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Archive for the ‘Hope’ Category

What Is Prayer To You?

Posted in Formation, Hope on December 15, 2009| Leave a Comment »

What is prayer to you?  Is it a chance to meet with God?  Is it an opportunity to pour your heart out to God and ask for help?  Or is it a chance to let God know how much you care?

I hope that prayer for you incorporates all of these things.  But do you ever catch yourself falling into a rut – or worse, bad habits when it comes to prayer?

Oswald Chambers asked a significant question in this regard.  Here is what he had to say,

Is the Son of God praying in me, or am I dictating to Him? . . . Prayer is not getting things from God . . . prayer is getting into perfect communion with God.  If the Son of God is formed in us by regeneration, He will press forward in front of our common sense and change our attitude to the things about which we pray.

How often do we take our laundry bag of needs and desires to God, dump them out and walk away, expecting God to “fix” everything?  I believe prayer has less to do with God meeting our needs and more to do with being formed to God’s will.

The closer we are to God – the stronger that relationship – the more likely our hearts will beat in sync with the Father’s.  When our hearts are beating in rhythm with God’s, then our needs will be put into perspective and doors will open.

So what is prayer to you?

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A Trip to See the Doctor

Posted in Formation, Hope on December 4, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Yesterday, I spent most of the morning at the doctor’s office with my son.  He hasn’t been feeling well most of the week but has been toughing it out.  Yesterday, he woke up and could not stand upright without terrible pain in his stomach.  As soon as the office opened, we headed to see the doctor.

As he was being examined, I watched as the doctor gently pressed on his stomach.  I could see the pain on my son’s face as the doctor examined him.  I wanted so badly to help him but there was nothing I could do.  In that moment, I was reminded, in a very, very small way, the sacrifice that God made for me.

God sent Jesus into this world to show us how to live.  But in walking with us he experienced a lot of pain – even to the point of torture and death.  God watched all of that but chose to let it happen.  I cannot imagine the pain God felt in watching Jesus die.

Jesus was sent as a sacrifice for you and for me.  That is what Christmas is about.  We should celebrate the coming of the Savior, but never forget the sacrifice that was made.  Christmas is coming, but it comes knowing there is an Easter to follow.

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I’m Going to Jail

Posted in Community, Hope, Missions on November 30, 2009| Leave a Comment »

At the risk of seeming self-serving, I have a request for you today.  I promise, it is not for me.  And I also promise that this platform is not designed to push an agenda save that of the honest and transparent sharing of the spiritual life together.

But please indulge this exception today.  I am going to jail!

OK, not a real jail – but I am being arrested this morning as part of an MDA program to raise awareness and funds to fight Muscular Dystrophy.  You can learn more about the program and even donate by clicking here.

Again, I do not plan to make a habit of using this avenue to push any agenda but I do believe as followers of the Way, we have a calling to try and make a difference in any positive way we can.  So I am asking you to go to my MDA home page through the link above to learn more.  Pray about how you might get involved in this or any other worthy cause to further the hope of Christ in a hurting world.

Blessings to you today!

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It’s Up to You and Me

Posted in Hope, Missions on November 30, 2009| Leave a Comment »

I received a donation request, as I do every year, from the American Bible Society last week.  As I read through the letter, the opening statement caught my attention.  Now most of you might be thinking, “It is a request for money, good marketing would tell you the opening statement should catch your attention.”  And that is true.

But here is how the opening statement read, “More than 2,000 years ago, an angel proclaimed Christ’s birth.  Now it’s up to you and me . . .”

Let that sink in for a minute.  What if the proclamation of Jesus and the rescue he offers was completely up to you?  What if the only way people were able to hear the good news that there is hope for them in all circumstances was for you to tell them.

Well, in a very real and significant way, it is!  I have said on many occasions that if the plan to redeem the world had been left up to me, I am not sure I would have entrusted that important of a task to humans.  But that is exactly what God has done.

It’s not marketing – its living a life that reflects Jesus.  The Christ has come!  He is with us today!  Shout it from the roof tops!

Live today as Jesus.

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Now That’s Living

Posted in Formation, Hope, Missions, Motivational on November 24, 2009| 2 Comments »

You don’t hear it much any more, but growing up I remember hearing the phrase, “Now that’s living!”  It usually followed an experience of excitement or joy.  It conjured up the idea that someone had “made it” and now they were all set – really living.

Yesterday we began to look at what it means to be in the world but not of the world.  There is no doubt in scripture that God’s people are to be in the world but there is also an idea of being set apart.  So how do we do that?  The first thing you need to remember is that it is a journey toward a goal.  You will have days where you do very well and then you will have days when – well, not so much.  But that is life.  The key is to stay focused.

This past summer we were at the beach in California as a family.  It was awesome – the tallest surf they had had in years.  But with the incredible waves came an extremely strong current.  We got out and body surfed on the waves – riding a wave into shore and then fighting our way back out to deeper water to catch the next one.  What happened with each wave is that we got carried further and further down the beach.  But we were having fun and living life and just taking it as it came.  After about 20 minutes of that, I realized we were 1/4 mile away from where we started.  Because of our lack of attention to what was happening, we were carried away from where we should have been.

The same is true in life.  If we are to be in the world without being of the world, we have to be focused on the goal of living for Jesus.  We cannot take life as it comes and disconnect.  We have to stay engaged in our relationship with Christ.  But how?  Here are a couple of things to work on:

1.  Stay committed to your personal time with God – Prayer and Bible reading will keep you grounded

2.  Stay connected with your faith community – We all need each other to stay focused

3.  Find someone to hold you accountable – God designed us to need one another

Remember that Jesus commands us to be salt in a tasteless world.  But if we become so diluted by the world, we lose our effectiveness and become useless for the kingdom.

We are called to be light in the darkness.  We are called to show hope when everyone else is in despair.  We are to show love to those who don’t even know what the word really means.  There is nothing more relevant than that.

Now that’s really living!

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Transformed Understanding

Posted in Formation, Hope on November 17, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Romans 12:1-2 talks about giving ourselves to God and focusing our attention on God and our sacrifice of ourselves.  Verse 2 is a well-known command that reminds us not to be concerned about this world but rather be more concerned about our spiritual transformation that comes when we “renew” our minds or change the way we think about God and the world and our priorities.

What I want to leave you with today is what comes after that phrase.  Verse 2 says, “Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.” I am thinking again of God’s will.  I wrote a little about it here.  As I ponder on what it means to “know God’s will for my life” I am confident that rather than God’s will being a concrete fact I need to find, it is more of a process of growth, experience and understanding.

This verse says that we will be able to realize God’s will as we are transformed – a process.  Be confident today that God has a plan and our mission in life should be to live in that plan.  And understand that as we grow in our relationship with God, our understanding of God’s will becomes increasingly more clear.

Be transformed by the renewing of your mind and  never forget that very transformation is the largest part of God’s plan!

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Keep It Simple

Posted in Grace, Hope, Missions on October 30, 2009| Leave a Comment »

One of the quotes I have pinned to my bulletin board caught my eye yesterday.  It is a quote from a jazz legend named Charles Mingus.  Here is what he said, “Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity.”

Reading this quote has had me thinking off and on since.  I have had this question rolling around in my head since yesterday, “Have I made the simple message of the Gospel complicated?”

I think one of the downfalls of the church is the sad truth that we have taken a simple message of love and forgiveness and made it immensely complicated.  Instead of focusing on a relationship, we have made it about religion.  Instead of concentrating on freedom, we have made it about rules.

God loves you and wants to have a relationship with you – that’s it in a nutshell.

It really is that simple!  Have you made it more complicated?

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The Unknowable God

Posted in Formation, Hope, Motivational on October 29, 2009| Leave a Comment »

I am still reading in Romans 11.  Today I got to the end of the chapter and ran across this verse and I have been rejoicing in it ever since.  Do this for me – stop reading right here, just for a minute, and click the link in green and read the verse and then come back here and read the rest of the post.

Now just let that verse settle for a minute . . .

There is no way we can ever fully understand God.  We talked about this earlier this week.  I learned early in my college career, a very frustrating lesson.  I really like to have things nailed down and really understand things, but I learned early on that in a lot of areas, the more I learn, the more I realize I don’t know.  Now that may not bother you, but for me, it has been a lesson that frustrated me at first.

But when I understand this truth about God, I have to stop and praise my Creator!  God is so magnificent, so big, so beyond anything we can understand, that it makes me realize there is nothing I can encounter that God cannot handle.

God is so awe inspiring that I don’t have to worry about anything – nothing!  In fact, simply thinking about how overwhelmingly unknowable God is shrinks my problems and concerns.

How big is God to you?

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God’s Presence In Washing Dishes

Posted in Formation, Hope on October 20, 2009| 2 Comments »

One of the normal evening rituals at our house is family dinner.  We don’t always get to eat together but we try.  It is the one time of the day we can enjoy being together as a family.  Kristi normally cooks and while she never gets much credit, she is a wonderful cook.  When Kristi cooks, I clean the kitchen.

As I was standing over the sink last night washing dishes, I was reminded of one of my favorite books entitled Practicing The Presence of God by Brother Lawrence. Brother Lawrence was born Nicholas Herman in the early 1600’s.  He joined a Carmelite order of monks as a lay brother and lived out his days in a monastery in the French Lorraine.  In this collection of Lawrence’s writings, he tells of how he learned to experience God’s presence in all circumstances.  In fact, Lawrence said he could sense God’s presence in the kitchen among the pots and pans just as strongly as in the chapel during prayers.

The key to sensing God’s presence, Lawrence found, is in our approach.  Everything we do should be done for God’s glory.  As long as our focus is on pleasing God, then everything we do will take on a new purpose.  A result of this new found focus will be that we will begin to sense God’s presence in everything we do.

Try it this week.  It could brighten your day – it might even change your life!

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It’s Monday

Posted in Formation, Hope, Motivational on October 19, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Never fails, when I wake up the day after Sunday, it is Monday.  It comes around every week!  So here we are this morning, it’s Monday again.  For some, Mondays are dreaded days.  But they don’t have to be.  Try this today:

  1. Read this
  2. Then pray that God will open your eyes to people and things around you that should invoke praise
  3. Determine today that you will impact at least one life positively this week
  4. On Tuesday, repeat all of the above – then continue each day in the same fashion.

Have a great week!

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