religion

Enter His Gates

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“Enter his gates with thanksgiving;
    go into his courts with praise.
    Give thanks to him and praise his name” (Psalm 100:4, NLT).

I must have read this Psalm at least a hundred times before and never noticed that the first verse is not a suggestion but a command. Enter his gates with thanksgiving is God telling us not to wait until the Sunday service starts to begin worship.

The problem with so many of us is that we enter into the presence of God with anything but God on our minds. We’re thinking about what to have for lunch, what Monday’s workload will look like, how to get the kids ready quicker next Sunday, how not to stay up so late on a Saturday again, etc.

The key is having an attitude of worship the other 167 hours of the week and not just the one hour a week that we meet on Sundays. Worship needs to be more than just the four or five songs we sing in any given church service. It should encompass everything we are and everything we do. That’s worship.

If you break down the word, worship = worth + ship. We’re declaring the worth of God, or shipping His worth if you want to use more current vernacular. We’re letting people around us know that God is worth our sacrifice, our serving, and even our very selves. God is worth everything we are and everything we have , , , and then some.

I believe that if we wait until 9:00 am on a Sunday to decide to worship. we’ve missed worship. We’ve turned it into what someone aptly described as Christian karaoke. We’re singing words to songs about God — some songs we know well and don’t have to think about what we’re singing and others we don’t sing because we don’t know them well enough.

My prayer is that our worship is 24/7 and consists of more than singing songs and lifting hands. Lord, make our entire lives an offering of worship to You as living sacrifices that bless and glorify your name. Amen.

Where You’re Headed

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Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “What lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you.”

I doubt he meant it this way, but my take is that what lies within you is Christ, the hope of glory. What lies within you if you are a true born again child of God is God Himself. That is so much bigger than anything that lies behind you or ahead of you.

The truth is that you can’t ever go back and change the past. It’s done. There are no Deloreans or time machines that will take you back to 1955 (or any other time) to fix what you messed up. For better or worse, it’s over and done with and you live with the consequences.

While you may not be able to start over, you do have the power to change your ending. You have the ability to rewrite the outcome of your story. And really what matters most isn’t how you started out but how you finish.

I’ve mentioned more than once that God’s story is heading toward a victorious outcome. The victory is already secure and the outcome is guaranteed. In fact, God’s promises are so sure that you can speak about them in the present tense, as if they’d already come to pass.

Jeremiah 29 talks about God’s future plans for His children. He knows the plans He has for us. That’s where our focus should be. We want to make sure we remain in God’s will so that His good plans for us will be fulfilled in us. We need to remember that having all the success and fame and money in the world is worthless if God’s not in it, but if God is with us, we need nothing else.

Lord, keep our eyes on You and on the heavenly prize You’ve set before us. Keep our eyes on the finish line instead of the starting gate because we will only find You as we move forward instead of constantly looking back. Be with us and be everything we need and we know that Your future for us is good. Amen.

Hatch or Go Bad

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“It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for a bird to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad” (C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity).

You’ve probably heard the age-old excuse for bad behavior — that’s just who I am, take it or leave it.

But the problem is that none of us can stay who we are indefinitely. We’re either moving toward or away from being better people. Or according to the Bible, we’re either becoming more like Christ or more like the world. Staying on the fence isn’t an option.

At some point, we’ve just got to hatch. We have to come out of our shells, so to speak. For many of us, that means becoming more vocal about what we believe, i.e. sharing our faith and having those gospel conversations. It means we can’t expect people to read our minds and our actions to guess what we believe. We have to tell them.

I can’t find where the Bible says that faith comes from seeing our faith acted out. While living what we believe is important and is what shows our faith to be genuine, what people need is to hear our faith proclaimed. We’re supposed to be ready to give an answer for anyone who wonders about the hope we have in Christ.

The problem is that many believers have never grown. They’re still babies in the faith. They never pray or read their Bibles. They don’t know very much about what they believe, much less why they believe it. Too many of them are fair fame for false teaching and cults. Too many are too willing to compromise convictions and doctrine over the illusion of peace and fitting in.

Basically, we all need to grow up. We need to move on from spiritual baby food to being able to feed ourselves on the Word of God and spiritually discern what’s good and what’s false. We need to live lives that will make others ask questions about why we’re different and what makes us different in the best way possible.

Lord, get us out of our shells, so that we can learn what it means to soar like eagles. Help us to grow up in You, so that we know what Your will is and what Your word says, so we can be faithful witnesses to those who need to know You. Amen.

Chris Johnson and Mortality

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For those of us long-suffering Tennessee Titans fans, Chris Johnson was one of the few bright spots in a history filled with a lot of bad teams who were often painful to watch. He was an electric presence on the football field and still holds the NFL record for yards from scrimmage in a single season, set way back in 2009.

It broke my heart when I discovered that he’s currently battling ALS, a nervous system disease that shuts down the body and leaves the person completely incapacitated. I watched the Good Morning America interview with him and Michael Strahan where he couldn’t speak and and to communicate through a computer controlled through eye movements. In a year, he went from relatively healthy to not able to pick up a cup of water. He’s 39 years old.

But I often forget that no one is promised tomorrow. No one is guaranteed 70-80 years of life. I’ve known way too many who didn’t make it to old age, so I don’t ever want to take for granted that I made it to 54. In fact, I’m thankful for every single day that God gives me.

I don’t know where Chris Johnson stands with Christ. I don’t know if he’s a believer, though I’m praying that he is. I do know that hs time left on this earth is limited, but every single person ever born under the sun can say the same. We all have a limited timespan. In the perspective of eternity, our lives, even those that pass 100, are like the dash between the birth year and death year — very short.

But for those who belong to Jesus, who said yes to Jesus to forgive their sins and be their Lord and Savior, death is just a doorway to everlasting life and forever in a place called heaven where God Himself dwells and where there is no more COVID or cancer or AIDS or ALS.

I’m praying for a miracle for Chris. I’m sure many others are as well. It would be an amazing testimony if God healed him of his ALS. But I also know God is not beholden to heal Chris or anyone else. We live in a beautiful but broken world that feels the effects of sin every single day. People get sick and die. People get hurt and die. That’s the reality of life on this side of eternity.

But I’m thankful that this is not all there is. Jesus told us He’s been preparing a place for us since He ascended into heaven nearly 2,000 years ago. I can’t want to see it. I can’t wait to see all those I loved who are there now. Most of all, I can’t wait to see Jesus. More than any pearly gates or golden streets, He’s the one who makes heaven heaven. I hope and pray that everyone reading these words has an assurance of salvation and a future eternity in heaven. If not, it’s not too late while you’re still breathing to choose Christ.

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.

Another Day, Another Psalm

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“You’re all I want in heaven!
    You’re all I want on earth!
When my skin sags and my bones get brittle,
    God is rock-firm and faithful.
Look! Those who left you are falling apart!
    Deserters, they’ll never be heard from again.
But I’m in the very presence of God—
    oh, how refreshing it is!
I’ve made Lord God my home.
    God, I’m telling the world what you do!” (Psalm 73:25-28, The Message).

It struck me that one thing David did very well was to express gratitude for the goodness of God. Sure, he was vocal about some of the hardships he went through. He was very honest about his own struggles. But never forget that a large part of the Psalms is David singing God’s praises.

I think if believers were as loud about God’s goodness as we are about what’s wrong with everything, people might be more inclined to listen to what we have to say. As my old pastor used to say all the time, Christians are more known for what we’re against than what we’re for.

Worship is a way of expressing gratitude. It’s giving God His breath back, as I heard it put recently. That means we acknowledge that everything we are and everything we own, including the very breath in our lungs, comes from God. When we give thanks, we’re saying that God is God, and we’re not. We’re declaring our dependence on God that He will continue to be good to us.

I think expressing praise builds our faith muscles. When we verbalize our gratitude, we are testifying to God’s faithfulness and giving the most effective sermon anyone could ever hear. People can argue our politics, our theology, and our doctrines all day long, but they can never refute the genuine testimony of someone who has seen and experienced the goodness of God.

Lord, open our mouths to declare Your praises all day long as Your servant David did so long ago. Help us to be as faithful to share You with others as You were faithful to share with us by revealing Yourself to us and give us all things pertaining to life and godliness, Amen.

Gut-Level Honest Prayers

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“God, listen to me shout, bend an ear to my prayer.
When I’m far from anywhere,
down to my last gasp,
I call out, “Guide me
up High Rock Mountain!”

“You’ve always given me breathing room,
a place to get away from it all,
A lifetime pass to your safe-house,
an open invitation as your guest.
You’ve always taken me seriously, God,
made me welcome among those who know and love you.

“Let the days of the king add up
to years and years of good rule.
Set his throne in the full light of God;
post Steady Love and Good Faith as lookouts,
And I’ll be the poet who sings your glory—
and live what I sing every day” (Psalm 61, The Message).

I’m up to the Psalms in my yearly Bible reading. They were originally the equivalent of a hymnal for God’s people back in the days before Jesus. You could also call the Psalms the prayer book of the Bible. Many of them were penned by King David, who never was one to mince words with God. They’re honest. They’re raw. They’re confessional. They’re sometimes not very pretty.

I think we lose something when we try to “pretty up” our prayers to make them more presentable before God. After all, He already knows what you’re thinking when you’re heart is breaking and you’re still trying to use flowery language because you somehow think those kinds of prayers are more acceptable to God. I confess I’m guilty of that one.

Prayer is the one place you can be honest. You can be real. I do think that you should still be reverent and not make Jesus your homeboy, but I also think God can handle your emotions and your frustrations.

Prayer doesn’t have to be pretty. Prayer doesn’t have to be proper. What prayer does need to be is authentic. Don’t tell God what you think He wants to hear. Tell Him where you are and how you feel and where you want to be. The key in every prayer is to say, “Not my will but Thine.”

That’s the prayer that never fails. You’re saying to God, “I know that You know better than I do what’s good for me and what will make me more like Jesus. You still work all things together for good, so I can trust You with my life.”

The best way to get good at praying isn’t to read more books about praying (although that can be super helpful). The best way isn’t to attend all sorts of seminars and listen to all kinds of sermons about prayer (which again can be useful). The best way to get good at praying is to pray.

I mean pray all the time. Pray whenever it comes to mind. Pray when you feel like it. Pray when you don’t. Pray when the words flow. Pray when there are no words. To borrow the old Nike slogan, just pray.

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.

Happy Summer Solstice Eve

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I had to look because I wasn’t sure if Summer starts today or tomorrow. Of course, summer starts in Tennessee whenever it darn well pleases and lasts as long as it darn well pleases, kind of like the actor who wins an award keeps on droning well after the allotted time has passed. Or like that houseguest who just flat out refuses to leave.

But it’s officially Summer Solstice Eve. I know that’s not really a thing, but it should be. Tomorrow is the longest day of the year, so the days start getting shorter from here all the way until December 21. Or maybe it’s December 20. Then it can be Winter Solstice Eve.

But I’m thankful for each season, even summer. Despite of all the sticky humidity, I’m still love summer (but not as much as fall or spring). I’m a fan of the longer days and the slightly less traffic on the roads until school starts back in August. I like being able to wear shorts and sandals so everyone can see my pasty legs and hairy feet.

I learned a long time ago that any day’s good when God is in it. As long as God wakes me up, He has a purpose for me. His plans for me are still good, so I can celebrate another 24 hours of being alive. The moment I fail to appreciate my own life, I cease to live and start merely to exist.

I also love summer because I love A/C. I know that I have an escape from the heat by going inside. Seriously, whoever invented the air conditioning unit needs a federal holiday where we can all stay home from work and bask in the glory of the A/C. I’d spend all day sitting directly in front of an oscillating fan and not consider it time wasted.

Happy summer! May you find your way to the nearest ocean or lake or pond. Or river. Or neighborhood swimming pool. Or maybe just step in a puddle. It’s gonna be a hot one. But for me, summer is great because it will help me to appreciate fall all the more. And all God’s people said . . . . AMEN!

Planting Seeds

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“Planting seeds
inevitably
changes my
feelings
about
rain.” (Luci Shaw)

Growing up, I wasn’t overly fond of rain. It was something that inevitable spoiled my fun plans for the day. Rain meant staying inside and doing dull stuff (or at least what seemed dull to me at the time but would probably seem like a paradise now). I had to stay in and read or watch television or take a nap.

But these days, I find rain relaxing and soothing. To a point. I’m still not a fan of rain that lasts for several days with no sun in sight and only grey overcast clouds. But then again, if I were a farmer, I might think about rain a little different.

Think about the seed. It falls into the ground. It stinks into the mire. But instead of being set free from the mire, it gets buried further and further down into the earth, a kind of death. But then the rain comes, and from a seed dying and breaking open, new life is born.

Jesus said, “Listen carefully: Unless a grain of wheat is buried in the ground, dead to the world, it is never any more than a grain of wheat. But if it is buried, it sprouts and reproduces itself many times over. In the same way, anyone who holds on to life just as it is destroys that life. But if you let it go, reckless in your love,“

Those parts of life that seem hard and cruel are the parts that lead to new life. The way God seems to press us into the earth instead of heeding our cry for relief leads to the seed cracking open, sprouting, and multiplying into a harvest. God knows what He’s doing.

Trust God in the dark and be thankful for the rain.