Best quote of the day

Don't be ashamed to admit you were wrong. It means you have more sense than you had before. -Ray Pritchard

Anxiety

"Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.  And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus." -Philippians 4

Anxiety is at epidemic levels in our world.  We are anxious about everything!  We fear what's happening around us. We are fretful about our jobs, our marriages, our kids, our environment.  Our culture has created an environment of anxiety.  In the midst of so much lack around us the one thing that is abundant is anxiety!  We worry about everything!  

I should know.  I have gotten a PHD in worry. Like many of you I have mastered the art of worry and anxiety and taken it to new levels.  I find I often worry about not having anything to worry about.  Pretty pathetic isn't it?

In contrast to the way we live the bible tells us not to worry about anything!  Imagine such a crazy admonition from the pages of the Bible.  Doesn't God know what's going on in my life?  Doesn't he understand I have good reason to worry, to be anxious?  Of all people God should know what I'm going through.

He does.  And what he knows is this- anxiety is the result of lack.  Lack of resource.  Lack of power to resolve a problem. Lack of control over events. Lack creates anxiety. When I have no way to meet the need, no way to control the situation, no way to stop the war or prevent global warming anxiety sets in.

God's solution is simple....when anxiety rises realize you are depending on your own supply, control or power and not God's.  Stop, take a breath and go to God with your problems, your needs, your lack, your fears and talk to him.

One thing you need to know about God...he lacks NOTHING!  He has everything you need.  When anxiety rises it's your cue to pray, to talk to God and give your worries and anxieties to him.  His supply can resolve your lack. His peace can calm your anxiety. His power to take care of your problems will dissolve your fears.  

In a world of anxious people there are a handful who walk in peace.  They know what to do about anxiety.  They talk to God and trust him to resolve it for their good and His glory.  And he always does.

So, today, as anxiety sets in, just as it does for all of us, take a breath, step aside and visit with God about it all.  Give it to him and he will trade your anxiety for his peace.  He will resolve your worries with his peace and presence.  Pretty good trade, don't you think?  

Pride, humility, Jesus and me

I just picked up a new book today and am reading it with a frequent wince.  The author deals with pride and the example of Jesus we are called to emulate.  I'm greatly challenged and not a little convicted by the challenge of this book.  

Would I recommend it?  Yes, if you want to deal with difficult issues in your life.  

Once in a great while I read a book that challenges me and convicts me.  This is one of those books.

Thankful

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day in America.  It's an annual day that had it's beginnings with a group of pilgrims celebrating their survival in a new land with food and thanksgiving.  Today is the day we gather for a traditional meal of turkey and a dozen other things that are not only delicious, but required for a real Thanksgiving meal.  The reason for the first celebration was thanks to God.  It's not the reason many celebrate it now, but giving thanks to God is a key element to the Judeo-Christian faith.  Throughout the bible giving thanks is an acknowledgment that what we have comes from God.  In fact the bible says that all things come from God's gracious hand.  Take a few minutes tomorrow and thank God for something in your life.  He gave it all to you, it only seems right that you take a moment and thank him.  

What are you looking at?

A lot of life is all about what you are looking at...how you see things.

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Do you see the problems or the opportunity?

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Do you see the wall or the window?

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Are you overwhelmed by worries and missing the joys?

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What are you looking at? What are you focused on? I must often follow David's example in Psalms and intentionally change my focus. If I focus on the "wall" (my problem) I get depressed, discouraged, and can't see what God is doing, but if I look out the "window" I see beyond my own knowledge and abilities and am able to see God at work.....then everything changes. For me the word of God is like that window, it's gives me a new, expanded, different and amazing view on my situation. God's word and his work in it gives me a vision of what's possible beyond my wall. Here's an example of David's own change of heart because of his change of vision as he finds himself looking at a wall....

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Psa 42:1-8- For the choir director. A Maskil of the sons of Korah. As the deer pants for the water brooks, So my soul pants for You, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God; When shall I come and appear before God? My tears have been my food day and night, While they say to me all day long, "Where is your God?" These things I remember and I pour out my soul within me. For I used to go along with the throng and lead them in procession to the house of God, With the voice of joy and thanksgiving, a multitude keeping festival. Why are you in despair, O my soul? And why have you become disturbed within me? Hope in God, for I shall again praise Him For the help of His presence. O my God, my soul is in despair within me; Therefore I remember You from the land of the Jordan And the peaks of Hermon, from Mount Mizar. Deep calls to deep at the sound of Your waterfalls; All Your breakers and Your waves have rolled over me. The LORD will command His lovingkindness in the daytime; And His song will be with me in the night, A prayer to the God of my life.

Living upside down

Whenever I read Jesus' words in Luke 6 I have to stop and calibrate. 

It's difficult. 

We live in a world that's been turned upside down from what God intended. If anyone lives as God meant us to live we look different. We look upside down. Here's the passage that always makes me stop to look at how I'm living in this upside down world...

Luke 6:27 "But I tell you who hear me: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. 29 If someone strikes you on one cheek, turn to him the other also. If someone takes your cloak, do not stop him from taking your tunic. 30 Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. 31 Do to others as you would have them do to you.

These words are so contrary to the way our world works and yet these are the life choices for a Christ follower. 

Every sentence of Jesus' words challenges our rights to ourselves. 

He calls us to love others in such a way that we give up all our rights to our own way, our own things, our own best and yet, at the end, we see the intent...Jesus is calling us to treat others in the way we want to be treated whether that ever happens or not. This is the way Jesus lived out his life. He lived these verses much to the confusion of those around him. Jesus turned the other cheek, he blessed when cursed, he showed us the final tally of this kind of life. 

It's a life that seems upside down, but if we live it out it will turn our world right side up.

Saturday's cartoon

Have a great Thanksgiving!

The devil's best weapon

The devil's best weapon to undermine and destroy the church and the love of God in the body of Christ is the fear of man.  

Fear pits one man against another.    

Fear divides.  

Fear separates.  

Fear breeds mistrust.  

Love is the antidote to fear. Fear undermines and destroys the love of God in any church family.  Love calms fear and draws the family of God together in unity.  

If the enemy can sow seeds of fear and lack of trust then love is lost, the body is compromised and confusion sets in.  Soon fear isolates and the church family has lost its focus on their #1 command- love one another.

It's sad watching people who love God living in fear and mistrust of other people who also love God.  What's wrong with this picture?  How have we let the enemy defeat the body of Christ with the fear of man?  Why don't we protest, draw in closer, turn towards one another instead of away from each other?  

Instead we let fear win the day and it makes us each vulnerable.  It weakens the body of Christ.  Imagine that...allowing the enemy of our souls the opportunity to defeat the body of Christ with such a divisive thing like fear.  

How should we respond?  What can we do?  How do we once more become the body of Christ, loving one another and saying "no" to the enemy's attempt to make us afraid of each other? 

How should we respond?  John 13:34-35- “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”  

"As I have loved you".....what a wonderful example to follow.  It would quickly defeat the devil's best weapon.  The love of God....it's the perfect antidote to the fear of man and the one thing that identifies us as the family of God.  It's our greatest need in the church today.

"Thankful" by the Skit Guys

Faithful

I am an early morning person.  Often, in these winter months, I'm leaving the house while it's still dark.  As I get to the car I often look up at the early morning stars with awe.  In the silence of the early morning, even while no one watches, God is faithful.  Every morning he is faithful.  The witnesses to his faithful love are the morning stars when I wake.

Some would say you don't need God for that.  It's just the way the universe is, but why is it so predictable?  Why is everything so stable, so constant?  This is the not the way a chaotic, random universe would work....but it does.  Someone, something has built into this amazing universe a consistency, a stability that is amazing to even the scientists.  It is the witness to a faithful God who holds all things together and witnesses to me each morning that he is unchanging as I look up at the stars...still in their places...just where they are supposed to be, just where they were the day before.

Your love, LORD, reaches to the heavens, your faithfulness to the skies.  -Psalm 36:4-6 

Faithful.  What a great thing to know about God.  Ever the same, showing his power and faithfulness to us by the early morning sky that is always there and whispers in the quiet of the cool morning air that a faithful God is caring for the universe he has made.  

Thank you, Lord.  I often take your faithfulness for granted, but I'm so grateful for it. Thank you.

Reflections

Yesterday I turned 62.

Life passes quickly!

I never expected to get this old.  I never thought it would come so quickly!

It seems I just begin and now I'm nearly finished.  

So, may I share a few reflections from 62 years of life?

- The thing you fear rarely ever happen. 
- God has always been kind.
- Good friends are rare and hard to find.
- A Godly mate is more important than all the money in the world.
- Money doesn't make you happy.
- Pursuing happiness doesn't make you happy.
- Happy isn't as important as everyone thinks.
- Pain is a good thing.
- Discouragement is normal.
- Hope is vital.
- There is a God, only one, and I know him personally.  He wants us all to know him.
- Life is not about what you have. It's about who you are.
- The only eternal things you will ever encounter are people.
- Most of us live in fear most of the time.
- Listening is more important than talking.
- Life is short, enjoy every moment.

Just a few thoughts after only 62 years.....

Saturday cartoon

Thankful, Day 9

Today I am thankful for God's love.  

It's a simple thing, this idea of love, but there is so much to it. It's a feeling, a decision, but at the core it's a need!  We need love to thrive.  Give a baby good food, water, clothing and every other need, but deprive them of love and they will be emotionally devastated, socially handicapped and ever needy.  Love is as essential to the human as food or water.  Without it we simply don't really live.  

As I write this I think of someone who grew up in an orphanage.  They got food, clothing, and the other "essentials", but they never received love.  It's has affected every area of their life.

The love of God is essential for a healthy life.  

Today I'm thankful for the love of God.  Today I'm thankful that God loves me.

Thankful, Day 8

Today I'm thankful for dogs.

There really isn't much more I need to say.  Dogs speak for themselves.  They are a rich blessing to those they own.  They don't talk back, they are always glad to see you and they like you even when you're unlikable.

Today I'm thankful for dogs.