Walking and Wondering

"I remember your genuine faith, for you share the faith that first filled your grandmother Lois and you mother, Eunice.  And I know that same faith continues strong in you.  This is why I remind you to fan into flames the spiritual gift God gave you when I laid my hands on you.  For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline."  (2 Timothy 1:5-7 NLT) Question ... Have you ever found yourself fighting fear and timidity in your life?  Okay another question ... what is timidity again???  The dictionary defines timidity as lacking self-assurance, bravery or courage; being fearful.  Apparently Timothy, a young pastor in the city of Ephesus, was fighting this very thing.  So Paul, his spiritual father, writes to give him some great council.  (Side note ... it's so important to have spiritual fathers and mothers in your life to help in times of need.  Pride says you can do it alone; wisdom say...

Luke 12:15 - Then He said, "Beware!  Guard against every kind of greed.  Life is not measured by how much you own." While at first glance this seems so simple, the complexity behind monitoring this in our lives is SO challenging.  We so easily drift towards measuring life by earthly standards, rather than Heaven's standards.   The backstory here involves someone coming to Jesus and asking him to tell his brother to give him his portion of their father's estate.  Jesus, rather surprisingly, responds by saying, "Who made me the judge over this situation?"  In other words, don't drag me into your conflict.  The bigger issue here isn't the inheritance, it's what's driving your emotions.  Then He goes on to explain the bigger picture ... GREED!  Where we so easily think that the amassing of wealth and possessions will lead to freedom, it can actually lead us to bondage.  It can cause us to judge people based on what they've a...

Luke 11:27-28 - And it happened, as He (Jesus) spoke these things, that a certain woman from the crowd raised her voice and said to Him, "Blessed is the womb that bore You, and the breast which nursed You!"  But He said, "More than that, blessed are those who hear the Word of God and keep it!"     That last line jumped off the page at me this morning.  Jesus says that 2 things define a blessed life: HEARING the Word and then KEEPING it. In our world of information overload, it is SO easy to become people marked by good intentions but poor follow-through.  We can find ourselves moving from inspiring moments to inspiring moments where we're ever excited about the possibilities of change but never actually changing.   Someone's testimony about the Lord touching their lives can inspire us to see similar impact in our own lives.  We hear a sermon that convicts us about areas of weakness in our walk with the Lord and are determined to address ...

My favorite definition of POTENTIAL on dictionary.com is ..."a latent excellence or ability that may or may not be developed."  A close second is ... "capable of being or becoming."  I really like those definitions!  I started thinking about POTENTIAL yesterday as I was picking my 7-year old son up from school.  As we were walking back to the car talking about his day, I noticed his shoe next to mine.  I know ... crazy thing to think about right?  But I noticed how his size 4 was dwarfed by my size 12.  And yet, it struck me that he wouldn't stay a size 1 for long.  Sooner or later, that size 4 would become too small to handle the growth he would be experiencing. The fact is that he has incredible POTENTIAL for growth already built inside of him.  And not just growth in the physical realm, but emotional, spiritual, relational, and so much more.  It's all packed inside of him by the Lord, who "knit him together in his mother's womb."...

     My good friend Edmund Kee passed away suddenly last weekend.  At 31, no one saw his death coming.  After all, strong, influential, entrepreneurial Christian men like Edmund don't die young.  They build an amazing legacy well into their retirement years for others to experience, learn from and carry on after they are gone.  Right?  Someone who saved himself for his wife like Edmund doesn't pass away 10 months into his new marriage.  Right?  Not so.      I couldn't have been more surprised last Tuesday when I received the call telling me that Edmund had passed away leaving behind his new wife Charlotte.  How do you process that?  How do you come to grips with the finality of that moment?  It all seems like such a waste of talent and passion for the kingdom of God. But I've found that questions like these don't often get answered, at least not with any satisfaction.  Even our best attempts...

One thing I love to do is spend time talking to my kids at night before they go to bed.  I love those moments when life slows down enough to communicate at a deeper level than the hectic pace of life normally allows.  And it's in those moments where my kids amaze me with the wisdom they possess and the purity of faith that they walk in. Recently, as I was talking with my 10 year old and my 12 year old sons, I asked the question.  "If  evolution was in fact true, what does that mean about the bible and about who we are as humans."  Okay, not your normal bedtime conversation, but I love to challenge them to think deeper.  The reality is that, as students in public school, they are going to be presented with blatant anti-Christian beliefs.  Our job then is to help them spot the lie, discern the truth, and understand the implications on what they believe.  And as always, my sons answers amazed me.  You don't have to look any farther than Genesi...

Whenever you see the word therefore, go back and see what the therefore is there for.  Before we can get to the "going", we need to have a good understanding of the conditions in which we are called to go.  Let's back up to verse 18 in Matthew 28.  There Jesus said ... And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth." This statement by Jesus is huge.  How often are we guilty of running off to accomplish something without seeing the full picture?  Jesus didn't call us to go in our own might.  He didn't call us to go in our own wisdom.  He didn't call us to go in our own authority.  He called us to go with His!   Authority is defined as 'the power to determine, adjudicate or otherwise settle issues, the right to control, command or determine.'  Our movement for the kingdom is driven by the authority of God Himself.  We are no longer under the authority of Satan, the en...