Stories and other stuff

“Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. 2 My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. 4 You know the way to the place where I am going.” Jesus the Way to the Father 5 Thomas said to him, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?” 6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. 7 If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.” John 14:1-6 (NIV) I had a short discussion with my son the other night about life. He finds me, in his words, arrogant, because I hold to Biblical truth instead of the ideas that he has. He said something that gave me pause, and I asked him who he stole the idea from. I told him th...

I said hello to someone today at Walmart who I know. She propmptly ignored even acnowledging that i was even there. I've been ignored before but not like that. I didn't take it personally. Obviously the lady didn't want to acnowledge me and that's fine. It should have been an awkward situation but I just laughed it off. It's not like she was anythong but an acquaintance anyway and I find the whole thing quite funny, acutally. I was just trying to be polite in the first place. I'm reminded of the places in Scripture where Jesus says Hw will tell people, "I never knew you. Away from Me, you evil-doers." It's one thing to be snubbed by someone at the grocery store. I think it's quite another to be told that by the King of Kings. I'm good for not being one to hold a grudge or take a slight seriously. It's not a big deal to me, but I can see something in it that the Lord will tell those that only knew about Jesus and not a r...

For this God is our God for ever and ever; he will be our guide even to the end. Psalm 46:10 I like this verse because it reminds me of a solid truth. God is. God always will be. Forever and forever. But the verse says more than that, it says that He will be or guide even to the end. I tried running my life. I made a collosal mess of it. I don't do that so much these days, but it wasn't always as easy (like it's still easy sometimes) to let go of things and let God. I've been kind of dealing with that lately, letting things completely go. It's not always easy, and I'm surprised how I can see myself trying to keep just a little piece of this or that for myself instead of going the total surrender route. Fortunately, the Holy Spirit helps me see when I'm doing that. The Spirit guides. He moves. Great things happen when we let Him guide us on the journey. As believers, He will guide us, even to the end. We may not always like, or even und...

We had a very interesting discussion at Bible study this morning. I love being a part of this group. They engage. They ask great questions. We have good discussions about Scripture and the practical application of it in our lives. One of the things someone brought up today is his belief that all of life is just a test. I got thinking about that, and, to be certain, we face tests in life. God tested Abraham's faith. I'm reasonably certain He has tested mine. God is God and He is entitled to do anything He wishes with His creation and that includes each of us. But if this is a test, I thought on the drive home, then there's really only one question on the test and it's pretty much a pass or fail test. The question each of us has to answer for ourselves is this: Who is Jesus Christ? If He is who He says He is, and we accept Him as Lord and Savior of our lives, and ask Him to forgive us of our sins, we become children adopted into God's family and will spen...

I get to do life with some pretty neat people. I get to belong to a small group at my church and out of this group, I have some pretty close friends. These aren't superficial friends, either. These are pick up the phone at 2 a.m. people that love Jesus like I do. I learn a lot from them and I'm blessed to be among them. I'm not sure I could put into words all the things I've seen happen since joining this group but I would like to share about something last night. I heard two stories last night, one was from a couple who obeyed God and moved. The second was from a couple who wanted to move and obeyed God and stayed. The details of their stories each fascinated me and I listened as they talked aboutp how some of their feelings had to be put aside to obey God's call on them in both situations. I listened with sadness in my heart because I still bear the wounds from not doing this at a key juncture in a relationship I was in with someone. I got punished 7 y...

Sometimes, when I teach a Bible Study lesson I try to interject a little bit of humor. In today's study, which was the story of Jesus healing a blind man and what happens afterward, I likened some of the events to what seemed to me the modern day equivilent of things that the people in the group would share some understanding of. The thing Jesus did was heal a man born blind. Now, nobody in the history of EVER up until that moment had ever done this thing, and when you look at this from the perspective of the guy that got his sight back, the story of what happens to him gets to be a little bit, well, much.... The Lord heals this man, and he's obviously got to be completely blown away by what happens. He's discovering all these new things. He can see what his parents look like, he can see what EVERYTHING looks like, and then the people around him are upset because Jesus did this wonderful thing to him on the Sabbath. So he winds up in front of the Pharisees for a line...

One of the things I've learned over the last few years is that we can avoid a lot of troubles in our own life if we make up our minds in advance of temptations coming our way, as to how we are going to hadle them. When we-pre decide how we will deal with the temmptations that come upon us in life, when they do, we have a battle plan for not falling into those temptations. Psalm 119:11 says " I have hidden Your word in my heart thatI might not sin against you." (NIV). Recognizing that when we sin, it's God Himself that we sin against. A friend of mine likens sin in the body of believers that Christ calls His Church to an infection. When we don't deal with sin in our lives, as a part of the body, it affects the entire Church in one way or another, even if we can't see it. Deciding beforehand that we're not going to give in and having God's Word in your heart are important tools for avoiding the sins associated with whatever temptations we fall into...

One of the things I get to do these days is lead a Bible study group on Wendensday mornings. This morning, we were studying John 8, in the latter part of the chapter, where Jesus says some profound things about who He is, who the Jews of the day were, and what the Truth does to people who believe that He is the Christ, the Savior of the world. The things the world is going through these days are not new. Not by any stretch of the imagination. What is different, I think, at least in my observation in my own little corner of the world, is that there is a larger lack of understanding the truth of God's word, which makes the lies the devil has been telling more palateable. We live, I'm told, in a post-truth world, where each of us is to make up our own truths and just go with it, whether or not those truths are based in any kind of fact. And even things we think are true are being manipulated to match whatever flavor of the month new "gospel" or "truth" co...