Tag: Faithfulness

Habits of Faithfulness

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With one more week to go in our series (and with this being the final part that I’m preaching), this week we are talking about another critically important way we can stand in our faithfulness to Christ even when we are standing alone. As we look at the story of Daniel in the lions’ den, we are going to talk about the kinds of things we do without having to think about them and what that means for our lives. Thanks for reading and sharing.

Habits of Faithfulness

I want you to think for just a minute about the sheer number of things you do on a daily basis that you feel like you could do with your eyes either metaphorically or literally closed. Given how automated many of the things you do are, that may actually be a tough list to compile. How many things in your life do you do because they are simply what you do? Surely your list includes some pretty basic things. If you use any kind of corrective lens, I suspect putting those on in the morning is automatic. Hopefully most of your personal hygiene routine runs on autopilot. The people sitting next to you are grateful for that. If you are a coffee drinker, your morning date with your coffee machine probably doesn’t require a lot of thought…which is probably good because if you are a coffee-drinker, you may not give a whole lot of thought to much of anything before that first cup starts energizing your system. 

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Loving the Hurting

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This week as we continued our series, How to Be Faithful When No One Else Is, we are turning with Daniel’s story in a direction that may be unexpected. When we imagine ourselves standing in faithfulness as the world around us turns away from such a path, we are often tempted to think in very much cultural terms. We imagine ourselves as warriors battling back the forces of evil. Yet being faithful after the way of Jesus looks very different from this. Let’s talk about how and why as we look at another story about a king and a dream.

Loving the Hurting

Let’s do a quick vocabulary poll this morning. This one is definitely a fifty-cent word. How many of you have heard the word “schadenfreude”? Anyone want to throw out a definition or use it in a sentence. It’s actually a really good word to have in your back pocket. It’s probably worth quite a few points in a game of Scrabble. I don’t think I’ve ever actually played a game of Scrabble in my life, so I could be wrong, but it at least has a lot of letters. Schadenfreude, as you might have guessed, is a German word. While a more robust definition is probably available in German, in English it basically translates to taking pleasure at the misfortune of others. We live today in a world where schadenfreude is a common feeling for a lot of people. 

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Stubborn Faith

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This week, after a couple of weeks off – one of them unexpected – I was privileged to be back in the pulpit. We dove into the third part of our series, How to Be Faithful When No One Else Is. This week we explored Daniel 3 and the well-known story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego and the fiery furnace. We marvel at their faithfulness and God’s miraculous rescue of the trio, but something even more powerful lies at the heart of the story when it comes to our challenge to stand on faithfulness even when we are standing alone. Let’s explore this together to see what it is. Thanks for reading and sharing.

Stubborn Faith

When was the last time you did something that left you feeling accomplished? When was the last time you checked something off your list in a way that made you feel satisfied? It feels good to do big things. It feels good to do smaller things too. It feels good to be making forward progress. Some of you know that I enjoy building metal models. They come in a nice, little kit with detailed instructions and sheets of metal that are pre-painted and laser cut so you can snip them out, fold them accordingly, and build things like this Stormtrooper. Putting the last couple of pieces into place and finishing these feels really good. It’s satisfying to finally throw away the empty scraps of metal that used to hold all the little pieces in place. 

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Morning Musing: Jeremiah 32:17

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“Oh, Lord God! You yourself made the heavens and earth by your great power and with your outstretched arm. Nothing is too difficult for you!” (CSB – Read the chapter)

I’m tired as I write this lying in my bed waiting for the ZzzQuil I took almost an hour ago to kick in so that I can get at least a reasonable night of sleep on the hard, bunk house mates currently underneath me. And why am I in such a state? Because I have spent the week chaperoning our kids at LifeWay’s flagship kids camp, CentriKid. Tomorrow is the last day, and I can’t wait to see my wife and to sleep soundly in my own, much more comfortable bed. Yet for the lack of amenities this week, it has been wonderful and worth every sacrifice to be here. This is not only to get to see growth in a great group of kids with my own eyes (something not very many senior pastors ever get to witness), but because I, too, have spent the week being reminded to not lose their far more natural, childlike sense of wonder at our God. Rather than tell you about the latest Marvel offering this week, let me tell you why this was such a good week.

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Courageous Faithfulness

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This week we kicked off a brand-new teaching series called, How to Be Faithful When No One Else Is. Over the next seven weeks we are going to be working through some of the story of Daniel to see how he maintained such incredible faithfulness to God in spite of living in circumstances that were generally not even remotely supportive of that goal. Living as we do in a culture that is increasingly hostile to public expressions of the Christian faith, Daniel’s story offers us several important principles we can use to follow his great example. Thanks for reading and sharing!

Courageous Faithfulness

All actions have consequences. That’s just how things work. Sometimes we have control over and can anticipate those consequences. Sometimes we can’t. When the U.S. withdrew our forces from Iraq a few years ago, one of the unexpected consequences was the rise of ISIS. This radical, Muslim, militant group swept to power throughout the Middle East, eventually taking control of a huge swath of territory for a short time. During their brief reign of terror, the world was treated a whole litany of shocking and tragic acts by the group and those who followed them. One of the most shocking, though, also turned out to be the most inspiring. Militants kidnapped 21 oil workers from a refinery in Libya. All but one of them were Egyptian Coptic Christians. The group took these men to a beach on the Mediterranean coast of North Africa and on camera offered each one the opportunity to renounce his faith in Christ and embrace Islam. All of them refused and had their lives taken for their refusal. When it came to the turn of the one African man who was not previously a believer, he responded, “Their God is my God,” and forfeited his life as well. The story of the incredible faithfulness and courage of these men is still told throughout that region to inspire others to follow Jesus as well. 

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