“Goods are given to us to be used, but not to be stored away. Just as Israel in the desert received manna daily from God and did not have to worry about food and drink, and just as the manna which was stored from one day for another rotted, so should Jesus’ disciples receive their share daily from God. But if they store it up as lasting treasure, they will spoil both the gift and themselves. The heart clings to collected treasure. Stored–up possessions get between me and God. Where my treasure is, there is my trust, my security, my comfort, my God. Treasure means idolatry.

But where is the boundary between the goods I am supposed to use and the treasure I am not supposed to have? If we turn the statement around and say, What your heart clings to is your treasure, then we have the answer. It can be a very modest treasure; it is not a question of size. Everything depends on the heart, on you. If I continue to ask how can I recognize what my heart clings to, again there is a clear and simple answer: everything which keeps you from loving God above all things, everything which gets between you and your obedience to Jesus is the treasure to which your heart clings” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer).

What does your heart cling to above Jesus? Or better yet, who does your heart cling to above Jesus? The answer just may be your idol.

And the very same goes for me.

Lord, may you be my heart’s desire above all else.

Amen.

“Thankfulness works in the Christian community as it usually does in the
Christian life. Only those who give thanks for the little things receive the
great things as well. We prevent God from giving us the great spiritual gifts
prepared for us because we do not give thanks for daily gifts. We think that
we should not be satisfied with the small measure of spiritual knowledge,
experience, and love that has been given to us, and that we must constantly be seeking the great gifts. Then we complain that we lack the deep certainty, the strong faith, and the rich experiences that God has given to other Christians, and we consider these complaints to be pious. We pray for the big things and forget to give thanks for the small (and yet really not so small!) gifts we receive daily. How can God entrust great things to those who will not gratefully receive the little things from God’s hand?” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer)

I’m in my bed, listening to the last of of the thunderstorms rolling through. I’m pondering and thinking over the sermon from Kairos, deciding on my takeaway from what Chris Brooks talked about.

My takeaway is this: don’t wait until you get what you want to be the person you want to be. Otherwise, you’d never appreciate the gift.

Don’t wait until you get married to start learning how to love your wive sacrificially like Christ loved the Church. You can love the people in your life that way now.

Don’t wait until you get rich to start being generous. You will most likely be as generous with $1 million as you are with $10.

Even when you’re in a waiting season, you can still choose to practice good and godly disciplines like gratitude and almsgiving and serving others. You can focus on improving yourself at any time, no matter what stage of life you’re in.

You don’t want to wait until God answers your prayer to get ready to for it. A farmer doesn’t wait for rain to work his fields. He cultivates the ground with the anticipation of rain. You want to prepare yourself in the meantime to be ready to receive it when the time comes.

“Dear Jesus, help me to spread Thy fragrance everywhere I go. Flood my soul with Thy spirit and love. Penetrate and possess my whole being so utterly that all my life may only be a radiance of Thine. Shine through me and be so in me that every soul I come in contact with may feel Thy presence in my soul. Let them look up and see no longer me but only Jesus. Stay with me and then I shall begin to shine as you shine, so to shine as to be a light to others” (Mother Teresa).

May this be your prayer. May it be mine. May it be the prayer of all who call on Jesus in faith. Whether or not it actually was a prayer of Mother Teresa’s or not (and I believe it was), it is still a beautiful prayer for every believer to start off the day. All I can really think to add is an Amen.

“The members of the council were amazed when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, for they could see that they were ordinary men with no special training in the Scriptures. They also recognized them as men who had been with Jesus” (Acts 4:13, The Message).

The most notable feature of these disciples who were instrumental in turning the world upside down and seeing the early church explode in numbers wasn’t their intelligence or their charisma. It wasn’t their brand or their elevator speech. It wasn’t their strategy or plan or five-year goal.

It was the simple fact that people recognized that they had been with Jesus. For three years they had followed Him daily, eating when He ate, sleeping when He slept. For those three years they took in every single word He spoke, every miracle He performed, every place He went, every life He touched.

That’s what will transform your world. When people see and know that you have been with Jesus. More than knowing facts about Jesus and having all the correct doctrines about God the Son, what makes a world of difference to the people where you live, work, and play is that you know Jesus.

The only way to know Jesus is to spend time with Jesus. That comes through Scripture, prayer, meditation, and community. You learn Jesus in the community of believers because each will show you a facet of His character, like the different facets in a diamond.

That’s my prayer. I want to know Jesus that deeply and profoundly so that I can’t help but be transformed. In turn, I want people who know me to be transformed not by me or my words or acts, but by the Jesus they see in me.

May it be the desire of every believer to know Jesus a little more each and every day until we see Him face to face. Amen.

Brentwood Baptist Church (and all of its regional campuses) joined together with Mt. Zion Baptist Church for the 3rd annual Better Together event held at Hadley Park near the Tennessee State University campus.

It was a tangible demonstration of what happens when the Church truly acts like the Church, where we truly live out Christ’s command to seek the kind of unity that He shares with the Father.

In a divisive age, there’s nothing more attractive to the world than when believers from every ethnicity, race, and socioeconomic background can join together for the gospel.

We gave out countless backpacks for children just as another year of school is about to commence. It warmed my heart to see the look of joy on kid’s faces over something I would have taken for granted back in the day. School supplies might not seem like much, but they could be the catalyst that inspires a child to want to learn. That child could grow up to be the one to make a real difference in his or her community.

Plus, the two churches had a rousing game of kickball for bragging rights and for fun, but mostly for fun. I’m sure a good time was had by all. I’m also positive that many lives were blessed as a result of this event.

I hope to be back next year to see how God will show up in unexpected ways. I don’t know how it will happen, but I know it will.

Feel free to steal, borrow, and otherwise apply this in any social media post or conversation that you might have in the next 24-48 hours. I probably stole it from someone else’s post many moons ago.

You’re most blessed when you can learn to laugh at yourself and not take yourself so seriously. You’re not as big a deal as you think you are, but you are more loved (by God) than you will ever know.

Most of all, if you’re reading these words, it most likely means that you woke up this morning, which is in itself a very underrated privilege not granted to just everyone. Yay you.

I wrote these words a few years back. I still believe them. I believe that neither liberalism nor conservatism captures the entire essence of the gospel. I believe that we’re not called to follow a political leader or platform or agenda but Jesus.

I still believe our utmost allegiance is not to a President– any President– or a flag but to a King and a Kingdom that will last forever. I believe one day Jesus will look at us for scars and if He doesn’t find any, He will ask, “Was there nothing worth fighting for?”

I believe that we can serve and bless Jesus in the way that we serve and bless the least of these and those who can never pay us back. I believe that sometimes the least of these will include you and me when we are the least lovable and deserving of grace.

“At the end of the day, Jesus will not ask us who we were against or how much we defended our free speech or how we let everybody know where we stand politically. He will ask, ‘Did you love the least of these? Did you love your enemies? Did you give to those who can’t ever pay you back?’ At the end of the day, all that matters is this: did we love well like Jesus loved us well?”

I woke up this morning feeling about the same as when I went to bed last night. I didn’t notice any monumental changes while I was showering or brushing my teeth or getting dressed. I didn’t radically transform on my morning commute to work.

It’s all about those 10,000 steps we take every day. They either lead us closer to or further away from who we want to be.

For the believer, it’s all about trusting the process. Better yet, it’s all about trusting the God who’s in charge of the process.

Every day, you change imperceptibly and unnoticeably. At every moment God is in work in you, making you more like Jesus. You probably don’t notice on a daily basis, but some event will bring into sharp relief how much you’ve changed.

Your reaction to a stresser won’t be the same as when you were stressed about the same thing last year. You won’t be quite as quick to rush to judgment on someone as you might have been 5 years ago.

Keep trusting God, even above your senses and feelings and intuition. All those things can mislead or deceive, but God never will. Trust God in the process. He is still working all things together for good.

“If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough” (Meister Eckhart).