Rich Mullins had on my formative years, as well as how the words he sang continue to resonate in my soul decades later.

One particular song that I only recently was able to fully appreciate is called “We Are Not as Strong as We Think We Are.” There is a vulnerability and a raw honesty that is missing in what I hear in a lot of the current music that gets played on Christian radio stations. There’s an authentic longing for restoration and hope in these words:

“Well, it took the hand of God Almighty 
To part the waters of the sea 
But it only took one little lie 
To separate you and me 
Oh, we are not as strong as we think we are 

And they say that one day Joshua 
Made the sun stand still in the sky 
But I can’t even keep these thoughts of you from passing by 
Oh, we are not as strong as we think we are 

We are frail, we are fearfully and wonderfully made 
Forged in the fires of human passion 
Choking on the fumes of selfish rage 
And with these our hells and our heavens 
So few inches apart 
We must be awfully small 
And not as strong as we think we are 

And the Master said their faith was 
Gonna make them mountains move 
But me, I tremble like a hill on a fault line 
Just at the thought of how I lost you 
Oh, we are not as strong as we think we are 

We are frail, we are fearfully and wonderfully made 
Forged in the fires of human passion 
Choking on the fumes of selfish rage 
And with these our hells and our heavens 
So few inches apart 
We must be awfully small 
And not as strong as we think we are 

And if you make me laugh 
I know I could make you like me 
‘Cause when I laugh I can be a lot of fun 
But we can’t do that I know that it is frightening 
What I don’t know is why we can’t hold on 
We can’t hold on 

It took the hand of God Almighty 
To part the waters of the sea 
But it only took one little lie 
To separate you and me 
Oh, we are not as strong as we think we are 

When you love you walk on the water 
Just don’t stumble on the waves 
We all want to go there somethin’ awful 
But to stand there takes some grace.”

I believe the Bible speaks of choosing to please God rather than people because only one opinion ultimately matters in the end. God won’t commend you for your popularity or for your appeasement of others but for your faithfulness and obedience. There is no merit to compromising away your convictions and beliefs in order to gain a crowd if you lose the very gospel that is the only power to save in the first place.

As a recovering approval addict, I can vouch that much of the time I want nothing more than to be accepted, no matter what. It’s easy to keep silent on divisive issues, and especially on matters of faith, if it means I keep myself in good standing. But that’s not being faithful to the gospel.

We’re called to tell the truth in love, but tell the truth. We’re called to love the sinners without loving their sin but pointing them to a Redeemer who can save them from their sins. We’re called above all to live for an audience not of many but of one — God.

My plan was to get to bed at a reasonably hour. I was all set to look at a YouTube video or two, write my nightly blog post, do my nightly Bible reading plan, and be in bed before 10 pm. Ha ha.

It all started going wrong when my cute little tortie decided to plant herself on my lap and fall asleep. She does make for a very cute excuse for me sitting on the couch and watching more than a few YouTube videos.

It’s the ready-made excuse for every cat owner not to move. After all, said cat is ensconced in said lap, so it would be rude and upsetting to said cat to move and disturb said cat. So, “getting to bed before 10” is looking more like “hey, let’s shoot for 10:30 and see what happens.”

Thank God there’s coffee to make up for my lack of nightly discipline. And I use coffee in the plural sense to indicate multiple cups of coffee. And then at the end of tomorrow, we repeat the process of cat, YouTube, and procrastination . . . or should I say pro-cat-stination?