Nick’s Walk

1. The evidence of our love for Him is the absolute spontaneity of our love, which flows naturally from His nature within us.    2. How things appear is less a function of reality and more about our focus..    I realize that the last two sentences don’t seem to have much connection. My pattern in doing Nick’s Walk is to read the OC devotional the night before, summarize it in my mind and sleep on it. During the night, God usually gives me what He wants me to say. Sentence 1 is a summary of OC’s devotional. Sentence 2 is the clear thought I woke up with.  I think there is a connection. With God within us, how could there be anything but a spontaneous flow of love from us? How can we have a bad day? How can we become stuck in a rut? Do you remember being “in love?” Oh I know I have been “in love” with my wife for 40 years. But I’m talking about those days when love is new, when you wake up and go to sleep with the object of your affection as the only thing on your mind. What glorious […]

. . . it has not yet been revealed what we shall be . . . —1 John 3:2   My great-granddaughter is at that great age. She gets excited about the smallest adventure. “Want to go bye-bye?” “What to take a bath?” “What to go outside?” Any of these will produce an excited giggle, nod of the head and her taking off in the right direction. She was created perfect and hasn’t had much chance to mess that up. At some point as we age we seem to lose our love of adventure. We crave certainty and seek to avoid the uncertain.  You can begin to see this even in my little not quite 2-year-old. A touch of rebellion. A determination to do it her way. Little things that take her a few steps from the perfect path He intended. Already she finds comfort in the known and the familiar. As much as she still loves adventure, you can see the tendency toward a love of certainty. “Certainty is the mark of the commonsense life— gracious uncertainty is the mark of the spiritual life.” I suppose this is part of our need to control. Control is what we […]

I will give your life to you as a prize in all places, wherever you go —Jeremiah 45:5   Matthew 10: 29Are not two sparrows sold for a penny

Do you seek great things for yourself? —Jeremiah 45:5 We know what this guy wants. Our problem is that we are a bit confused about what we want.   Have you ever been in a relationship, perhaps for years and then you realize that you were in it just for what you got from the other person? Have you ever had the reverse situation? Have you heard yourself saying “He (She) doesn’t care about me? God knows what you feel. It happens to Him all the time. Most of us who claim a relationship with God, if we’re honest, would have to admit our relationship consists of wanting things from Him. Only the most immature relationship is measured by the gifts exchange. And we don’t want to get in a gift giving contest with God. What He really wants is to share Himself with us. He already knows us better than we know ourselves. He already possesses everything that is or has been or will be. Why don’t we want God but rather we look for gifts from Him? It’s because we don’t realize that He is everything we could ever need. The key to our relationship with Him […]

Take now your son . . . and offer him . . . as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you —Genesis 22:2    I can’t always separate what I personally know about God from what I have been told. When we read about biblical characters hearing from God we often picture a face to face conversation between Creator and created and wish we had that kind of clarity when God communicates with us. But isn’t it likely that when God told Abraham to sacrifice his son that the word of God came to Abraham as it comes to us, in a still small voice. Would not Abraham have doubted that it was God who was speaking? What kind of God requires the death of a child?  Maybe it’s Satan talking to me, Abraham might have thought. This can’t be God.  Often we don’t hear clearly from God because we filter his messages through our traditional view of Him. We think, that can’t be God. God wouldn’t ask me to do that. God wants to personally reveal Himself to us. We have a guidebook in scripture. God does not change and what […]

Be ready in season and out of season —2 Timothy 4:2   It’s Kairos Season again. Three times a year a retreat is held at one of the camps at Angola. Preparations begin weeks in advance with weekly training meetings. The first such meeting was Saturday. I’m not a big fan of meetings, but I enjoyed the fellowship and the beginning excitement as we look forward to another retreat when God always shows up. I left Baton Rouge excited and ready for more. Within a few hours of my return to Lafayette I was burned out and exhausted. I know that the work God has for me here is at least as important as that at Angola. Why is the daily work of baby sitting and such not so exciting and terribly exhausting? ““Preach the Word! Be ready in season and out of season.” In other words, we should “be ready” whether we feel like it or not. If we do only what we feel inclined to do, some of us would never do anything. There are some people who are totally unemployable in the spiritual realm. They are spiritually feeble and weak, and they refuse to do anything […]

When we are not admiring our church buildings or puffing up over our “body of work” in the kingdom, we are counting souls. How many were at service? How many came forward? How full are the parking lots and the pews. There are a multitude of  problems with this. First, we don’t add a single soul to the kingdom, that’s the work of the Holy Spirit. Second, our job is not salvation and sanctification, those are the work of God’s grace.    Our job is not to save souls, but to disciple them. It’s a lot tougher to measure success in the disciplining business and that’s a good thing. A disciple is a “follower.” You can’t make someone a “follower” by teaching them or preaching to them or conveying information to them. You can only make followers by example. It takes a follower to make a follower. Here are some good tips. As we follow Him, we give example and become carriers of His light. That provokes others to follow and we are discipline. We can’t measure success or count noses. We just have a joyful sense that we’ve moved closer to Him. One becomes a convert in an […]

One day this week I watched “Angels and Demons.” In the movie the Tom Hanks character rushes from magnificent church to magnificent church in Rome trying to prevent murders. His problem is figuring out in which magnificent church the next murder will occur. I eventually (being so quick-witted and all) decided that maybe there are too many magnificent churches, at least in Rome. I once was a member of a church fellowship that had no building at all. We referred to it as the “Church without Walls.” It was a great church. After a few years, we lost our first pastor and gained a building. The “church” was never the same. I have friends who belong to a fellowship that worships in a magnificent building. I like to kid them about it, asking how many bibles could be  bought or missionaries could be supported on what it took to build and keep up the magnificent structure. Okay, so sometimes I’m a bit of a jerk. Of course it’s not just physical “works” that can be a problem. “Beware of any work for God that causes or allows you to avoid concentrating on Him. A great number of Christian workers […]