Recently I was reminded of how the Lord can take the straw of our very imperfect efforts and spin it into kingdom gold. A child we had sponsored years ago reached out and contacted me through social media. Her story reminds me of how God takes our most ineffective actions, whether we are seeking to do kingdom work or just to know him better and hear his voice, and spins our straw into gold.
If we want to know God, good theology is important; personal experience can be sweet; but they cannot be our starting place. We cannot start with those and work our way up to the cross, the stumbling block and folly. We must start with the cross, the God's love for us perfectly reflected in Jesus on the cross.
Neglecting our theology and relying on our experiences of God can leave navigating rough seas without a map.
The theme song from "Cheers" famously proclaimed, "You wanna where everybody knows your name." That rings true for a lot of people, it certainly does for me. We really do want to be somewhere where we are known -- we want to be accepted. Do people know you? I mean really know you, not just …
Oh, my. It has been well over two months since I posted the last installment of thoughts on the 23rd Psalm for the Hurried Life. Time for confession. After posting regularly for a couple of months I fell silent. Not because I had nothing to say but because (wait for it...) I got too busy. …
If we ever needed to know how to overcome Hate, this is the time. Hate, as vile and reprehensible as it is, cannot be out-argued, out-protested, or shouted down. Only Love can overcome Hate. Only Love can overcome Hate -- but how? Love cannot prevail by hating Hate. To overcome Hate, Love must be, like …
We are invited to a feast; to be the Lord's guest of honor. Are we too busy to attend?
When your path takes you into the valleys of darkest shadows where danger and evil may lie in wait, what will you do?
Are we too busy for God or too busy because we don't seek God?
God is always interested and active in out lives. He wants us to know him and his good plans for us. We just need to learn to slow down and quite ourselves so that we can hear him.
