“Create in me a clean heart, O God, And renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from thy presence; and take not thy holy Spirit from me. Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation; and uphold me with thy free spirit.” Psalm 51:10-12 Renew – Restore – Uphold. These three words are lavished with peace and power. Do you remember how excited you were when you started living for God? I was fifteen-years-old when I received the Holy Ghost and I told everyone I could about the love of God; my friends, the barista at Starbucks,…
And Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, “You lack one thing: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” Disheartened by the saying, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions. (Mark 10:21-22, ESV) By the world’s standards, I am not a wealthy person. I do, however, feel very blessed as I consider how God supplies my daily needs. I have housing, food, transportation, and money to pay my bills. God is good to me, and I am content. Most of us are more blessed than we even realize. As I began reading the story of the rich young ruler, several questions flashed through my mind. My first thought was, “Isn’t that an extreme request by the Lord? Why would He ask that young man to give everything away? Can we not serve God if we are rich?” The longer pondered the story, I thought perhaps this isn’t really about money as much as the attitude of our heart—how we feel about our material possessions. What I do know is that the young man chose money over discipleship and turned away…
“Jesus went up the mountain and summoned those he wanted, and they came to him.” (Mark 3:13, CSB) What is it about a mountain that pulls people to reach its summit? The difficulty of the ascent doesn’t matter; they feel a compulsion to reach where others dare not tread. Mount Everest, considered the world’s tallest summit, has had a “traffic jam” at times as unprecedented numbers of climbers waited in line for their turn to reach its peak. Can you imagine enduring over 29,000 feet of treacherous climbing, not to mention rigorous training and great expense, just to wait in line? Perhaps all of us seek a mountaintop experience of one type or another in life. Although the climb can be arduous, lifechanging things may happen on the mountain. In fact, if the path were less difficult, the experience would hold less meaning. The struggles only increase the exhilaration of finally reaching the top. Being summoned to meet God on the mountain surpasses all other life experiences. There God reveals Himself to us and allows us to see our world from a higher perspective. Some of the most notable events in the Bible took place on a mountain. On Mount…
The day after Christmas, I enthusiastically challenged my nine-year-old grandson to a game of bowling. The standup video kind. We were having a blast—he was winning—until something caused me to lose my footing, and I went down. I apparently tried to break my fall with my arm, but instead I broke my arm with my fall. Badly. When my fractured forearm was examined, I learned a new word: comminuted. A comminuted fracture is when the bone breaks into several pieces and needs more than simple resetting. In my surgery, for example, they had to reconstruct the shattered bones with grafts,…
“Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.” (Ephesians 5:15-17, ESV) You may think a year is 365 days long, but that is technically incorrect. It really takes the earth approximately 365.242189 days, a tropical year, to circle once around the sun. And, no, I will not (cannot) explain a tropical year. Just do an internet search to satisfy your curiosity. This year is Leap Year, and February will have twenty-nine days instead of the usual twenty-eight. Without this extra day in our calendar every four years, we would lose about six hours every year. Most of us complain that we don’t have enough time to get everything done. Now, on Leap Day those six hours times four—a full day, give or take a few seconds—will be placed back into our account. We will receive a gift—the gift of time! If we truly did have the gift of extra time, how would we choose to spend it? Just think of the possibilities. We could: Catch up on our sleep or…
The man who had died came out, his hands and feet bound with linen strips, and his face wrapped with a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.” Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what he did, believed in him, but some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done. (John 11:44-46, ESV) Many times, eyewitnesses to the same event will each “see” the event differently. I suppose it’s a combination of one’s perspective, attentiveness, or even bias that may affect our perception of what happened. In the story of Lazarus in John 11, it wasn’t so much what each one saw, as how they reacted to what they saw. The story is familiar to most of us. Lazarus of Bethany became very ill, and his sisters, Mary and Martha, sent for their friend Jesus. They knew He had performed many miracles and had the power to heal their brother. But Lazarus did not improve, and Jesus did not arrive—at least not in the timely manner they expected. Since we have read the complete story in the Gospel of John, we understand why Jesus…