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If you just read the title of this and are still reading, you don’t have time for cute stories or complicated formulas, so I’ll just get to the point, if that’s OK.
If you are in a situation where you are at a complete loss as to what to do, it’s because you need to reset your glance and your gaze. You have allowed your gaze – your long-term focus – to become set on your circumstances, your prayer request, your frustration, your pain, your desperate desire for change, or something other than the Lord. You’re glancing at God, asking Him to fix whatever you’re gazing at.
Nice try. I understand why. But it doesn’t work that way. Reset your gaze on God, and your glance on the world around you.
That’s what it means to wait on the Lord.
That’s what it means to praise, or to worship
Yes, that’s in the Bible. [click to continue…]
The other day I turned left out of a parking lot and started heading south on Avenue Q, between 19th and 34th Streets in Lubbock, where I live. If you’re not familiar with that stretch of road, it’s a seven-lane thoroughfare, with three lanes each heading south and north, and a turn lane. Big. Wide. Sprawling. Busy.
It was in the afternoon, around 3:00 or so. I was talking on the phone with Joel, my son. Traffic was busy enough, but not nuts. I was in the middle lane, with cars pretty much all around me – left and right, front and back. I was probably about a quarter mile from the 34th Street intersection when the strangest thing began to happen.
I went blind. [click to continue…]
Had coffee with a sweet friend last week. She was describing the amazing things the Lord has worked in her life over the summer as she has gone through a wonderfully painful, gloriously gut-wrenching season. Each day the Lord has brought new strength, insights, healing, and refreshing as she prepares for a future that is far less certain… but far more peaceful.
Did you get that?
Far less certain, but far more peaceful.
Like many people, she had defined peace and satisfaction in terms of being able to predict what the future held (among other things). Now as she returns to school, she heads off into an unknown destiny, with lots of uncertainties. But she has a phenomenal peace that she is being held right in the center of God’s heart and hand.
Here’s how she expressed it to me. I was so touched, I wanted to share it with you (my paraphrase): [click to continue…]
I live because…
Jesus fought me. He was my holy enemy, mercifully blocking my stubborn rebellion.
Jesus bought me. He was my sacrificial redeemer, willingly shedding His blood for my pardon.
Jesus sought me. He was my desperate lover, tenderly calling me out of my hiding. [click to continue…]
I believe that it is not dying that people are afraid of. Something else, something more unsettling and more tragic than dying frightens us. We are afraid of never having lived, of coming to the end of our days with the sense that we were never really alive, that we never figured out what life was for. – Harold Kushner
The great Presbyterian pastor Donald Grey Barnhouse was once riding in a funeral procession in Philadelphia when he noticed a large cargo truck running in front of the procession. From the way the sun was positioned, he noticed that the truck was casting a large shadow on the sidewalk. That shadow crossed light poles, road signs, and even people, and didn’t harm anything. No one would want to be in front of the truck, mind you, but the shadow was harmless.
Every one of us was born on the other side of something called “labor.” We enter the world completely helpless and fragile, totally dependent on the protection, care and kindness of others. We borrow the oxygen and assorted things for a span of time the Bible calls a “vapor.” Despite our claims to ownership, we take no possessions with us. And we end our sojourn on earth passing through something called a “shadow.”
Birth is a labor soon forgotten…
Life is a vapor quickly fading…
Possessions are an illusion suddenly passing…
Death is shadow silently creeping…
Is there any wonder we struggle sometimes to know what’s real? And what’s valuable? [click to continue…]
I spent 26 years in school. At each level I learned many things. I learned how to read, how to write, how to spell. I learned that Columbus really didn’t discover America, that the South was doomed from the beginning of the Civil War, and that we really don’t know who wrote the book of Hebrews. I learned to parse a verb, to multiply polynomials, and to define “fallacious” and “facetious.” I learned more theories related to leadership than I care to count.
But in spite of all the things I learned, those 26 years failed to teach me four very important things – lessons that can determine my success or failure out in the real world, where bells don’t ring and (true story) traffic lights don’t control the noise in the lunchroom. Let me share them with you – with the understanding, of course, that I’m still learning. Next year’s list could be completely different. [click to continue…]
Constantly in motion, ever-aware, always alert both night and day, an unseen force is shaping your life in ways you can’t imagine.
Ever-learning.
Ever-revealing.
The algorithms behind this crawler make Google look, in comparison, like a nearsighted man searching for a haystack in a needle factory.
He sees you when you’re sleeping and knows when you’re awake. But I’m not referring to the jolly old elf. I’m talking about the Ultimate Search Engine. But it’s not an “it” – it’s a Person. [click to continue…]
(Something of a “life lessons year in review,” in no certain order. I’d love to hear yours. Feel free to add your own in the comments section.)
1. How awesome your cancer surgeon is.
2. How nice people can be, even when you wish they would just hate you.
3. How God provides, even sometimes for fools.
4. The sun really does come out tomorrow.
5. How to spell “aneurysm.”
6. Life goes on, with you or without you.
7. Contrary to the words to the MASH theme, suicide is NOT painless.
8. Failure doesn’t stop people from loving you.
9. Rejection does not come with a cocoon to wrap you away for a while.
10. Nobody is more committed to your success than you are. [click to continue…]
Wisdom is boring.
Wisdom is a nag.
Wisdom is a boring nag.
Wisdom sucks the life out of the party.
Wisdom is a boring, party-killing nag.
Wisdom asks questions about consequences when all I want to do is enjoy myself. What’s wrong with a little fun, know what I mean? Wisdom uses words like “safe,” “abstinence” and “consequences.” Now THAT’ll get your blood pumping. Zzzzzzz. Look, all I want to do is have a little pleasure in my life. I know there’s more to life than feeling good. But I can control myself. [click to continue…]
Tense Truth: God gives you desires you can never satisfy and makes demands you can never fulfill. He then goes about bridging the gap, doing for you what you can never do for yourself. Your primary responsibility is to trust Him to be Himself – to rest in His faithfulness.
++++++++++++++++++++++
Have you ever felt like God was somehow playing a joke on you? You hear people talking about being forgiven, and you feel guilty for, well, feeling guilty. You read the stories about miracle-working power, and wonder why you got left at the station. You learn more and are less happy; work harder, but feel weaker. You’ve learned to speak “Christianese” and go through the motions, but sometimes you just feel like a fraud.
What if I were to tell you that God has a glorious answer? Something more liberating than a self-improvement project or yet another string of self-disappointments?
David’s Truth Discovery
For nearly a year, David had played the role. The psalmist of Israel, the beloved king, had gone through the motions, mouthed the words, and tipped his hat to the man he once was. Very few knew people the real story: David was just a shell of the man he once had been. [click to continue…]
If you just read the title of this and are still reading, you don’t have time for cute stories or complicated formulas, so I’ll just get to the point, if that’s OK.
