Tag: Humility

Digging in Deeper: Obadiah 3-4

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“Your arrogant heart has deceived you, you who live in clefts of the rock in your home on the heights, who say to yourself, ‘Who can bring me down to the ground?’ Though you seem to soar like an eagle and make your nest among the stars, even from there I will bring you down. This is the Lord’s declaration.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

On occasion I’ll help my boys work on something that they’ve never done before. Oftentimes it is something that I have done and know how to do. In these instances it is not uncommon for them to get a little resistant to my help. Parents, give me an, “Amen.” They protest that they don’t need me because they know how to do it. In my more gracious moments (I don’t have those all the time…) I let them go a bit and help them up when they fail. But their pride can be pretty maddening at times. Sometimes it is downright infuriating. Our heavenly Father feels the same way.

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Digging in Deeper: Micah 6:8

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“Mankind, he has told each of you what is good and what it is the Lord requires of you: to act justly, to love faithfulness, and to walk humbly with your God.”‬‬ (CSB – Read the chapter) 

Have you ever tried to read one of those End User License Agreements you normally just click “accept” and ignore when downloading some program onto your computer? I have. Most are just line after line of legalese that eventually make your eyes go cross. It would be nice if some company would offer a kind of three-point summary of it along with the link to read the full text. EULA’s are bad enough. Have you ever felt that way about the Bible? It sure would be nice to have a summary of all of that, wouldn’t it? 

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Connecting Like Jesus

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This week we kicked off a brand new series taking a fresh look at who God has designed us to be as a church. The message is focused on our church, but the ideas apply to every church and every follower of Jesus. Who did God make you to be and how can you become more that person? It starts with connecting with people. Jesus was a master at that. Learn more here about how He did it and how we can join Him in it.

Connecting like Jesus – John 4:1-26

Our culture is a maze of contradictions.  Think about it: We have never been more connected in terms of technology and social media than we are right now and the webs are getting tighter and tighter all the time.  Movies like Enemy of the State with Will Smith and Gene Hackman that envisioned a slightly futuristic reality in which the government can track every single movement we make is now not only completely true in terms of what they can do, it’s actually even more true now than it was then.  Social media and other tech giants are working on algorithms that not only know where you’ve been, but attempt to predict where you’ll go next in order to allow advertisers to even more closely and personally target their efforts. 

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Morning Musing: Psalm 138:6

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“For though the Lord is high, he regards the lowly, but the haughty he knows from afar.” (ESV – Read the chapter) ‬‬

Have you ever met someone who was too big for their britches? We like to give lip service to the idea that people are people no matter who or where they are, but in reality we don’t really believe that. We don’t believe it whether we think we are something or whether we’re sure we aren’t. Our celebrity culture makes this as plain as day. Celebrities are a little (or sometimes a lot) like spoiled children. The worst of them act in the zany ways they do not only because they think they can, but because all the people around them enable them to do it by catering to them. 

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Morning Musing: 2 Samuel 20:2

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“So all the men of Israel withdrew from David and followed Sheba the son of Bichri. But the men of Judah followed their king steadfastly from the Jordan to Jerusalem.”  (ESV – Read the chapter) 

Unresolved issues become the fuel for future conflicts. There’s an old adage about conflict resolution that heralds time as a kind of universal problem-solver. Far from being true, though, this idea is nothing more than a dangerous fantasy. When we face a conflict or even a tension in a relationship, if things are not brought to a resolution, we should not consider the matter resolved. Time is no healer of wounds. Conflicts which are not resolved, but rather are simply left alone do not solve themselves. They become festering pools of bitterness that eventually threaten to poison everything around them and become the lens through which we view everything else in our lives. 

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