Time with family

Thanksgiving is always a great time to be with family and eat too much food. This year, for the first time in many years, we drove to Iowa to spend the holiday with my family. It was great to see them all. It's the only time we can get a photo of everyone because those Iowans who don't move away also don't travel....so if we don't go to Iowa we won't see them. (If you're from Iowa you know what I mean....it's an Iowa thing.) Anyway, it was great to see my brother, Mitch and my sisters, Peggy and Suzy. No one talked about it, but I missed our younger brother, Marty, who passed away 4 years ago. The photo of us kids just didn't seem right without him.

Quote of the day

While visiting family this week I found an old copy of Francis Schaeffer's book, He is there and He is not silent. I was even more surprised to find that it was autographed. I haven't read this book in years, and was thrilled to have another copy, so I'm working my way through it again. With that brief intro here is the quote of the day from Francis' book:

"There is only one philosophy, one religion, that fills this need in all the world's thought, whether the East, the West, the ancient, the modern, the new, the old. Only one fills the philosophical need of existence, of being, and it is the Judaeo-Christian God- not just an abstract concept, but rather that this God is really there. He really exists. There is no other answer." -Francis Schaffer, pg. 13

Hard labour, guy stacking 20 bricks on his head

Message? You can always handle more than you think you can. It's just a matter of balance.

Front Fell Off

Time for a good laugh. Enjoy.

Saturday's cartoon

We live in a very interesting country where we get to see a peaceful transfer of power from one government to another. It's a very unusual thing in world history for a country to work this way, but this year has been a strange political year. I thought this cartoon expressed our reality well.

Exhausted!

We just got in from a long drive back from Iowa after a great Thanksgiving with our family. It was good to see family, but the 800 mile drive home is exhausting! I'm glad to be home, but I am worn out....I think I could sleep anywhere!

The great adventure

Life is an amazing adventure. I often feel I'm in a situation much like this photo....walking a tightrope, risking it all, to simply get through the day.

..................

But to be honest, in my attempts to survive the day, I often miss the beauty around me....all that God is doing, all that he has made. I miss it all because I'm just trying to keep my balance and not fall. How can you enjoy all that God is doing when you're just trying to keep your balance? I think the thing I will regret when life is over is that I have focused so much on not falling I miss the wonderful view and amazing adventure.

.....................

I think this is the reality in many lives as I talk to people. They are just trying not to fall off the tightrope they are walking with work, kids, soccer, church, family time, homework, e-mails......and the list goes on. How much we miss when our focus is on keeping our balance.

..............

But then something happens...the rope is cut:

................

The company downsizes and we are laid off.

..................

Our mate gets sick and we spend the days in hospital.

............

A child rebels and suddenly we feel as if we are falling,

.........

and all our attempts at balance are suddenly meaningless in the light of the present crisis. The truth is that in those moments we most try to avoid we often find a new passion for God, a fresh relationship with him because we can no longer depend on ourselves, we can't do it without him...we need HIM. Once you find yourself at this time in life realize you are about to experience a portion of the great adventure.....you will discover that you wouldn't trade those difficult times for anything because it's in those moments that you find an intimacy in your walk with God.....you will begin to experience the great adventure we will be part of for eternity.

...............

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving! I hope you each

have a wonderful time with family and friends

during this holiday season.

Thankful, part 3

Thanksgiving day is a week away, so I want to take the week leading up to this American holiday to celebrate a few of the things I'm thankful for. I invite you to share your thoughts as well as we give thanks for all that God is and all he has done. This idea of being thankful is a daily practice for many of us, but with a holiday set aside to be thankful this is a great time to talk about all of God's blessings.............
.................

Part 3- I'm thankful that I can talk to God and he listens.

...........

One of the great invitations of the bible is for us to talk to God. We call it prayer, but it's very simply an invitation to come and visit with the creator. He invites us to talk to him anywhere, anytime about anything and he tells us he hears and listens. I'm thankful for a God who cares and listens.

.........

The world is a very lonely place at times. I see so many who are alone with no one who seems to care for them, but God does. Whether you are rich beyond your wildest dreams or homeless and sleeping under a bridge God cares about you and listens when you call. This week is a great time to simply talk to God and thank him. Don't wait for the prayer of thanks on Thursday, but talk to him often. He hears, he cares and he answers prayer.

....................

I'm so thankful that we have a God who listens when we call.

.................

Reference Rainbow

"When Christoph Römhild, a Lutheran pastor in Hamburg, Germany, sent Carnegie Mellon Ph.D. student Chris Harrison a list of 63,779 cross-references between the Bible's 1,189 chapters, the two became enthralled with elegantly showing the interconnected nature of Scripture. Each bar along the horizontal axis represents a chapter, with the length determined by the number of verses. (Books alternate in color between white and light gray.) Colors represent the distance between references. Graphic by Chris Harrison, Carnegie Mellon University."

"This article first appeared in November 22, 2008 issue of Christianity Today. Used by permission of Christianity Today International, Carol Stream, IL 60188."

You can view the article on their web site here.

..........

Thankful, part 2

Thanksgiving day is a week away, so I want to take the week leading up to this American holiday to celebrate a few of the things I'm thankful for. I invite you to share your thoughts as well as we give thanks for all that God is and all he has done. This idea of being thankful is a daily practice for many of us, but with a holiday set aside to be thankful this is a great time to talk about all of God's blessings.............

.................
Part 2- I'm thankful that God loves me.

...................

John 3:16 "This is how much God loved Mike: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life." (THE MESSAGE edited by Mike)

...............

One of the things we don't know about God is how he looks at us, how he feels about us. We don't know that unless he tells us. This short verse, the most familiar in the bible, tells me how God views me. Note that this verse was spoken by Jesus (God the son) himself. In other words he said, "I want you to know how much the father and I love you....we love you so much that we decided to give the most valuable gift imaginable to demonstrate that love, we decided to give ME (Jesus)." Jesus loved the Father so much that he obeyed and came, and he loved me so much that he died to save me....as I unpack this idea I get overwhelmed by how big God's love is for me. It's more than I can even imagine.
.............

Being loved without qualification, without expectation gives me a comfort, a peace, a hope that changes how I view God, myself and the world around me. I am loved not for what I have done, not for how I look, not for my money, not for my brains....I'm loved because God loves me.....that's it. What an amazing blessing, and I've only just shared with you a few drops from the ocean of his love for us. It's so much more than we can even understand. We are loved by the one who made us, and it's shown in his son who became a man and died for our sins.

.........

Today I'm thankful that God loves me.

..........

born to be blind

Being a motorcyclist myself I wondered where this video was going. It's very cute and I thought you would enjoy it.

Thankful, part 1

Thanksgiving day is a week away, so I want to take the week leading up to this American holiday to celebrate a few of the things I'm thankful for. I invite you to share your thoughts as well as we give thanks for all that God is and all he has done. This idea of being thankful is a daily practice for many of us, but with a holiday set aside to be thankful this is a great time to talk about all of God's blessings.

............

Part 1- I'm thankful that God is good.

.............

Psa 73:1 A Psalm of Asaph. Surely God is good to Israel, To those who are pure in heart!

..............

In his book, Knowledge of the Holy, A.W. Tozer wrote,

..............

"That God is good is taught or implied on every page of the Bible and must be received as an article of faith as impregnable as the throne of God. It is a foundation stone for all sound thought about God and is necessary to moral sanity. To allow that God could be other than good is to deny the validity of all thought and end ill the negation of every moral judgment. If God is not good, then there can be no distinction between kindness and cruelty, and heaven can be hell and hell, heaven. The goodness of God is the drive behind all the blessings He daily bestows upon us."us."

.............

For me, this is a foundational truth of Christianity. For us to have a good God is an amazing insight into the very core of our faith. Unlike many religions that put the burden on man to please and appease an angry god, our God is good and loves us. It's his goodness that invites us to approach him. His goodness is at the very core of all our theology- because he is good he made us, because he is good he sustains us, because he is good he saved us, because he is good and is always good I can approach him without fear. To say that God is good brings great peace to fearful hearts and great comfort to the broken and downcast. It's his goodness that engulfs all he has made. It's his goodness that is revealed in all that Jesus did and said. It's his goodness seen in the cross. It's his goodness that raised Jesus from the dead, and ultimately it's his goodness that will oversee the final judgment of each one of us.

...................

Later in his chapter on the goodness of God, A.W. Tozer wrote, "Always God's goodness is the ground of our expectation." By his own words he has told us he is good and that he never changes. It's his amazing goodness that I'm thankful for today. As many have said, almost to the point that we lose it's importance, God is good....ALL the time. Forever the God who made us demonstrates that at the very heart of his nature is an ultimate goodness that I want to be close to...that I want to emulate....that I want others to experience.

..........

Today I'm thankful that God is good.

................

Hangin' with celebrities

I live in a strange place. I live in a community where a number of nationally known Christian leaders live....people you would know if I told you their names. This morning I'm at a coffee shop we all frequent, and several of them have come in, and stopped by my table to say "Hi, Mike, how's it going?" We are all friends because of the ministry and because we run into each other so often. The interesting thing for these comments is not that I know them, but that they are just normal guys following God, serving him...it just happens they are very popular and very visible, but they all have feet of clay just like you and I do. We all struggle with life, kids, money and all the other stuff. They just have the added problem of being nationally known. I know we live in a "celebrity culture" but that's not what God's interested in...he's interested in our focus, worship and adoration being directed towards HIM, not towards a man or woman. I heard a message this week by Francis Chan in which he described a group of girls coming up to him after he spoke at a retreat to tell him that they liked him best of all the speakers at the retreat. In the message he admitted that his first response was to be flattered, and then it hit him....if they are focused on me they aren't focused on God, and he had to repent of his pride...of his sin of enjoying the glory meant for God. After all these years in life and ministry I have met and known many people of note, but the ones I think of most fondly are those who don't like the spotlight, but would rather focus the attention on Christ. Truthfully, when we are done with this life the only "celebrity" will be God himself and all the lights will be turned on him. I long for the day when he gets all the glory both in heaven and on earth....what a day that will be....

Rev 5:13 And every created thing which is in heaven and on the earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all things in them, I heard saying, "To Him who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb, be blessing and honor and glory and dominion forever and ever."

.............

Finally, some honesty!

An Australian company recently entered the overcrowded bottled water market knowing that it would be hard to stand out, so they chose the honesty route- it's just bottled water and here's another one.

I love their approach and the product. In the battle for the "water dollar" they would get mine. I just thought their approach was funny and well done....I know I would buy it!