I thought I’d share this with you, not because I’m overly stressed or anxious beyond the norm, but because many of us have dealt with fear and worry at some point: This is a good prayer for those times:

“Lord Jesus, the stresses in my life often reach a dangerous proportion—or so it seems. My body, mind, and spirit struggle to keep up physically, mentally, and yes, spiritually. Some days anxiety stalks me like a deceitful predator, and the temptation to worry draws me in. I know better, but some days the challenges outweigh the truths buried inside. My trust in You fades into the background, giving fear and concerns permission to discourage me.

In those moments of apprehension, help me remember that I belong to You, and that You are not the author of fear or anxiety, but the giver of love and a sound mind. Teach me Your ways to respond to problems by giving thanks in them. Your Word assures me that You are always there with me. You are the Blessed Controller of all things, and nothing escapes Your attention in my life. You have given me every tool and spiritual blessing to fight against those things that try to steal my peace. You’ve promised that when I’m stressed and burdens are trying to weigh me down, I can come to You. You will give me sweet rest!

Whether the anxiety stems from work, parenting, finances, physical issues, or even world conditions, You are there, Lord, to shoulder the weight. Teach me to recognize the stressful trials as tools for you to shape me and rearrange me. Through those difficult times, You will teach me patience, enlarge my faith, and help me see things I couldn’t see earlier—if I will only let You. When I’m clueless as to what to do, Lord, I want to turn to you first, not last.

Forgive me for trying to handle things on my own, Lord. The need to be in control sometimes gets a stronghold on my life. That only makes things worse. I want to trust You more and see things from Your perspective, not my own. No one makes me feel uptight, angry, or stressed, and no one forces me to react negatively. I choose to respond according to my beliefs. Do I believe You are in control? Do I believe You created all things and hold all things in Your Hand? Do I believe You are truly good? When an anxious thought creeps in, help me to stop and relax, to take that thought captive, and to turn apprehension into a calm prayer for deliverance. Revamp my belief system, Lord. Show me a new way to handle life according to Your Way.

No matter what issues I am dealing with; no matter how big the problems or situations, I’m laying them all at Your feet today. Turn these potentials for stress into lessons for growth and trust. When I can’t see any possible solutions, I choose to believe that You are working things out for my good—in Your own time, as you have in the past. Show me what to do, or what not to do. As I focus on You, remembering Your promises and Your words, I believe You will fill me with a peace that is beyond all understanding

In Your precious name,
Amen” (Jennifer Heeren)

“The heart of salvation is the Cross of Christ. The reason salvation is so easy to obtain is that it cost God so much. The Cross is the place where God and sinful man merged with a tremendous collision and where the way to life was opened. But all the cost and pain of the collision was absorbed by the heart of God” (Oswald Chambers).

I saw a church sign that said something along the lines of how grace and salvation are free but not cheap.

I always love how Dietrich Bonhoeffer contrasted cheap grace against costly grace:

“Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.

Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a man will go and sell all that he has. It is the pearl of great price to buy which the merchant will sell all his goods. It is the kingly rule of Christ, for whose sake a man will pluck out the eye which causes him to stumble; it is the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciple leaves his nets and follows him.

Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock.

Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son: “ye were bought at a price,” and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us. Above all, it is grace because God did not reckon his Son too dear a price to pay for our life, but delivered him up for us. Costly grace is the Incarnation of God.”

Today, I was involved in a discussion at the monthly deacon’s meeting about works-based faith or faith-based works. The question that came up was about how you can tell the two apart.

An answer came to my mind later after the meeting. I remembered something I had heard once in a sermon that said, “As believers, we fight not for victory but from victory.

That’s the key difference. Not FOR but FROM.

The words look and sound a bit similar, but there’s a world of difference in the life of a believer based on which one you live from.

As a believer, you don’t live and work for the approval of God, but from that very approval. You don’t work to earn your salvation and justification, but you live from the justification and salvation that come from the unmerited favor of God’s mercy and grace.

To live FOR is to live a performance-based life where you’re never quite sure if your good is good enough, where you can hopefully make up for your mistakes and failures with enough good deeds.

To live FROM is to live out of gratitude for Jesus’ finished work. It’s to know a peace that comes from realizing that you could never earn God’s favor but that He chose to bestow it on you out of His good pleasure.

I want to live not FOR but FROM God’s love. After all, I can only love because He loved me first.

I’m very thankful that it’s Friday. The week was long, the pollen was everywhere, and I am very tired.

I’m sure my allergies/sinuses/hay fever contributed greatly to the feeling of weariness. I’m also certain that I worked my butt off at my job this week, so that might have something to do with it.

Still, at the end of the day, I have a job for which I’m grateful. While I have The Crud, it is not fatal or catching. Just very, very annoying. I think I will survive.

I already think a nap will be in order for tomorrow.

“Blessed be God, the Father of our Lord Jesus the Anointed One, who grants us every spiritual blessing in these heavenly realms where we live in the Anointed—not because of anything we have done, but because of what He has done for us. God chose us to be in a relationship with Him even before He laid out plans for this world; He wanted us to live holy lives characterized by love, free from sin, and blameless before Him. He destined us to be adopted as His children through the covenant Jesus the Anointed inaugurated in His sacrificial life. This was His pleasure and His will for us. Ultimately God is the one worthy of praise for showing us His grace; He is merciful and marvelous, freely giving us these gifts in His Beloved.  Visualize this: His blood freely flowing down the cross, setting us free! We are forgiven for our sinful ways by the richness of His grace, which He has poured all over us. With all wisdom and insight, He has enlightened us to the great mystery at the center of His will. With immense pleasure, He laid out His intentions through Jesus, a plan that will climax when the time is right as He returns to create order and unity—both in heaven and on earth—when all things are brought together under the Anointed’s royal rule. In Him we stand to inherit even more. As His heirs, we are predestined to play a key role in His unfolding purpose that is energizing everything to conform to His will. As a result, we—the first to place our hope in the Anointed One—will live in a way to bring Him glory and praise. Because you, too, have heard the word of truth—the good news of your salvation—and because you believed in the One who is truth, your lives are marked with His seal. This is none other than the Holy Spirit who was promised ¹as the guarantee toward the inheritance we are to receive when He frees and rescues all who belong to Him. To God be all praise and glory!” (Ephesians 1:3-14, The Voice).

“The answer to idolatry is identity — who you are in Christ” (Chris Brooks, Kairos).

I don’t usually take notes during sermons these days. I think my brain has gotten a little too ADHD for the discipline of actually writing down in real time what the pastor says. The sad result is that I can’t remember too many sermons lately or even give a brief synopsis of most of them.

But sometimes, I hear something that arrests my attention. It’s almost like I HAVE to write it down. I need to take physical pen in hand and inscribe it in a tangible way so that I’ll remember it later.

That happened last night.

Idolatry happens when we look to something other than God to tell us who we are, why we’re here, what our purpose is, etc. We look to relationships, careers, possessions, bank accounts — anything and everything — to find out who we are.

But as Pastor Mike Glenn once said, none of these are strong enough to hold our world together. None of these can truly define us or give us purpose. Eventually, everything we set up as an idol and expect to take the place of God will fall short and fail to live up to impossible expectations.

Even good things like marriage, children, and ministry can become idols if they become the end objective and not the means to glorifying God and His gifts.

I am a recovering idolater. I still slip up all the time and chase after little tin gods instead of God Almighty. I know I’m not alone.

Let Jesus tell you who you are and idols will lose their power over you. Let Jesus look at you and love you, and as you receive that love, you will find that it– and Jesus– are enough.

Chris Brooks made an astute observation in his Kairos sermon tonight. He addressed the question of the rich young ruler: what must I do to inherit eternal life?

Normally, you don’t DO anything to inherit. It’s not based on merit or achievement. There’s no test you pass to gain an inheritance.

There are two conditions for an inheritance– you must be a relative and someone has to die.

In regards to inheriting eternal life, Jesus was saying that salvation isn’t earned. As Billy Graham once said, it’s not a reward for the righteous but a gift for the guilty.

If anyone had to DO anything for our eternal life, it was Jesus. Through his perfect life and death on the cross, He made us who have believed in His name to be heirs and children of God.

“The payoff for a life of sin is death, but God is offering us a free gift—eternal life through our Lord Jesus, the Anointed One, the Liberating King” (Romans 6:23, The Voice).

Way back in 1991, I discovered Dark Shadows. More accurately, I found the 90’s revival that basically retold the same stories with a different cast and better production values.

It didn’t take long for me to get hooked. It also didn’t take long for the series to fade, lasting all of 13 glorious episodes and ending on one of those dastardly cliffhangers. I think the cancellation had something to do with the Iraq Gulf War coverage.

Here I am, 28 years later, finally discovering for myself the original series in all its black-and-white (so far) glory. Apparently, the show was shot essentially live, so there are flubbed lines and prop fails aplenty. But there is also campy goodness.

So far, no Barnabas Collins. I believe it took a while for him to finally show up at Collinwood. But there’s enough gothic atmosphere and weird family members to make it interesting.

It is definitely a product of its time — 1966. But for me that only adds to the retro appeal. It’s also the opposite of the fast-moving, quick-cut fare of modern television. It moves slowly and deliberately, giving the viewer time to take in all the surroundings of the old manor.

I just hope Amazon Prime doesn’t take it off the Prime list any time soon.

For anyone out there who wants to know, all my NCAA tournament brackets are now fodder for the shredder. ALL of them. In other words, all the teams I had pegged to win it all in each of my various brackets have lost.

Duke was the last to fall, making it official that I officially suck at picking winners at NCAA basketball. Next year, all my brackets may just be randomly selected by computers rather than by me.

But on the good news front, I picked up a pair of vintage Dan Post cowboy boots from Pre to Post Modern today. I wasn’t planning on buying any boots. In fact, boot buying wasn’t even a blip on my radar.

But I saw them. I remembered that my granddad had several pairs of Dan Posts back in the day. They were his favorite brand. So I broke down and made the purchase.

It’s nice to have something that ties you back to someone you loved like a grandparent or a parent. I can wear these and think of dear ol’ granddad.

Plus, they’re super comfortable and fit perfectly.

“The servant grew up before God—a scrawny seedling, a scrubby plant in a parched field. There was nothing attractive about him, nothing to cause us to take a second look. He was looked down on and passed over, a man who suffered, who knew pain firsthand. One look at him and people turned away. We looked down on him, thought he was scum. But the fact is, it was ourpains he carried— our disfigurements, all the things wrong with us. We thought he brought it on himself, that God was punishing him for his own failures. But it was our sins that did that to him, that ripped and tore and crushed him—our sins! He took the punishment, and that made us whole. Through his bruises we get healed. We’re all like sheep who’ve wandered off and gotten lost. We’ve all done our own thing, gone our own way. And God has piled all our sins, everything we’ve done wrong, on him, on him” (Isaiah 53:3-4, The Message).

I realize that we’re still a few weeks away from Passion Week leading up to Easter Sunday, but these were fitting words that turned up on Bible Gateway’s Verse of the Day.

The next time you walk into any Target or Wal-Mart or any other store and see all the displays of Easter candy and fuzzy rabbits, remember that Isaiah 53 encapsulates what this holiday is really all about.

I can almost imagine cartoon Charlie Brown yelling out, “Isn’t there anyone who knows what Easter is really all about?”

“Sure, I can tell you that,” Linus replies. Then he proceeds to recite Isaiah 53. Jesus did it all for the love of you and me. He bore the penalty of the sins we had earned and died the death we deserved.

But Easter Sunday is more than just death. Jesus didn’t stay in that tomb. As the popular worship song goes, the tomb was borrowed for three days. Just a rental.

“The resurrection completes the inauguration of God’s kingdom. . . . It is the decisive event demonstrating thet God’s kingdom really has been launched on earth as it is in heaven. The message of Easter is that God’s new world has been unveiled in Jesus Christ and that you’re now invited to belong to it” (N.T. Wright).