It’s easy to be naïve …
When others bear the price.
This Sunday when you go to church, look around and make an effort to see those who have no family or are going through hard times …
Then ask if they’d like to share Thanksgiving with you and your family at your home later this month.
If space allows, also invite others in your neighborhood and community who are isolated, struggling or maybe even homeless.
This is love.
This is being the church.
You will form friendships that will last a lifetime.
Marianne and I do this each Thanksgiving – as well as throughout the year – and it has enriched our lives beyond measure.
The key to effective ministry …
Is becoming less and less indispensable.
Faith is not so hard to find …
It’s just outside your comfort zones.
A government that wants the power to solve all of our problems …
Soon becomes the problem.
Idolatry takes many forms …
As does its bondage.
May God’s people have the wisdom to resist both.
For me, there’s no greater joy than seeing lives redeemed …
Through the one-on-one ministry of confession, forgiveness and surrendering our associated burdens to the Lord.
There, true repentance happens …
And freedom begins.
Faith presumes no outcome rooted in our own wishes …
But simply trusts God’s goodness.
Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be.
True liberty is the freedom to pursue virtue …
Not autonomy to pursue vice.
I think I need to be sent to millennial sensitivity school.
Back in 2016, I was having lunch at a fast food joint with two bros who often ministered with me in the local jail.
We were minding our own business at our own table, talking privately between ourselves about the upcoming elections and the Second Amendment, when a thirty-something dude walked up and told us to stop talking because it was “hurting his feelings.”
Continue reading
Forgiveness isn’t saying what they did is ok …
But letting your heart fully acknowledge how wrong it really was and then release it to God.
Continue readingGod’s no thief.
He won’t take the burdens of our heart – our accumulated regrets, hurts, anxieties and wrongs – unless we give them to Him …
As an intentional act of surrender.
To give them to Him, however, we must first own them …
By honestly and fully confessing them to Him.
Because if we can’t or won’t do that …
Then they own us, and not us them.
Nor is God a cheat.
When we fully and finally release them to Him …
He always gives us peace and resolution in return.
Always!
A pastor introduced himself to me at a local ministerial association meeting and asked about “my” church.
As I considered how best to answer, it struck me for the first time that we didn’t have a name. I mean, the idea had just never even occured to us.
When I told him that, he seemed intrigued.
So I went on to shared how we were a simple, participatory gathering of believers who were the church, rather than folks who went to a church, and we never even considered the need for a “name.”
He thought about that and asked a few questions.
I responded by explaining that we don’t follow the post-New Testament model of a sole-proprietor “pastor” who preaches and runs the “service” every Sunday.
Rather, my role is to be an elder who – with others – unassumingly insures a safe environment where everyone can gather and feel free to minister one to another, each according to their own gifts as prompted by the Holy Spirit …
You know, just like the New Testament says.
He quietly considered what I said, then responded that he guessed that was OK – after all, “God once spoke through a jackass.”
Seriously, he said that.
Sigh …
It’s hard to give God our future …
When we keep holding on to our past.
God’s grace:
Love with conviction,
Mercy with repentance,
Freedom with holiness.
I’ll take relational simple church over staged scripted church any day of the week.
If you’re confused about why it takes victims of sex abuse in the church so long – if ever – to build up the courage to speak up …
Look no further than your own reaction when it involves abuse by someone you support, like or know.
Is church supposed to be a staged event …
Or a functional community that ministers to one another?
Planned Parenthood received birthday congratulations from President Obama and Hillary Clinton today, which is ironic …
Given the millions of babies who will never have a birthday because they were killed by Planned Parenthood.
Those who claim the Bible is God’s authoritative written Word only in spots,
And by implication that they have the authority to spot the spots,
Are not teaching some new revelation but the same old deception …
Which starts by asking,
“Did God really say?”
I get so tired of the lie, repeated whenever someone wants to avoid the hard work of living by their convictions – or even having convictions – that we must not judge.
Where does Scripture make a blanket prohibition on judging?
Continue readingLove God, do what’s right …
And trust Him with the results.
Plumbline Faith 