holiness

Missing Kairos

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Sometimes, I’ll drop by Brentwood Baptist Church on a Tuesday. I’ll slip into Hudson Hall and look around for a moment or two. Usually, the lights are out, so I’ll turn on my phone’s flashlight and wave it back and forth in front of me. Typically, there will be chairs set up similar to when Kairos was still a thing.

I miss Kairos. For those who weren’t a part of the magic, Kairos was a young(ish) adult event that happened every Tuesday from 2004 to 2024. Since then, it has transitioned into something called Rally, which is more of a college ministry centered around small groups and monthly gatherings.

I’m thankful for Rally, but I do miss Kairos. I realize that as Ecclesiastes says, there is a season for everything. Perhaps, Kairos had a season and now it’s over. Maybe it served its purpose for what God intended to do through that particular ministry. I know it was very influential in my own life, as well as the lives of many, many others.

I was blessed to be a part of it for over 18 years, most of which I served as a greeter and prayer counselor. I saw some very talented people come and go through the years. We had some incredible speakers, singers, musicians, and tech people. We had people who were gifted in areas of hospitality and serving. But most of all, God showed up.

Was it a perfect ministry? No. Did we get a few things wrong over the years? Probably. But we tried to be obedient to the calling God has placed on us for such a time as this. The years to come will tell how successful we were. But then again, God never called us to be successful but simply faithful and obedient.

I may be the only one who’ll say this, but I miss Kairos. But there’s not a day that goes by where I’m not thankful that God allowed me to be a small part of it for all those years. I’m blessed.

Getting Hold of God

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“Whenever the insistence is on the point that God answers prayer, we are off the track. The meaning of prayer is that we get hold of God, not of the answer” (Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest).

If I’m not careful, prayer can become like my childhood letterd to Santa. Those typically started off with me stating how I’d been good all year and thus was worthy of all the loot I had coming to me. The specifics of those letters escapes me, but I’m sure that I was like every other kid back in the day who mailed actual letters in envelopes to an address somewhere at the North Pole.

We do the same with God. It’s like, “God, thanks for being God. Here’s what I want from You” and then the list of wants and needs begins. Sometimes, we even have a list of people we’re praying for (which is by no means a bad thing to do).

But prayer isn’t as much getting things from God as it is getting to know God. The more you know God, the more your wants and needs change. By the end, I suspect we’re praying God’s prayers back to Him. That means we’re asking God for what God wants for us and in us. We want the same things He does.

In the mean time, it is perfectly acceptable to come to God in prayer without asking for anything but simply to adore Him and thank Him for who He is. I think the less we’re concerned about getting answers, the more we’ll see God at work because our focus won’t be so narrowly limited to His hand.

The good news is that even if you feel you’ve been doing it all wrong in prayer and treating Him as Cosmic Santa, you can always start over in a sense. You can spend at least part of your prayer time in adoration and thanksgiving before processing to petitions. You can look for opportunities throughout the day to thank God for what He’s doing, even if you can’t always see what that is.

Again, the point as always is to pray. The best way to get better at praying isn’t listening to more sermons or reading more books about prayer but praying — and being around people who pray often and pray well. That has helped me a lot. I still think reading books of prayers is good, like the Book of Common Prayer or The Valley of Vision. But mostly just pray.

The Perfect Church Service

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Jim Cymbala in his book Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire said something that floored me. If you walk away from any church service praising the sermon or the music, then that church has failed. If you’re focusing on the human elements of any worship gathering, the church has not done its job.

Ideally, the response to any worship service isn’t how great we are as a congregation or how great our ministry staff is, but how great is our God. As I read recently, our Sunday meetings can easily slip into Christiak karaoke followed by Ted talks with tithes if we’re not careful.

The key is to allow room for the Holy Spirit to move. Too many churches have programmed their services down to the last second leaving no space for the Holy Spirit to speak to people’s hearts and minds. I for once am not advocating for two hour services, but I do think that sometimes we could be just as attentive to the gentle whisper of the Spirit as we are to the worship schedule.

I also think that we (especialy me) need a shift in our mentality about worship. If our goal is to meet with God, then it shouldn’t matter if the songs were hundred year old hymns or the latest CCLI worship songs. It shouldn’t matter that the pastor made all his points start with the same letter or not.

Our goal is not a great sermon or a deeper worship experience through carefully cultivated worship playlists but to encounter the living and holy God. He’s the true audience of any worship service, not us. Otherwise, it’s just another concert or music event with no more benefit than if we’d stayed home and listened to a Christian Spotify playlist or watched a televised sermon from some famous preacher.

Lord, as we prepare to meet You tomorrow in our places of worship, move in our hearts to yearn for You and You only. Give us eyes to see You and ears to hear from You that You might speak a word to us tomorrow and we could walk away from the gathering different than when we arrived. Speak, Lord, for Your servants are listening. Amen.

Missing the Awe of God

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“I came to see that I was wired for awe, that awe of something sits at the bottom of everything I say and do. But I wasn’t just wired for awe. I was wired for awe of God. No other awe satisfies the soul. No other awe can give my heart the peace, rest, and security that it seeks. I came to see that I needed to trace awe of God down to the most mundane of human decisions and activities” (Paul David Tripp, Awe: Why It Matters for Everything We Think, Say, and Do).

I was inspired by today’s sermon on this one. Basically, my pastor said that many of us are missing the awe of God in our daily lives. Proverbs 9:10 says, “The fear of Yahweh is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.”

The way I understand it, fear isn’t me quaking in my boots, afraid to go near God. It’s a reverential awe where I recognize that God isn’t a bigger, faster, stronger version of me, but something other and something completely unknowable to me apart from divine revelation.

I know that reverential awe is missing if all my prayers start out with a wishlist to God of all the things I need and want. If God is my Cosmic Santa, then I don’t fear God or give Him the respect that’s due Him. I need to remember that God owes me nothing, but I owe Him everything.

According to Solomon, that kind of fear is the beginning of wisdom, which is knowing who I am and who God is. As I get older, I realize that wisdom isn’t always a reward for growing older. Some younger people have way more wisdom than those who have been around way longer.

True wisdom comes from a complete surrender and submission to God’s will out of a holy and reverent awe of who He is and what He’s done for us. I still love the analogy of the fear of God being like watching a storm from a safe place. You can witness the might and majesty of it while being safe from the dangers of it.

Lord, help me to love You well by learning to develop a healthy and reverent awe of You, remembering that You owe me nothing and I owe You absolutely everything. Thank You for loving me and saving me. Amen.

Watch Your Thoughts

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“Watch your thoughts, for they become words.
Watch your words, for they become actions.
Watch your actions, for they become habits.
Watch your habits, for they become character.
Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.” (Frank Outlaw)

The problem with a lot of modern Christianity, particularly the American variety, is that most people think that you automatically drift toward holiness aside from any intentionality or effort. True, you don’t work for your salvation, but the Bible commands us to work out our salvation. Holiness takes discipline and effort; that’s why there are so many professing Christians and so few disciples.

I’m guilty for thinking that I will become holier the longer I’m saved simply because I’m saved. I think a lot of us are. We forget that for every godly saint, there are 10 older believers who are just as immature in their faith as they were on day one of their salvation. A lot of people who call themselves believers know very little about what they believe and even less about the Bible.

But we (me included) are called to a higher standard. If we truly live out what we believe and strive for biblical holiness, three things will happen: 1) People will call us extreme and radical, even those inside the Church who are comfortable in their lukewarmness. 2) Many will hate us as they hated Jesus for speaking the trust and not compromising with sin. 3) Some will be drawn to the real holiness they see instead of the pretend piety they see most of the time that actually puts people off from the faith.

Lord, help us to love You more than we love anything else in the world. Help us to follow You instead of following the world’s idea of faith. Remind us how Your disciples rejoiced when they were counted worthy of suffering for Your name because that means that people are paying attention. Help us to be lights to a dark world and salt to a decaying culture. Amen.

The Joy of the Lord

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“The stronghold of the Christian faith is the joy of God, not my joy in God. . . . God reigns and rules and rejoices, and His joy is our strength” (Oswald Chambers, Run Today’s Race).

i think too often we read that and take it to mean our joy in the Lord. Or at least I do. I somehow managed to go through most of my life reading the verse about the joy of the Lord being our strength and came away thinking that I had to conjure up or manufacture joy in the Lord to be strong. Anybody else? Just me? Cool.

I think we forget that the Lord has joy in His children, not for anything we are or anything we bring to the communal table, but simply because we are His. He has joy in what He has made. He has greater joy in what He has bought and paid for and redeemed.

To go through life in my own strength is like pushing my car from place to place instead of driving it. God’s strength is the fuel that helps me to become what He created me to be and to go where He’s called me to go. If I decide I don’t need that strength, I’m getting as far in life as I can push my car — not very far.

If you’re feeling spiritually weak, maybe the best thing for you and I do to is to rediscover God’s joy. I’m thankful that holiness isn’t something I work up in my own power. Sure, I strive for holiness, but not in my own strength. If only we could remember that God’s joy is endless and never runs out, we could always find our strength to live in the center of His will.

Lord, overwhelm us with Your joy today. Help us to lean on Your strength as we seek to please You and to do Your will in every area of our lives. Make us a people who are known for their contagious and overwhelming joy that can only come from You. In Jesus’ name, amen.

Things You Learn from Social Media

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I’m not advocating for increased social media usage. Is it addictive? Probably. Is it mostly a waste of time? Most of the time. Can you learn useful and edifying things from social media? Absolutely.

The medium itself isn’t good or bad. It all depends on the person using it and the people who are creating the content. One such person fairly blew my mind with this little nugget of truth.

He was speaking about how a tree grows. Honestly, I don’t give much thought to it since I am not an arborist (or whatever you call people who make a living studying trees).

He said that trees grow in two directions: upward and downward.

The tree grows downward into the deep richness of dark soil, developing a system of roots that can sustain the tree. The tree also grows upward toward the sky. That part wasn’t the mind blowing part.

The part I’d never thought about is the tree has to have the roots first before it can bear the fruit. If a tree has no root system, it won’t last. It will topple over at the first gust of wind or hard rain. A bit like those who hear the gospel but never go deeper with it to combine it with faith.

So many of us want instant success. We want immediate gratification. We don’t understand that for successful vertical growth we often need to go deep into the dark and the damp and the dirt to develop a foundation of roots that can sustain upward growth. We need to be grounded in the truth of God through His Word and His work in our lives to make us more like Him.

So much of what God does in us is something that is in secret. Not even we can see all that God does in us. I seem to remember posting about how God can do 10,000 things in us and we are sometimes only aware of 3 or 4 of them at any given time.

So much of what seems like God’s silences or inactivity might just be working underneath to nurture those roots and give us the foundation we need for upward spiritual growth. We are becoming the kind of people God can then use to bless multitudes when we in our own power could bless no one because we have nothing of worth to offer.

Remember God is always at work whether you can see it or feel it or not. God is always keeping His promises to finish what He started in you and in me. Trust the process even when you can’t see it or see the results right away. Know that He will be faithful to do what he says because He is a promise keeper.

Sin Avoidance Mode

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The sermon in church was on Genesis 3 about the whole deal with the serpent and the fruit and sin. Basically, Adam and Eve messed up. I don’t presume to know what they were thinking about but if they were anything like I am, then I imagine they went around all day chanting the mantra, “Don’t eat the fruit. Don’t eat the fruit. Don’t eat the fruit.”

Of course, that’s not the best way to avoid sin, but it’s the way most of us try to live. We have our sin avoidance mode where we’re constantly thinking about what we shouldn’t be doing. All the focus is on the fruit (or whatever it is that’s bad and sinful). The problem is that when that’s all you think about, then that’s all you want to do. It doesn’t work.

The Bible talks about setting our minds on things above. We’re to think about whatever is pure and lovely. We’re to fix our eyes on Jesus as the author and finisher of our faith. Nowhere does it say to avoid sin by constantly dwelling on the concept of not sinning and specifically that sin you should never do.

I had a friend once who told me that if you’re trying to break a bad habit or overcome an addiction. you don’t want only to stop doing the bad habit. You need to replace it with something godly. You need to replace it with a spiritual discipline. Otherwise, you wind up trading one addiction for another.

In one of His parables, Jesus spoke about the demon that was cast out and left the person, but found the place he left had been swept clean but left vacant, so he came back and brought seven friends with him who were even more evil than he was. If your aim is solely to stop sinning, then you risk ending up falling to a deeper temptation or a worse sin if you don’t add a good habit in its place.

Paul says to put off, be renewed, and also put on. In other words, stop doing that sinful activity. Confess your sin. Be cleansed and renewed. But don’t forget to practice daily habits of prayer and Bible study. Don’t forget to tap into the power of the Holy Spirit to enable you to live godly.

Lord, help us to focus on pleasing You more than avoiding sin. Help us to see no so much that sin is bad but that You are glorious and worthy of our holiness. May Your love for us fill us up and compel us to live in love toward You and toward everyone else so that they too can know of Your goodness and love. Amen.

Faux Omniscience

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“The serpent told the Woman, “You won’t die. God knows that the moment you eat from that tree, you’ll see what’s really going on. You’ll be just like God, knowing everything, ranging all the way from good to evil” (Genesis 3:4-5, The Message).

The lie from the garden was that if Adam and Eve ate the fruit, they’d have the knowledge of good and evil. They’d be like God. The serpent told them the truth — mostly. And it’s that 2% lie mixed in with the 98% truth that got them in trouble and caused them to rebel against God.

Maybe one way that knowledge of good and evil has expressed itself is that we’re currently in an age of information overload. I recently ran across a statement that we consume in 30 minutes the same amount of content that our grandparents got in a month. That floored me.

Having social media and 24-hour news channels has created an unlimited access to everything happening around the world. I heard it referred to as a faux omniscience. We end up being burdened with all the tragedy from all around the world, somehow feeling like we’re supposed to do something to fix it.

Knowing more doesn’t automatically make you wiser. Sometimes, we can know more than our capacity to process it all in a healthy way. Spiritually, sometimes we can be informed and educated past our capacity for obedience. We become consumed by fear and rage and try to take the place of God in figuring our the solutions to all the world’s problems when in spite of all our learning, we’re still quite finite and limited in our understanding.

Only God has the capacity to know everything plus the wisdom to know what to do about it. Only God is in control and sees everything in the world with perfect clarity. Only God is the one who can fix it. And God has already provided the solution through the cross in Christ Jesus. His victory is already assured and all the evil in the world is from a defeated foe.

Perhaps we need less doomscrolling and news bingeing and more time spent with God. Maybe we need less consuming information, especially from secular sources, and more time spent learning the heart of God through the Bible and prayer. I heard once that the antidote to anxiety is always adoration and worship. That’s the best way.

Easter Saturday 2026

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“This is my Father’s world:
O let me ne’er forget
That though the wrong seems oft so strong,
God is the Ruler yet.
This is my Father’s world:
Why should my heart be sad?
The Lord is King: let the heavens ring!
God reigns; let earth be glad!” (Maltbie D. Babcock)

This is the day between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. I don’t know of any faith tradition that observes this day. I imagine that everyone needs a break after Maundy Thursday and Good Friday before Easter Sunday. Besides, what would you celebrate or honor?

As far as we know, nothing happened. I know the Bible talks about how Jesus preached to the spirits in prison between the crucifixion and the resurrection, but I’m honestly not sure what that means. Did Jesus actually descend into hell to proclaim His victory? Was He preaching through Noah to those before the flood? Better minds than mine have had differing opinions for decades.

I do know that most likely the disciples were locked away in a secret room, grieving and terrified of being discovered. Their Lord had just died. They thought the dream was over. Any thought of a future kingdom was as dead as the Rabbi they had followed for three years.

But we have the blessing of hindsight. We can look back, knowing what the next day would bring. We know that those same disciples who had abandoned Jesus in the garden and watched from afar as He was brutally executed would be the same ones to proclaim the gospel with supernatural boldness, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer as Jesus had suffered.

It does seem sometimes that the wrong seems so strong. From every headline, it seems like evil is winning. But we know that this is still the Father’s world. Jesus is still ruler. We know, and one day the whole world will know. So we can look forward with hope and not despair like so many in the world do.

Easter Sunday is a reminder that evil and wrong have already been defeated. Death is not the end. Those who we love and lose who are in the Lord are not lost forever, but are in the very presence of Jesus, and we will see them again.

“And I will rise when He calls my name
No more sorrow, no more pain
I will rise on eagles’ wings
Before my God fall on my knees
And rise
I will rise” (Chris Tomlin / Jesse Reeves / Louie Giglio / Matt Maher)