Month: May 2018

Stand Down

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In this third part of our teaching series, Stand Up: How to Fight Injustice, we finally start talking about action.  We’ve spent the previous two weeks establishing a baseline from which to begin our fight.  This week the fight begins…but not where we might expect it.  Our battles against injustice begin best not on our feet, but on our knees.  Keep reading to see how this plays out through the story of Esther.

 

Stand Down

One of our good friends in Virginia is a handyman who enjoys woodworking.  Prior to living there and getting to know Rod, the only time I had ever done any woodworking was my junior high shop classes—classes which I thoroughly enjoyed and was pretty good at.  I still have most of the things I made.  Rod and his wife, Pat, had the gift of loving us and they did it well and in a number of ways.  One of the ways Rod did this with me in particular was to let me come down and play in his shop and create.  I only got a few projects finished before our growing family reduced the time available for woodworking to nil, but I enjoyed every minute of it.  Some of my favorite projects are a spice rack/cookbook shelf that’s hanging in the dining room and a toy bulldozer that was intended to be for the boys to play with until I realized how quickly they were going to break it relative to the number of hours that went into making it at which point it became a display piece.  Well, Rod liked to collect t-shirts with inspirational or funny messages on them.  One of my favorites was one that was perfect for the novice woodworker.  It read: Measure twice, cut once, curse, go by more wood, repeat. Read the rest…

Morning Musings: Galatians 2:20

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“I have been crucified with Christ.  It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.  And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”  (ESV – Read the chapter)

At first read, this is a pretty far-out there claim for Paul to make.  I mean, as far as an objective fact goes it is totally false.  He was not crucified with Christ.  As far as we know, he was not anywhere nearby when Jesus was crucified.  More than that, given where he was theologically then, he would have been part of the crowd cheering on the event.  He would likely have been glad to have been able to drive the nails into His hands and feet himself.  So what does he mean? Read the rest…

Digging in Deeper: Matthew 6:24

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“No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.  You cannot serve God and money.”  (ESV – Read the chapter)

Have you ever had two bosses?  How did that go?  Unless it was a truly unique situation, the odds are that on some occasions you were happy with one, on other occasions you were happy with the other, and only rarely were you happy with both. Read the rest…

Morning Musings: John 16:13

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“When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.”  (ESV – Read the chapter)

If you are a follower of Jesus, you have the Spirit of God living within you.  Reflect on that for a minute.  The power and presence of the God who created the universe is dwelling within you.  That’s a pretty game-changing idea.

If you are a follower of Jesus and you don’t know where to go in life, you need merely to look inside of you.  And I don’t mean that in some kind of a new-agey way as if you were somehow divine yourself.  Rather, I mean this in the sense that if you are a follower of Jesus, you have within you the Spirit who can answer your questions.  Now, He may answer by telling you to go and consult with His word and other believers, but you can at least start there.  And His answers will not often come in the ways or times we would most prefer given our druthers, but they will come.  We can count on it.

Digging in Deeper: Exodus 19:5

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“Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my reassured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine…”  (ESV – Read the chapter)

One of the things we are called to (and by “we,” I mean “everybody”) over and over again in the Scriptures is obedience.  We live in a day, though, when obedience is not a popular idea.  We want to be free to do as we please.  We want to loosen the restrictions on ourselves so we can pursue our hearts’ desires without any limitations.  Nobody likes the idea of obedience…except for when they do. Read the rest…