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At the end of today, don’t you want to feel like you’ve made a difference? This requires some intentionality. Why not do at least one of these things you know you should today? 1. Call your mom or dad. They’ve done so much for you. Let ’em know you’re alive and love them. 2. Kiss your spouse and mean it. 3. Do something unexpected for someone who always seem to be serving you. 4. Spend some face time with a friend. 5. Listen to someone who has lived and learned more than you. 6. Be the person you wish people think you are. 7. Try to understand why someone feels so strongly about something you don’t care about. 8. Call someone you start to text. 9. Surprise someone. 10. Pray for an enemy. Have a nice day.

Life isn’t fair. Yet most of us burn untold energy in trying to achieve fairness, in trying to end unfairness, in crying about unfairness. If we are ever to enjoy life, we need to forget about fairness. It’s not fair that the hardest working people don’t make the most money. It’s not fair that those who do the most to help others are often the least recognized or rewarded. It’s not fair that some are judged by the color of their skin, the language they speak, or the place they were born. In our relationships, we need to stop believing that we should get as good as we give. We can’t enjoy our relationships if we carry about account books in which we log every good thing we do for someone else and every good thing they do for us. Don’t expect balance in relationship. The joy is in putting more in than we can every expect to get out. It’s not fair that for some the hardest thing about being a Christian is being marginalized while for others it means being killed. We need to stop whining about how we no longer live in a “Christian” nation while […]

Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool, in Aramaic called Bethesda, which has five roofed colonnades.  In these lay a multitude of invalids—blind, lame, and paralyzed.  One man was there who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had already been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be healed?”  The sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, and while I am going another steps down before me.”  Jesus said to him, “Get up, take up your bed, and walk.” John 5:2-8   My Pastor used the above verse for his sermon on Sunday. It was a great sermon. One line stood out for me, “Do you want to be healed?” This seems an incredibly stupid question for Jesus to ask. After all the man had been an invalid for thirty-eight years and had lain near the healing pool at Bethesda for “a long time.” Wasn’t it obvious that the man wanted to be healed? Maybe it’s not so obvious. We don’t always want to be healed from our conditions. In some […]

The One True God has revealed Himself as the eternally self-existent “I AM”, the creator of heaven and earth and the redeemer of mankind. He has further revealed Himself as embodying the principles of relationship and association as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Theology is the study of God. Man makes a mistake in trying to understand the universe and his place in it by studying Himself. Real understanding can only come through knowledge of the one who was here first and started it all. God provides a mirror of himself through the wonder of His creation. Scripture presents God through His Son empowered by the Holy Spirit, but only Christianity provides knowledge of God through a relationship with Him. Judaism provides for a system of dealing with a holy God through rules and rites performed by a priest. Islam also offers rules and rites to one God, but it’s not the true God. Don’t let anyone tell you that Allah is Jehovah God the Father of Jesus. Hinduism breaks the vast complexity of God into multiple mini gods, each with their own personality. Atheism substitutes self for God. Only Christianity allows for personal relationship with God, which is what […]

The infallibility of scripture is the cornerstone of Christian Theology, but it’s an increasingly difficult pill for modern society to swallow. Modern man doesn’t grasp that anything is absolutely true. He’s been trained to think that truth is dependent on situation, culture and person. At first blush there’s much freedom in that kind of thinking, but it’s the top of a very slippery slope. Life in a gray, versus black and white, world is scary. There is no peace in never knowing whether our actions are right or wrong. There is joy in being on the right path and not wandering lost in a dark forest. One of the challenges of promoting scripture is that it outlines a way of living that with each generation seems more outdated. How can this generation be convinced that scripture has answers as applicable today as ever? We need to accurately portray the bible for what it is, cover-to-cover, the story of Jesus. God reveals Himself to man through His son. It is part history, part song book, part prophecy, part guidebook, and part theological exposition. We make things hard on ourselves by focusing on the less significant and more difficult to prove parts of […]

I just finished reviewing the “Our Beliefs” page on my church’s website. It has nothing unusual for a mainline Christian church. I didn’t find anything to which I couldn’t give a hearty “Amen.” Each statement is backed up by bible verses. Yet, upon a complete reading of the page I didn’t come away with a good sense of what Christianity really is. I guess that’s because Christianity isn’t really a set of beliefs. We make a mistake, I believe, when we cut our faith to a list of beliefs and then dare the world to disagree. I’m not saying our beliefs are not important. They surely are. What I’m saying is that you can’t give someone the list of beliefs and tell them, “If you believe these, you are a Christian.”  I believe Christianity is much more like a trust exercise. You know the ones. Someone falls backward and “trusts” that a group behind him will catch him before he hits the ground. We become a Christian after we decide that what we are doing isn’t working. We put our trust in Jesus and stop trusting ourselves. It’s like the trust exercise. We probably become willing to do it […]

We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives, 10 so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, 11 being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, 12 and giving joyful thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of his holy people in the kingdom of light. Colossians 1   The glorious totality of a life in Christ begins with knowledge of his will. We read in the bible of men hearing directly from God with clear specific instructions and directions. We are envious. The will of God seems so mysterious. When things are dark and confusing, we look desperately for the will of God, at least some hint, some nudge in the right direction. Most of the time, the sense of being lost and confused isn’t caused by not hearing from God, but from not following his last direction. If things seem to be going well, we don’t want to hear about a change of direction. If all seems […]

We all have a leadership role. We have spheres of influence. We impact the lives of others. We may feel unimportant if our spheres of influence are small. We may feel ineffective if we don’t seem to be impacting those with whom we come into contact. We need to act differently if we are to fulfill our roles. Here are some tips. Spend at least 15 minutes listening. Every day, spend at least 15 minutes listening. One of our great frustrations, especially as we age, is that the ones we love don’t seem to listen to us. We don’t want others to learn lessons the hard way. They don’t seem to believe we have anything to give to the issues that they face. The only way to turn this around is to stop talking and start listening. Listening is a fantastic gift. Almost everyone feels that no one listens to them. The person who is willing to listen suddenly becomes a very important person to someone else. If you know you’ve not a very good listener,  here are some great tips. Say, “Tell me more.”  When the person you are listening to stops talking, don’t fall into the trap of thinking, […]