Nick’s Walk

I am at the Borders at the Galleria in Houston, Texas. How and why I am here is the subject of today’s Nick’s Walk. Rosemary and I are on “vacation.”We decided to take a few days alone after a hectric Christmas season. The plan was to spend a few days in Houston after a brief stop at my brother, Michael’s place in Port Arthur. Yesterday was fine. We had a great visit with Mike and his great family We got to the hotel late and I am suffering from a cold. So drugged with Nyquil I got a great night’s sleep. I  awoke late for me, so the day was already off beam. I had planned to wake up at my usual early time and do my blog and then, of course, a full day of vacation like activity. Plan destroyed. As I open my eyes, Rosemary says “Are you going to breakfast? Can you bring me some.” Knowing she never gets up that early, 7:30. I astutely realized that she hadn’t slept all night. The day’s plans further shot. I took a shower, got dressed and went down for breakfast. After breakfast, I packed up a buffet for […]

How often do we get past the joy of salvation (What He did for us.) and into the complexity of relationship (Who He is.)? As a species we are generally not good at relationships. When someone asks us about another, “Who is that?” We generally respond by announcing what the person does. For example, “He’s my teacher.” “He’s my neighbor.” “He’s my friend.” These are roles. They are defined by what the person does. A teacher…teaches. A neighbor…lives nearby. Even a friend is someone who hangs around us. It is rare that we really get to KNOW someone…rare and a bit scary. As Chambers describes  God, quoting Psalm 97:2, “Clouds and thick darkness are around Him.”We like to relate to people, and to God, by what they do; because that’s simple. What people are is more complex, and what God is, is complex indeed. For me, this is one of the great lessons of Kairos. I always think I know about an inmate after meeting him on Thursday night of a retreat, but by Sunday night I realize he is so much more. What happens between Thursday and Sunday, on my part, is just listening. God does much in […]

It is a fine to say that we want to live a life based on trusting God; that we want Him as our pilot. Oswald Chambers asks “Will you go out without knowing?” Do we have the courage to step out each morning without a plan other than to do what He dictates. God doesn’t share his plans. He leads one step at a time.We do well when considering leading an Extraordinary Life by giving our Utmost for His Highest to consider a young man who last night probably established himself as the greatest player in college history and accepted the Most Valuable Player of the Sugar Bowl award by thanking his Lord and Savior Jesus Christ on national television. Tim Tebow demonstrates the Christian who is unashamedly Christian while being the finest he can be in his chosen vocation. Tim wore a bible verse reference on his face for each game. For his final game as a Gator he chose Ephesians 2:8-10 8For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9not by works, so that no one can boast. 10For we are God’s workmanship, created […]

Yesterday I was listening to the first couple of chapters of John Bevere’s Extraordinary. We will be doing that study on Sunday nights beginning in a couple of weeks. Bevere begins with an Extraordinary but simple point. We can do nothing to make God love us more. His love is constant and unchanging and NOT dependent on anything we do. However, his pleasure with us IS dependent on what we do. This is a point the Church desperately needs to learn. We have overtaught the love of God with a negative impact. Most Christians know that God loves them, no matter what they do. So they conclude that what they do doesn’t matter. The message regarding pleasing God is grossly undertaught.I am a pleaser. I like to do things that please others. We pleasers need to be ever vigilant of a point as subtle as the love/pleasing issue. It is a wonderful thing to do things for others BECAUSE of our love for them. It’s not so good to do things so that they will love us. We pleasers have to constantly be on guard less we cross that motivation line. This is particularly true with our relationship with […]

2009 is over. Thank God. Most of us are saying that because the year brought economic downturn, unemployment, political instability, government gone crazy, people gone crazy…just to name a few. Speaking of crazy, I think all of that’s a good thing..a God thing…signs He still loves us. There can be no question that God loves Israel. The Jews are His chosen people. Sometimes, they wished they weren’t. God disciplines those He loves. He doesn’t tolerate it when His loved ones focus on anything other than Him. When one of His begins to rely on anything more than Him, He takes that thing away. Can there be any question that we have relied too much on money? Have we not over relied on our government? Have we not relied on the concept that our country is special? Hasn’t He made it clear that all that reliance was misplaced? It’s painful to be disciplined. Discipline is a bad word now. We have come to believe that love can not include discipline; when the Word teaches that discipline is the evidence of love. How have we handled this discipline? Generally, not well. We’ve pointed fingers of blame for the problems of the […]

Christmas vacation 1969 was the most exciting ever. At least it changed my life forever. 1969 was an eventful year. Nixon was elected President and Armstrong walked on the moon. It was a big year for me. I had joined the Navy in October 1968. The Vietnam war was raging and I had suffered through three majors in three semesters at USL. The draft was alive and well and the Navy sounded better than the Army (or, Dad forgive me, the Marines). I was in electronics school in California after boot camp and in October 1969 I was home in Lafayette on leave on my way to a computer school in Maryland. My sister Pat had a friend Donnah who had a sister named Rosemary and we were introduced. I don’t think we said more than a couple of words to each other. After my eight week school was over I returned to Lafayette, this time on Christmas leave, on my way to still more computer schooling in Biloxi. (Remember I had joined the Navy because I was sick of school.) While in Maryland I had no vehicle and nothing to spend money on so for Christmas 1969, I […]

The self-assessment we discussed yesterday takes the Christian down a different path. For me, Philippians 4:13 says it all. “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”If we consider this verse carefully, the New Year’s Resolution process can be life changing.1. The corollary to “I can do all things through Christ” is that “I can do nothing on my own.” It took me a long time to realize this truth and, even now, it keeps slipping away. Things will start going well and suddenly I believe I’m the reason and I try to grab the steering wheel from Jesus, with tragic results. Face it. You can do nothing. Stop trying. It might be easier to take if we consider it this way. I can do no GOOD thing on my own. After all, do you really want to do things that aren’t good?2. The secret is to do things through Christ. We sometimes look at Philippians 4:13 as a super vitamin pill. When times get rough and my agenda isn’t working out, I just take a Jesus pill and get strength to do what I want. It just doesn’t work that way. The only way we can […]

Most people with financial problems don’t know how much money they owe. Most with weight problems don’t know their current weight. On Sunday Pastor T encouraged us to consider our personal development for 2010. He discussed goals and dreams and some of the tools we might use to achieve them.The first step in this process, however, is assessment, sometimes called “getting a baseline.”  We really need to completely understand where we are, before we can decide where we want to be.You can do an excellent health assessment at the Mayo Clinic web site.Dave Ramsey can help with a financial assessment and goal setting.  Rick Warren has a nice tool for spiritual assessment. We have a few days before New Year’s. Why not do a bit of self-examination? You may find the tools cited above helpful. The most important thing is to spend some quiet time with God and ask Him what you need to work on this year. If you are like me, going through assessment tools points out so many areas that need work that I tend to be overwhelmed and end up frustrated and do nothing. We all need a little help in prioritizing the things in […]