Against the Wind

I am fascinated by the art of sailing and by the power of wind.  I am even more impressed by the image a sailboat can provide to us all as we face the “windy days” of our lives.  I’ve said it before, but was reminded yesterday as I watched the sail races at Corpus Christi harbor.  In the midst of an ongoing wind, these able sailors are able to spin their boats around on a dime, with great expertise, all because they know how to use the wind, the very thing that would keep them from advancing.  It all boils down to how you take advantage of the situations that we face.

We face life’s light winds, breezy days, even gale force winds, and if we know how to harness that power, we can take the risk and move forward.  We can “fly across the waves” with little stopping us because we know what to do.  Here’s my point- when the winds of life are blowing, pull out the sail of your faith, set it, and watch God get you to some amazing places!  Quickly!  You need not fear, just trust that you will see great results.

Makes one start to wonder why the Holy Spirit was made known to people in the form of wind at Pentecost….hmmm.

 

 

 

 

Your Best Day Ever!

The above picture was from a few years back when I had the privilege of preaching to a group on Mt. Carmel in Israel, the same place Elijah did battle with the priests and where God sent fire to consume all of the altars and prove who really was in charge.  I have to admit I was nervous about waving my hands around too much!

One of the most interesting things that I have to deal with each day as I know you do as well is making choices as to what gets done and what does not.  No complaints here, but as the Lead Pastor of a growing and thriving South Texas congregation it takes a lot of time and energy to make sure things are being planned, deadlines are being met, and our future is cheerfully being planned.  It is a blessing to be part of such a dynamic situation!

I know this is the case for everyone else as well, but it goes without saying that you have to choose what gets done first, and then move into other things, in order to get everything into the day.  I have discovered some great ways to make things happen, thereby getting more into each day.   As a result, more is being accomplished and there is an increase of satisfaction with the tasks at hand.

Yet my best day ever is the day when I let my Lord and Savior Jesus do the heavy lifting.  I suspect Elijah felt the same, but my life of faith is a partnership with Him, His grace guides my life, shapes my being, defines my personhood.  In all of that, when I realize through prayer I need to be letting Him be God in my life, and at the same time, I do everything I know is within my power to accomplish the tasks at hand, then I know I am having my best day ever!

I have some inside information to share, at least from my perspective.  I hope you might consider taking it to heart– your best day ever is today!  Never before in your life have you had such opportunity at your fingertips.  TODAY is your best day!  Live it!  Seize It!  Be confident tomorrow will be even better!  For me, it’s not because I a rocket scientist but I know who does the heavy lifting in my life.  For that, I get to be eternally grateful to my Lord.  I invite you to do the same!

A New Day!

 

This beautiful photograph shot in the early morning as the fog was cloaking the corn made me think as I took the shot, “I wonder what God has in store today?”  When the morning starts as beautifully as this, how can you not wonder what blessings will be abounding?  At the same time, being a veteran of the human experience, I also recounted those who would be facing the biggest crisis in their lives, medically, physically, even spiritually!  I paused to take in the beauty, and remember all in prayer that God would right the wrongs and ease the pain of those who cannot make sense of the situation they face.

It’s the thought of the gift of a new day-a new start-a new beginning- it really doesn’t matter what you name it, it is more the God-given gift of being able to do it differently on THIS day!  I have long loved to take pictures of the sunset, especially over the water, but I think I am becoming more of a convert to taking a shot of the morning sun just peeking over the horizon line.  It inspires me to drop to my knees in thanksgiving to a God who sets the universe in motion, and gifts us all with a brand new day.  What a blessing!

Live in the power of what God has given you today!  Don’t waste a minute of the precious gift you have!

But I cry to you for help, O LORD; in the morning my prayer comes before you. Psalm 88:13 NIV

Joy

Put this ice cream sundae in front of just about anybody and you’ll see their face light up with anticipation and maybe even a little joy!  Joy is an emotion that Christians seem to fall short of in their day to day existence, and the reason I raise the thought is that somehow, in all of life, a Christian ought to be able to experience joy in their lives.

Others ought to be able to experience it as well, for what I know of joy, it is only real when it is contagious.  It is something that fully engages the heart, and when we are truly joyful, it finds its way to the outside of our being.  Another way to say that is that if we are joyful, our face will know it.  Why isn’t that the case?

I sometimes wonder if joy is a commodity we have become convinced is unattainable.  Maybe like the center of a archery target, or the pin on a green we’d love to get a hole in one on, but know better.  When joy is placed into the “unattainable ” category, we miss its purpose in our life altogether.  When we become removed from joy, when it is but a goal and not something readily achieved, we miss what God intends for our lives.  God’s gracious gift of salvation ought lift our hearts!

Think about the last time you were knock down, dragged out joyful!  If you can’t recall it, something might be wrong.  Dwell in the Father’s Word a while.  Hear of the plans made for you since the beginning of time.  Recall the mighty deeds that God brings to bear on the human situation.  Remember that God has called you by name, and gifted you with the inheiritance of the Kingdom.  Let the Spirit dwell in you and let that joy be in your heart, replacing the gloom and doom scenarios so “socially correct” these days.  Listen to the liturgy- “Lift up your hearts.”

For me, it’s not a case of something I ought to be experiencing occasionally.  It has to be a place I dwell, I reside in all of the time.  It speaks to my focus on what God has done in my life, how the grace and work of Jesus impacts my thoughts, and how the Holy Spirit provides clarity when I focus on the Word that God provides.  It’s not that I serve an angry God, but a God of second chances.  So why the long face?

Joy is mentioned well over 200 times in Scripture. Live in it!

“Be joyful always.”  1 Thessalonians 5:16 NIV

(And for those who just gotta know- the sundae is from Wilson’s in Door County, Wisconsin.)

God’s creative hand

Far away from the steel and concrete of our cities of the world lies a beach with sand upon it.  This picture I snapped at the northern portions of South Padre Island in the great state of Texas has amazed me at the intricacy of detail and how the wind has combined and sculpted this ever-changing array of beauty, for anyone who goes looking for it.  I know I’ve blogged about this before, but somehow I’m drawn back today.

God’s creative hand is all over my life, and I think the same holds true for us all.  It is more a matter of where we find ourselves looking.  We think we have accomplished great “works of art” in our lives, and perhaps we have, but can it lift a finger to what is pictured above?  I often wonder if some of more remote regions of the world, like this South Padre Island beach, are the place God’s creative hand “sketches” for the fun of it.  I often wonder if God whose marvelous creativity is portrayed in front of us, uses this erosive process of wind and water to produce grand landscapes of beauty.

These days living life can seem to be one of those “erosive moments” that you might be facing.  Take heart, for we all live those moments.  Economic ups and downs, the loss of wealth and way of life, joblessness, homelessness, you name it-all are processes that seem to wear us down.

To that, God draws elaborate pictures in the sand with the remains of what has been worn down.  God might even us the process, and even more amazing, might use US after we have been through these struggles.  Faith informs us God’s heart is redemptive-we are not forsaken to live in the stink of our existence.  God’s son Jesus, is our King!

When all is said and done, I think our lives are shaped by what we look at, and as such, where our eyes lead our hearts.  If we can see the beauty of the Creator manifested in the contrasting grains of sand, we might just see it when we are faced with challenges and somehow find the resilience to endure.  God dwells with us, grace abounds, and we are not alone.  A mighty God who loves and cares for us, reaches out to us all to invite us to do something different for a change.

God invites us to look to Him!  Acknowledge all that is prepared for us as we live our lives is truly because of His call on our lives.  Wow!  Perhaps in our looking, both at creation and the Words of the Creator in Scripture, our eyes will lead our heart to discover the massive activity all around us- by the artistic, creative hand of a gracious, caring, and loving God.

Indeed, the very hairs on your head are numbered.  Don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.  Luke 12:7 NIV

The Politics of the Ditch

One of life’s most interesting places to meet people is in the “Ditch”.  To give it geographic co-ordinates, it would describe that area on either side of a highway.  As a former Firefighter/EMT whose Department responsibility included a stretch of a busy Illinois interstate highway, I had the privilege of meeting many people in various stages of distress, but all, to a person, were in the Ditch.

As reports were filed, the common question of “What happened?” almost always led to a statement of mis-belief.  It would go something like this- if I could combine them all into one thought- “I was driving along the highway, and then all of a sudden, I found myself in the Ditch.”   Not sure of how, but willing to admit their presence there.  I always smiled to myself at the prospects of the politics of the Ditch.  We are never sure how we got there, but almost always, we have to admit  that we are there.

We’d almost always get things resolved, tow trucks called, highways cleared, and then everyone would head back to the station.  Until the next call.  And then we’d do it all over again.  The Ditch would claim yet another into its mysterious realm.  Day after day.  Week after week.

Something behind these thoughts is what it bringing them to the front of my mind and into the words on this blog.  Getting out of our cars and into our lives, we find ourselves in the most interesting of places.  The Ditch.  We can’t explain how, but here we are.  It is as if we just looked away for a moment, and “bam!”  It happened.

For many, they can quickly recover from their accidental visit to the Ditch.  With the appropriate help, and with a little time, they are back on their way.  Yet others, if you can believe this, find the Ditch a good place to be.  They want to go exploring.  They want to meet the others who are Ditch residents as well.  They might even want to go deeper into the Ditch with those fancy 4 wheelers.  They even encourage others to join them on their excursion away from the highway.

It takes but a momentary glance away from what God is inviting us to consider to find ourselves heading off into the Ditches of the world.  And once there, we see others who have for whatever reason ended in the exact place as we have.  Here’s a critical point I think-  It’s what we do to get back onto the road toward that heavenly home that matters.  Too many times we linger in the Ditches of the world.  We deliberately chose to stay off the path we know we really should be on, even to the point we know we are risking ever finding our way home.  The politics of the Ditch deceive us into thinking being “off-road” is a good and exciting place to be.  The politics of the Ditch begin to replace what we know in our hearts we should be all about. The politics of the Ditch quickly replace our desires to follow the highway to our heavenly home.

The politics of the Ditch effect people, groups, churches, even denominations and multiple denominations all the same time.  We get lost in looking away, and we refuse to take the steps necessary to get back onto the right road.  We find ourselves stuck in the Ditch, and we dig ourselves in deeper by asking all of the wrong questions.

The children of Israel fell into the bondage of slavery to Egypt.  and when it was finally time to the leave the Ditch (Egypt) they fought with Moses at every chance to remind him this wasn’t what they were used to.  And as it has been said before, God chose the wilderness time to be the time His people who had come out of Egypt, would have to spend to get the Egypt out of them.

It happens.

Might the world be a better place if we took more time and energy paying attention to what we might become following God’s “highway” as opposed to finding ourselves lost in the Ditch?  If you have any doubts, watch the morning TV shows.

It may happen, but we don’t have to succomb to the politics of the Ditch.  That’s a deception made for us by one who would rather encourage us to look away than to follow.  The simple plan of salvation presented in the gospels of the Bible might be a place to remind us of God’s way.  Perhaps we all need to be reminded that the way of the world is really the Ditch.

 

“As for me and my family, we will serve the Lord.” Joshua 24:15 NLT

Obedience

Obedient.

What images are conjured up when we think about that word? Maybe some soldiers carrying out orders?  Stopping at the side of the road when the police flashers are behind your car?   I hope this doesn’t reveal anything psychological about me when I admit to it, but when I hear the word, I think of a child doing things as they are told.  I don’t see it as coercion or anything like that.  I see a trusting relationship where the child participates.  It is equally interesting that at he same time-I’m thinking of a child being obedient, I can better describe it in terms of what they are not doing.  Yet I think defining obedience with disobedience in not really adequate.
“While Jesus was here on earth, he offered prayers and pleadings, with a loud cry and tears, to the one who could rescue him from death.  And God heard his prayers because of his deep reverence for God.  Even though Jesus was God’s Son, he learned obedience from the things he suffered.  In this way, God qualified him as a perfect High Priest, and he became the source of eternal salvation for all those who obey him.” Hebrews 5: 7-9 NIV

Does obedience come from suffering?  Does it come from a positive relationship with someone?  Does it come when the bottom drops out of our “expectations?”  I get a sense that what is described into the Hebrews was an attitude that Jesus had with the Father.  Although he was divine, he subjected himself into a time of suffering to learn obedience.  That might now look like a relational word, that Jesus built up a empowering relationship by “hanging in there” and trusting in what God in mind.  No matter what.

Does our earthly suffering bring us closer to that obedience, or does it make us throw in the towel and walk away?  When we wait on God’s plan, are we willing to be molded, pressed, shaped, and even put through up against the gates of hell itself in order to learn how to trust God and his provision for us all?  Most people don’t have the stuff for that these days.  Certainly, many denominations struggle in the same manner.  They miss the power of simply letting God guide, shape, mold, and direct us.  We have to have a time to interject our thoughts into the argument.

Jesus did not.  He endured the suffering.  He walked through the pain.

He was obedient.

The Grand Deception

I took this picture in Orlando a few years back and it recently popped up on a screen saver to remind me why I took this in the first place.  It’s my humble opinion that the world presents us with a story line that we begin to fall for, even believe, when we think we all have to be the same.  Our “sameness” lowers the expectation that we might have for life, making things a bit blander in our life.  There is a dumbing down that occurs when we all jump on the bandwagon in order to be like one another.

The grand deception is that we believe this line of thought.  Somehow, we do what others do.  Our social media outlets which we all use share ideas at light-speed which we take for our own and follow because someone else follows them as well.  We live in a culture that lifts up “average” as normative.

I think we are deceived!  What part of the Divine creativity is not working when we are all copies of each other?  Instead, would it not be more in keeping with the King’s creativity if we would embrace the diversity a bit more in our lives?  Can we somehow give ourselves the permission to be the power-packed different from society type?  Are we ever listening to God closely enough to hear a part of the divine plan in our lives, that we are created exactly the way we are created to be exactly who we are.

Avoid the grand deception!  Use this day as the day you celebrate your awesome uniquely you reality!  Rest in the power of God’s love in your life, and spend more time seeking how to be true to who you are and less time trying to fit in the blur of others.  You might surprise yourself!

“But as for me, I will always have hope; I will praise you more and more.  My mouth will tell of your righteousness, of your salvation all day long, though I know not its measure”  Psalm 71:14-15  NIV

Letting Go and Letting God

This morning I received an interesting blog from ARE which bemoans the fact that there is something terribly wrong.  It seems there is an epidemic of what I’ll call hopelessness that is sweeping the church these days. It appears that many, including yours truly, at times miss what I am going to call the tides of life.

Twice a day the oceans shift according to lunar cycles and the grace of science to bring in the tide, and then to have it recede.  That means four times a day things change.  Life brings with it a cyclic nature, and we have to look at where we fix our gaze to see how well we will live.

I’m fairly happy go lucky, have a beautiful and loving wife, great sons and wonderful daughters-in-law, and life presents no major challenges along the way.  If you’ll permit me, I want to describe this type of attitude to living as my “bobber” approach to life.  At times I tend to float on top of things, almost oblivious to the tides of life.  Up and down local doesn’t matter when one is at the top of their game.

At other times, I either change my focus, or other people change that focus for me.  I begin to get myself into a fixed state.  Rather than being on top of things, I’m in a different place, and the natural flow of things is disrupted.  Life changes dramatically for me when that happens.  I fix my position in life- let’s say at low tide- and twice a day I’m doused by bad planning.  If I fix my position in life at high tide, twice a day the bottom falls out from below me and everything falls apart-sounds like Mondays, right?

I’m not for a moment belittling anyone who does what I do.  I’m just noting that when my focus on life changes from dynamic to static, I am headed for more trouble than it’s worth.  Instead of being on top of the situation (my bobber analogy) I choose at times to fix my position which I think would be akin to building a house right on the shoreline of the ocean.  It’s just the wrong place to be, and I’ll be reminded of that at least four times a day.

The tides of life challenge us to be wise in our choices as to what we spend our time thinking about.  Vigilance in remaining dynamic seems to work so much better than being static.  The trick is to recognize the tidal side of things in advance!  I realize that some are not in a position to be able to recognize the dynamic side of things, as I find myself at times.  Yet our common brokenness is best served when we turn to God to be our provider, to somehow gently get us to release our grip on the controls of life and turn them over God’s divine control.

Perhaps at that moment, and maybe even better said, when we let go and let God, we are in the best of  places!

Easter: The death of death

This American flag flies quietly and proudly over the gravesite of President Herbert Hoover and his good wife Lou in West Branch Iowa.  The Presidential Library there is a fascinating view of a man whose quiet Quaker heart was bent on serving others, feeding the world’s hungry, all while taking tremendous heat for the rest of the woes of the world.  He lies in state in graves which overlook an area close to his place of birth.  He died.  We pay our respects for the good work that he and Lou did on behalf od our country.

Little wonder when the women came to the tomb that Easter morning nothing seemed right.  Jesus was supposed to be there.  He died.  They saw,  with their own eyes, the exact spot where they had placed him.  Now, with their own eyes, they saw he was not there.  They had a hard time hearing the angelic messengers telling them-actually reminding them what was going on.  We hear a bit later in the gospel Peter came and looked things over, and simply walked away, shaking his head.

That’s where the heart and mind of many people lock up. The evidence points to a direction that doesn’t make sense.  It cannot square with what they think they know based upon what they have seen.  Let’s cut to the chase-what Jesus accomplished on that Easter Sunday was tantamount to the death of death.  It no longer controls the sequence of events for humanity.  There is another chapter.  While the fat lady might have sung, there is at least another verse to the song!

Humanity struggles with the one dimensional understanding we all have with life.  We think we know, and therefore we let that guide our thoughts.  We think we have the answers based upon what we think. Obviously, the Trinity had other plans.  It is much larger than what we can stretch our heads around.  That’s why I think the church needs seven sundays in the Easter season.  We have a tendency to not “get it” and as a result “not live it.”

Don’t be standing there looking to make sense out of the situation.  Here is where your heart of faith needs to carry you to a new understanding-that the one and only foe of our lives, death itself, has been humiliated and defeated by the resurrection of Jesus.

He is not here, he is risen!  Death, frankly put, is out of business.  New life in Christ begins.  I bid you all a joyful Easter celebration.  And be joy filled!