thanksgiving

It’s Never Too Late

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Anxiety will make you believe that if it doesn’t happen right now, it never will. That goes for whatever you’ve been praying for and dreaming of and wishing for. If you let it, your fears will make you think that you’ve missed it.

But remember God’s ways are not our ways. God’s timing certainly isn’t like ours. If you think you can mess up God’s plan for your life, remember that you are not that powerful. God took into account all of your and my foolish decisions when He set His plan into motion long ago.

Are you praying for that dream job? Keep praying.

Are you praying for marriage? Keep praying.

Are you praying that your wayward children will come to faith in Jesus? Keep praying.

As long as there’s breath in your lungs, it’s never too late. As long as God is on His throne in heaven, it’s never too late.

When anxiety tries to intrude into your thoughts, remember that God has not given us a spirit of fear but of love and power and a sound mind. Remember that peace that passes understanding comes when you make your requests known to God with thanksgiving.

The key is with thanksgiving. You can’t doubt God’s future goodness when you’re focused on all the promises He’s made and kept up until now. Thanksgiving helps you to see God at work in your circumstances.

Give thanks. Keep praying. Don’t give up.

Blessings > Difficult Times

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Perspective is everything. I remember reading somewhere that some people out there would just about kill to have one of your bad days. They’d love to have your bad job or your small house or your simple blessings.

It’s easy to forget that a vast portion of the world’s population doesn’t have access to clean water. Many people have food insecurities. If you have a roof over your head and more than one change of clothes, you are considered wealthy compared to many around the globe.

My old boss used to say that any day without a toe tag is a good day. I agree to a point. To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord for those who are in Christ Jesus. That’s not a bad day. The Apostle Paul said it’s good for Him to go away and be in heaven, but it’s also good to stay for the sake of those who need mentoring and discipling.

But I get the gist. To be alive is a gift. We do God a disservice when we take our daily breath for granted or don’t give thanks for waking up every day. We forget that to be still living means that we still have a purpose and our lives still have a meaning.

To be alive means that we’re still called to be disciples who make disciples. We’re still students in the school of Jesus. We still have much to learn and much pruning and chiseling before we look like Jesus.

Times are hard, but don’t let them make you forget your blessings. You can still count them one by one. You can still give thanks for each of them by name.

You Overcame

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Anyone else in here ever get a song stuck in your head? Or are you like me and have a virtual running jukebox in your head with music playing all the time. I mean All. The. Time.

The latest song that’s been playing in my brain is an oldie but a goodie by Jeremy Camp. I remember singing it in church back in the early 2000s. I wish it could make a comeback or that somebody could do a cover. Maybe somewhere some church could have a 2000s worship night.

The lyrics are straight out of the book of Revelation. This song is basically singing scripture, and to my mind, there’s almost nothing better when it comes to worship music than singing the word back to God. Here are the words:

“Seated above, enthroned in the Father’s love
Destined to die, poured out for all mankind
God’s only Son, perfect and spotless one
He never sinned but suffered as if He did

All authority
Every victory is Yours
All authority
Every victory is Yours

Savior
Savior, worthy of honor and glory
Worthy of all our praise, You overcame
Jesus, awesome in power forever
Awesome and great is Your name, You overcame

Power in hand speaking the Father’s plan
You’re sending us out, light in this broken land

All authority
Every victory is Yours

Savior, worthy of honor and glory
Worthy of all our praise, You overcame, You overcame
Jesus, awesome in power forever
Awesome and great is Your name, You overcame, yeah

We will overcome by the blood of the Lamb
And the word of our testimony, everyone overcome

We will overcome by the blood of the Lamb
And the word of our testimony, everyone overcome

We will overcome by the blood of the Lamb
And the word of our testimony, everyone overcome

We will overcome by the blood of the Lamb
And the word of our testimony, everyone overcome

Savior, worthy of honor and glory
Worthy of all our praise, You overcame, You overcame Jesus
Jesus, awesome in power forever
Awesome and great is Your name, You overcame

You overcame (You overcame)
Jesus (You overcame)
You overcame (You overcame)
You overcame

Savior, worthy of honor and glory
Worthy of all our praise, You overcame, You overcame
Jesus, awesome in power forever
Awesome and great is Your name (Your name), You overcame
You overcame
Jesus
You overcame” (Jon Egan)

They Overcame

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“They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and they did not love their lives even in the face of death” (Revelation 12:11, TLV).

Tonight I attended something called What a God: A Night of Testimony & Thanksgiving at Brentwood Baptist Church. Basically, it was a night of worship interspersed with testimonies of people who experienced the healing of God in their lives and a time of prayer for those dealing with serious illnesses.

It was a beautiful reminder of the goodness of God. Time and time again, we saw how the Lord was faithful to do what He promised. Time after time, we saw how the miracles came because people were bold enough to ask in prayer. I don’t believe that God heals everyone every time on this side of heaven, but I do believe that we often don’t receive from the Lord because we do not ask.

There’s something powerful about someone’s testimony that points people to Jesus. You can argue points of doctrine and theology all day long, but it’s hard to dispute eyewitness accounts. Add that to some powerful songs of thanksgiving, and it was a good night.

I still say that the best antidote for worry is worship. The cure for anxiety is adoration. Once you take your eyes off of yourself and put them on Jesus, everything that seems so pressing and urgent falls back into place. Of course, I know that certain kinds of extreme anxiety have physical causes and it is no sin to take medication or have counseling at times.

Every time we gather for worship, we remember that we are singing not for a potential victory but from a promised victory. We declare that the battle is the Lord’s and He has already overcome. The enemy is already a defeated foe. We are already more than conquerors through Him who loved us.

I’m thankful to Travis Cottrell and all the worship team at Brentwood Baptist Church for putting on a night like this where God was the main attraction. It could very easily have been another concert with an audience of multitudes, but it was instead a worship night with an audience of one. And boy, did He show up.



1st Sunday in Advent

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“Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which your Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the living and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.”

I sometimes forget that Advent is not a season only for looking back to the incarnation but also looking forward to the second coming. The first time, Jesus came meek and lowly as an infant. The second time, He will come as a conquering King. No one will miss His arrival this time.

The older I get and the more I see of this crazy world, the more ready I am for Jesus to come back. Lord, we have lost our minds down here. It’s getting nuttier by the minute. I find myself uttering the phrase “make it make sense” so often these days.

But one day it will all make sense. One day it will all be made right. One day, I will finally be able to ask all the questions I’ve been saving up. Only they won’t matter anymore. All the questions I ever had will die on my lips when I see the King of glory coming with the clouds. I won’t need to ask any more questions because I will be looking at the Answer to all of them.

But in the meantime, we wait. We wait with expectant hope. Not a wishful thinking, pie in the sky kind of hope, but a confident, sure thing kind of hope. It’s so certain that we can speak of it as if it’s already happened. Like the Kingdom of God being now and not yet.

I’m thankful that while I didn’t grow up celebrating Advent, I’ve discovered it and grown to love it later in life. All the waiting and counting down makes Christmas so much more meaningful. Plus, I get those extra 12 days to make it last even longer (although technically, the 12 days aren’t really a part of Advent).

Lord, give us grace to wait well this Advent season, knowing that our waiting is never in vain and our hope in You is never wasted. Amen.

God and the Next Breath

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“Lord, I come to you with empty hands. If all I have today is You and the next breath, that will be enough.”

A friend taught me that prayer a long time ago, and I was reminded of it today seeing it in my Facebook memories. I think that prayer of gratitude and dependence is the perfect antidote to this culture of pervasive entitlement and greed.

Really, all I bring to God is a pair of empty hands. I bring nothing. Anything in me or from me that’s any good at all was first a gift from God to me. All that I have that wasn’t given to me by God is God Himself, and even that is a gift.

If all I have in the next 24 hours is God and nothing else but the next breath, that’s enough. If I have all the riches in the world and all the knowledge in the world and not God, I have nothing. I seem to recall a Bible verse about gaining the whole world and losing your soul in the process being futile.

Basically, every moment from here to eternity is a gift. I didn’t earn the next breath. I don’t deserve the next breath. God’s grace is what sustains me and keeps me going.

I think if I lived like I believed that, there’d be a lot less anxiety and a lot more adoration. There’d be a lot less worry and a lot more worship. There’d be a lot less talk about the weather and sports and politics and more of me sharing the goodness of God out of the overflow of a heart made full by gratitude.

Lord, I really do come to You with empty hands. If all I get from You today is You and the next breath, that’s enough. I’m good. In fact, I’m more than good. I’m blessed. Amen.

Old Time’s A-Flyin’

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I heard something interesting from a movie I was watching earlier today. One of the characters said that time is basically relative. Riding 8 seconds on a bull can seem like an eternity, but so can that time between 8 am and 3 pm on a school day. I get that.

I also remember when the time between the beginning of fall and Christmas felt like forever. I was not patient as a child, so I was ready for December 25 to hurry up and get here. Now, I wish I had that time back. I wish time moved as slowly as it seemed to move back then.

Now, I blink and it’s almost Halloween. I blink again, and there will be turkey and gravy with all the fixings on the dining room table for Thanksgiving. Then it will be Christmas. I will hardly have time to process one before the other is upon us.

I suppose that is the blessing and the curse of growing older. Now, I hardly have to wait for anything anymore, but I also feel like life has increased from a marathon to a sprint finish. It’s all I can do these days to remember what month it is, much less the day.

But I’m thankful for each day. I’m thankful to God for waking me up this morning and giving me another 24 hours. I’m trying not to take life for granted when I realize that so many people my age and younger won’t get to see tomorrow. So many people I knew growing up won’t get the privilege of growing old.

I suppose I need to take a few deep breaths and savor this one and only life that I have. The Bible speaks about redeeming the time, using it wisely instead of wasting it by wanting to hurry on to the next big event, next holiday, or even the next weekend. I can live in the moment just as much on a Monday as on a Saturday.

One day, I will step into eternity. Looking back, I’m sure the entirety of this life will seem so very short in comparison. One movie I saw had this quote: “The whole human life is just a heartbeat in heaven.”

I think that’s true. Our lives this side of heaven are like the blink of an eye. But what we do in that blink determines our eternity. More accurately, the choices we make affect where we will spend eternity. Like the decision to follow Jesus as Lord and Savior. That’s the one I’ve never regretted and the one I stake my hopes on as my life gets closer and closer to the ending. I’m definitely over the halfway point.

Hopefully, I can live in such a way that my legacy won’t be anything I leave behind but those who will go with me into heaven because I was a good and faithful servant and was ready to give an answer for the hope I have when people asked.

Driven to Tears

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Tonight at Room in the Inn, we had our annual Q & A instead of the usual Bible study for the homeless guests. There were four of us who each took one theological question and gave a roughly five-minute answer. The one that stays with me is when Tommy Woods did the question on what is the gospel and why does it matter.

It wasn’t so much in what he said but how even talking about the gospel got him emotional. Talking about the magnitude of what Jesus did for us on the cross brought him to tears. I was moved by the passion behind the emotion.

I sometimes wonder if we really understood what Christ went through on the cross, how much he really suffered, and how great the pain of bearing a whole world of sin felt, wouldn’t it bring us to tears every single time? How could I not be moved by the One who moved heaven and earth to get to me in my lostness and rescue me from my own rebellion?

I think if we knew how much God really paid for the free gift of our salvation, we’d sing a lot louder. We’d worship more boldly. We’d live more sacrificially. We’d never stop being a thankful people instead of a grumbling and complaining people.

Jesus once told the story of two debtors: one owed $50 and the other owed $500. He said this to defend the woman who broke a jar of expensive perfume to bathe Jesus’ feet while using her hair as a towel. He said the one forgiven much is the one who loves much.

If we think we’re basically good people with a few minor hangups and faults, we might feel a little entitled about our salvation. If we think we’re bad people who needed to be made good, we might offer up a token prayer of gratitude. But if we know that we were dead in sin and God in Jesus made us alive, we’d spend all eternity in thankful praise. And one day, we will.

It’s All About Perspective

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You know what it’s like to be around people who constantly focus on everything negative. In any given situation, you can always count on these people to find something wrong or where it’s good now but it might rain or storm tomorrow. At times, we’ve probably all been that person depending on how much sleep we got last night or the enchiladas we had for lunch that aren’t agreeing with us.

But being around people who are constantly negative is draining. You find yourself being pulled into a kind of Pit of Despair when the person you’re talking to is complaining nonstop and has next to nothing positive to say about anything.

As I’ve mentioned numerous times, I think the key is perspective. And what helps your perspective more than anything is cultivating an attitude of gratitude. Being thankful can change the way you see your world.

I get that some people seem to have more than their fair share of bad luck or rotten circumstances. Some people never seem to get any breaks. For some, I really think that a negative outlook leads to a negative outcome in a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy kind of way. Other people can be going through a season of suffering and still keep a smile on their faces.

The ones who are best at staying positive are the ones who know that this life isn’t all there is. They have their hopes set not on a better tomorrow but in the One who holds all our tomorrows in the palm of His hand. They’re looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth where everything bad will be no more and all the best parts of this life will have only been like an appetizer before the real feast.

The moral of the story is what I’ve probably said a thousand times but still can’t say it enough into my own brain — giving thanks makes it possible to see the good in your day and in your life and to see God at work around you. That’s the key.

Little Victories

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So last fall I did something a bit offbeat. I bought a tiny tent for Peanut. It was $20, so I figured it would be worth it to give Peanut yet another napping spot where she could hide from the world while she gets her 23 hours of beauty rest.

I didn’t figure on the required assembly, so it sat on my bed for a while before I finally dug up the courage to read the instructions and put it together. More accurately, I read the instructions, couldn’t figure them out, messaged the company, got sent an instructional Youtube video, watched the video, then put the tiny tent together.

Then Peanut showed her appreciation by sleeping right next to it. A couple of times, she poked her head in to look around but decided she wasn’t having any of it. Finally, today I put in a different blanket that she’s used before and voila! She finally decided to try it out.

Sometimes, life can be hard. There can be very little going right for you. That’s when it’s important to celebrate the little victories. Did you get to the end of the month with all your bills paid? Victory. Did you get to the end of the month, period? Victory.

Do you have a roof over your head? Victory. Did you have at least one warm meal today? Victory. Were the clothes you wore today clean? Victory. See? You have lots of little victories to celebrate if you think long and hard enough.

God is good even when times are tough. God is working even when we can’t see it or feel it. Once we get over our American entitlement mentality, we see that every single good thing in life is a gift from God. Sometimes the trials themselves can be gifts if they cause us to look up in prayer and desperation. Pain can be God’s megaphone to rouse a deaf world, including those of us who profess to follow Him (with much thanks to C. S. Lewis for that one).

Give thanks for all the little victories, and maybe just maybe you’ll see some bigger breakthroughs in your life. At least you’ll see God more clearly.