God's Glory Revealed In You

Got 6 minutes?  Mankind is fit perfectly for the life of God Himself—nothing else will satisfy, nothing else will work.  That is the essence of Christianity.  Here’s a great way to find Him alive and effective in you.

Home Sweet Home

Enjoy Your Treasure

Is there a place or two that when you visit, you come alive? Maybe it’s a distance away, like a vibrant meadow or a mountain view or a breeze that brings the scent of the ocean to you. Or perhaps it’s nearby, like a certain chair in the early morning or a walk through the neighborhood.

One of mine is an emerald pool on a secret river in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Since the late 60’s, I have been wading through its long, slow waters and scanning the currents and sinister snags as I hunt what lies within it. The very moment I enter the water I find myself sighing deeply in welcome and relief. It’s as if the Divine Masseuse has begun gently massaging away the cares and deep anxieties that have knotted me up and made me rigid and mechanical.

I don’t like Ralph The Rigid and Mechanical. He’s a fake, a put on. Somehow I can be held captive by him, a sort of hostage from myself. But not in the river. I get myself back.

There is a better way that brings me back to life, and I don’t have far to go to find it.

Years ago God worked in such a way that I discovered Him to be the greatest treasure. Not simply because of His value, supreme as it is, but because of what happened to me when treasuring Him. I wasn’t simply dazzled by what I found, like a pirate might be after lifting the lid on a treasure chest. Instead, the radiance filled me and affected me on the inside, and I became the best Ralph imaginable. I discovered that God knows the real Ralph, the one He fashioned, and He loves revealing that treasure—even if it has been buried. I was filled with the Spirit—God Himself—and my Treasure treasured me. I was forever changed and hooked on Treasure.

After that no commands to obey or give or pray or read or sacrifice were really necessary, having been made superfluous by the one: Enjoy your treasure. It happened again this morning when, resisting the impulses to read the newspaper or to get on the internet and find out what’s happening in the world, I turned my thoughts to Him. “Father, I sure like you and need you today. What are you thinking about? What’s on your mind?”

It didn’t take long before the stone over my heart moved and there He was: Treasure. As a result, Ralph The Rigid and Mechanical vanished, driven away after a simple gaze, and the real Ralph appeared.

Matthew 13:44 "The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.”

No one had to tell the man what to do about the treasure—he genuinely treasured it, and that led him to do what he did. It’s the same with us, I think.

The next time you’ve lost your way, resist the urge to drive faster in order to get where you’re going. You won’t get there. Instead, take a minute or two and get off the common avenue, the activity that allows treasure to remain unnoticed, unvalued, and return to your treasure. Have a look again. He will treasure you back to yourself.

(This is a transcript of yesterday’s video, “Enjoy Your Treasure,” and is for those who might rather read than watch. To see the video, click https://youtu.be/hATdDlTcJp8, or scroll down this blog page.)

Enjoy Your Treasure

The next time you’ve lost your way, here are 4 minutes that will show you that help is easier and closer than you might think. 

Ungrace

What plagues and hurts Christians a lot? Believing that we fit in this world’s current of ungrace, and swimming as if our lives will be measured by ever improving personal bests.

He Is What You Want

Jesus is well acquainted with failure and sin and faithlessness and betrayal and ugliness of all sorts. He took all of ours at the cross, as though He had made the mess Himself. He knows all about it and is really good with those of us who fall into it. No matter how you are today, no matter how bad your experience, He is what you want. He is the solution. He is the way forward. He may not answer all of your questions, but He will give you life. He will revive you and you will feel better. And that counts.

Thoroughly Blessed

If you believe that God is waiting to bless you based upon your obedience, you will be caught up in a self-righteousness crusade. You will try to hear just right, speak just right, move just right, behave just right, and give just right. You will have your self-righteousness at the controls of blessing. That is a terrible false burden because any vestige of a quid-pro-quo relationship with God—if you do it right, He’ll do it right—has forever been removed by the free gift of Jesus’ righteousness, making you exactly right in Him and having all things already. Because you believe Jesus, He has become everything for you, and in Him, you are well and thoroughly blessed. Think that through. We don’t live by or for the benefits of our righteousness; we live in His.

Speaking In Pennsylvania

Tomorrow morning I’m off to Pennsylvania to speak at “The Dan Stone Retreat,” which is being held at the Salvation Army Ladore Camp, in Waymart.  Not only am I excited to speak with this group of encouraging and loving people whom I met last year (this is the 20th year of the retreat), but I might get to sneak in some fly fishing.  Wouldn’t that be good?  ("Thank you" to those supporting me, which enables these trips. If you'd like to help, no gift is too small. http://lifecourse.org/Giving.html.)

All Blessings

God is not waiting for you to obey Him so He can bless you. The perfect obedience of Jesus took care of all that already. Remember: it's not what you see that reveals what you have, it's where you are—in Him—that proves it. Live from there, because that's a pretty good place to be, don't you think? (Ephesians 1:3-10.)

Claude, the Coffee Angel

I admit to feeling grossly inferior at times to the coffee artisans who make beautiful latte art. Perhaps you’ve see white flowers, asteroid bursts, a bouquet crowned by a heart, and more admiring your lips as you raise your coffee concoction to drink. But I offer today’s miracle of the mug as proof of my, um, honorabilityness, which sprang from my own espresso creation: Claude, my Coffee Angel. If, per chance, you cannot see him, wings uplifted and singing his way from right to left, then you are doomed—doomed, I say, to endless and fruitless searching for the crema and latte art anointing as you wander your allotted days. For those who do, indeed, recognize Claude’s heavenly, ephemeral visage, you are blessed. Rejoice…or something.

(I hope you enjoy your Monday morning coffee!)

Let's Get Together

I will be speaking with a college basketball coaching staff in San Diego, California, today (they’ve been reading through my book for several months), and will meet with a small group in Poway tonight. Tomorrow night I will speak with a counseling ministry group in Charlotte, North Carolina. To be able to do this is why I’m such a big fan of internet video conferencing via Skype, FaceTime, Zoom, and more. Would you like to meet with me? It’s easy and terrific. Simply message me, or go to: http://lifecourse.org/Face_To_Face.html.

Let’s get together!

An Earth Day Toast

On a day known as “Earth Day" (at least in the U.S.), I’d like to propose a toast to the brilliance of humans, who have turned wastelands into farmlands rich in agriculture, barren waters into those teaming with fish, darkness into light, and uninhabitable terrain into useful and beautiful environments pleasing to all (except the “humans-are-destroyers-and-must-be-stopped” types). I offer the famous little pinkie salute and a heartfelt “Thank you!” for the creativity and strength that shows how much we are like our Father, the Original Creator.

New

To Hell With That

Last Sunday night I took what might have been my greatest-ever leap of a public confession:  I have been watching the television show, “The Walking Dead.”  Not just binge-watching as a secret way of addiction, but year after year, season after season—6 years.  Scandalous.  How could I do such a thing?  How could I watch an awful, hellish show like that?

Because I care about people. 

An important part of story telling is putting people into situations in which they must adapt, change and grow in order to move forward.  If it’s well written, many of us are drawn into the lives of the characters because we want to see what they will do and how they will do, as well as what relationships might look like for them in that story’s situation.  It’s about people.  In this show, we don’t care about the fictitious zombies—they’re a hazard, to be sure—we care about the people; their struggles, their failings and successes, their attempts at creating a community of trust and support, and what difficulties they must overcome in a pretend situation.  It’s the same old story of what happens to people re-told in a different package.  I know—a very different package, but that’s why we care, that’s why we watch.  The show is not about “a big lie of hell,” as some have said, it’s about a good, godly caring. 

I have watched or read hundreds of stories that are really the same thing.  An adolescent is magically endued with super-athleticism for a season, and leads a professional team (baseball, soccer, basketball, and more) to the championship.  A young woman is magically gifted a single evening as a princess at a ball, and still wins the affection of the prince after the magic disappears—the glass slipper fits.  A group of disparate teens must bond together in order to vanquish an awful alien/force/army/tyrant that could never actually happen, but we want to know what they do, how they do, and how their relationships look in that story. 

I believe that most of us deeply care about people and how we interact.  Reading or watching stories about that stimulates a goodness in us.  When I consider the many friends I have whose opinions about politics, religion, economics and sports are waaaaay different from mine, with a few exceptions, we’ve learned pretty well how to remain friends and remain genuinely caring, even while communicating our differences—sometimes with heat.  I often drink a beer on Tuesday nights with some of my “different opinion friends,” and we care deeply for each other.  It’s an invaluable time for us, and few things get in the way of it.  There are some who, learning this, would condemn me for drinking a beer.  I occasionally target shoot with a friend, and we have a blast together, all the while talking about the craziness of life, our terrible flesh and its lusts, and more.  There are some who would condemn me for shooting guns.  Over the years, I’ve gone with my wife and daughters to the movies many times and watched films that provided a way for us to talk and discuss true issues of the heart.  Some would condemn me for the movies, some for the Diet Coke, some for the GMO popcorn. 

All of that to say that most of us highly value the biblical story and our experience of “God with us.”  We’re crazy in love with Him because He made that happen through the reconciling cross and resurrection of Jesus.  If our being reconciled to Him, our being put into harmony with Him, means anything, it means we are safe to be with Him exactly as we are . . . and exactly as we are not.  We are safe.  Loved.  Open hearted.  Genuine.  Free.   And in the love of “God with us,” free of fear.  Frankly, most of us want that same reconciliation to extend into as many relationships as we can find, where we’re safe and open with each other.  In my experience, that’s where God—and God in me—does His best, most evident work.  That’s where the good news of His life and love and grace for us is best given and received. 

However, relationship with you through text or video on a computer screen is not easily managed.  I haven’t had coffee with you, I haven’t been with you when you were sick or discouraged or happy or stupid or brilliant or loving or angry.  I don’t know your story, but I know you’ve got one.  It’s important to you.  It’s important to God, who wants you to know how good and capable and perfect He is with you in your story—all of it.  God with you.  Yes, He might well change your opinion about a thing or two; wouldn’t you expect that?  Wouldn’t you want that?  That’s what can happen in friendship, and that’s particularly good when you’re safe with God, Mr. Know-It-All Friend. 

His opinion of you is better and more accurate than the one you’ve got rattling around in your brain, influencing your relationships.  He’s not mad at you because you like stout beer over pilsner, “Kill Bill” over “The Sound of Music”, plastic grocery bags over hemp, or Bernie over Donald.  None of that is actually YOU—it’s not the heart of your story.  So if you and I major on the minors, if we get most passionate, most heated about the minors, we’ll raise invisible shields around our hearts and come to believe that’s the way of relationships.  Shields up.  People around us, but not people with us.  Not really.  Worst of all, we’ll come to think of God around us, but not God with us.  Reconciled in The Book, but not in experience.  What a killer that is.  I say, “To Hell with that.”  I want to walk with you as best I can—even through a computer screen—whether you’re sick or well, sad or happy, stupid just now or smart, “dead” or “alive.”

So is anyone besides me looking forward to next Sunday’s first episode of season 2, “Fear The Walking Dead”?

(This is a transcript of day-before-yesterday’s video, “To Hell With That,” and is for those who might rather read than watch.  To see the video, click https://youtu.be/XddlziWmDUA, or scroll down this blog page.)

To Hell With That

Got 9 minutes?  I have something to say about the things that are keeping you from the freedom and joy of authentic relationships—with God and people.  I hope it helps you.