My Ramblings

In Psalm 18, David is is listing several things that God has done for him in his life. The psalmist ends verse 35 with this phrase, "...you stoop down to make me great." As I was reading, this image struck me; the image of God stooping down (squatting down to reach David) in order to raise up, not just pick up, but to "make...great." I am reminded of the great humility (humbleness) of God. I think I tend to reserve humility for Christ the Son. He "emptied himself", he was "numbered with the transgressors", he washed the disciples feet, he gave over his life, etc. God is humble. Jesus was God in the flesh, behaving the way God behaves, loving as God loves, giving as God gives, stooping as God stoops; Jesus is God, in all his power, authority, and humility. Further, the stooping image is not of God just reaching down to pick up David. That is covered in verse 16. Here, there is much more involved. God is making something, making someone. ...

“Your loving kindness is better than life." Taken from an ancient psalm and more contemporary Christian song. Often I equate the good things in life with God’s loving kindness. The close parking space, the friendly receptionist, the sale at the grocery store, the pay raise, the warm reception at church, the green lights, etc. all point to God’s favor warmly extended our way. Who could argue with God’s loving kindness expressed so beautifully and practically on behalf of mankind. Even Scripture reminds us that we should be thankful and realize where the good things come from, “Every good and perfect gift comes down from the father of heavenly lights.” To go a step further, we can begin to equate these “blessings” with God’s communication with us. We pray, talk to God, and don’t hear a response with our ears, but allow God to speak through circumstances. For example, everything falls into place for a new job and we "hear" that as God speaking to us to take ...

Again this morning, I am amazed at the spiritual blindness of some. In the Gospel of John, Chapter 5, Jesus has just healed a man who has been an invalid for 38 years. Now that he is healed, Jesus tells him to pick up his mat (he used it to regularly lie in wait by the pool at Bethesda) and go home. This man has not been able to do such a thing in 38 years. It is a miracle. However, there is a problem. The day all this happened is a Sabbath and people are not supposed to work on the Sabbath -- this man is breaking the law by carrying his mat. The religious leaders of the day scold the man for his actions and he tells them, "The man who healed me told me to pick up my mat and go home." The leaders respond, "Who told you to pick it up and walk?" They completely overlook the healing. They skip over the miracle -- this man has not been able to walk for 38 years and today he is walking!! These religious leaders are so offended by the man's actions that they ...

A simple question. If only the answer could be so simple. Jesus, as recorded in the Gospel of John, encounters a man who has been an invalid for 38 years -- longer than I have been alive. Jesus asks the man his simple question, but instead of "yes" the man begins to make excuses... "I have no one to help me," "I am too slow getting in the pool," "someone else always gets in before me." Thankfully, Jesus gets beyond the excuses and hears the man's heart, "YES, but..." The man wants to be healed, but simply did not see a way out of his situation, except for the waters at the pool of Bethesda. His focus on this one "answer" blinded him from seeing THE answer. He could see no other alternative. How often do I miss what God wants to do in my life, my family, my church-family, simply because I can't see. I think I know the answer and if Jesus would just lower me into the pool, before anyone else gets in, then all wo...

I can't believe it's here; the first day of my six-week sabbatical. The months leading up to this day have been busy and hectic. I have put a lot of extra time and effort into preparing myself and the church for this extended absence. In thinking over these things on my drive home yesterday a couple things came to mind. First, I am only going to be gone six weeks, this should not be such a big deal. The reason the church has made such a big deal of it is because I have made a big deal of it. I think a couple of things play into the difficulty of going away: one, I am the only pastor and only full-time employee on staff at the church and two, due to my own failure to equip the saints for the work of the ministry, I still do a majority of the tasks necessary to keep the church business and the church services running from week to week. Taking this break has forced me to delegate many of the tasks that should have been delegated a long time ago. Also, during this time, I am...

My six-week sabbatical begins today. It is strange to think that I won't be back in the office for over a month. The Potomac District , in its effort to plant new churches and rejuvenate plateauing congregations is encouraging the pastors of the district to occasionally take time to rest. Each year the District approves a certain number of sabbaticals. Of course, ministers can take a break any time they like, but with District approval comes funds to help pay for some travel during the time off. The meeting that this sabbatical was approved the board changed the district's sabbatical guidelines. Under the former guidelines, the District has certain expectations of its ministers on sabbatical. To the best of my memory, some of those guidelines are as follows: ministers should take at least four consecutive weeks off ministers should not preach for at least two of those weeks in a row two weeks of the sabbatical should be used for a family vacation the minister should spend time...

It's been a tough week personally. I took some time just before Easter looking at pics from last Easter when my sister and nephew were in town for a visit. We enjoyed Easter Service at church, the kids loved the Easter egg hunt. Then, we drove over to the hospital to visit mom. We took some pics of the three boys in their Easter clothes sitting on the bed with their grandma. She hated the idea of being photographed in the hospital. She always cared so much about how she looked and never thought she looked great, but we talked her into allowing the pics. I'm glad she did although looking at them now makes me sad. Little did we know that Easter Sunday, Resurrection Sunday, that just over two weeks later, mom would be gone. I miss you, mom.

She is forcing herself to eat today; two swallows of tomato soup and three minutes to rest before another bite. Talking is difficult and even oxygen aided breath is short. She is so weak and tired. The morphine helps with pain, but she still feels nauseated and can't sleep. How do people do this? How does a person gracefully watch his or her mother die? Seconds feel like hours; days feel like weeks. I know she is ready to be home with her Husband, Father, Savior, Best Friend. I know He is ready to see her. What is He waiting on? He doesn't have to wait any longer. I know He wants to see her, I know He is good, I know He has a grand plan. Why this lingering?

Our 4 year old recently shared some great wisdom with us and I thought I should pass it on. School has started this week and our oldest son began a new grade in a new school. That will be its own post. However, as my wife and I were trying to prepare him for his transition, we talked with him about what he wanted to wear. His response: "My skin." trying to avoid the question. Our 4-year-old responded, "You can't wear naked." We still laugh about his wise words. So, if you can't decide what you want to wear, just remember, You can't wear naked.

About two months ago, after much prodding by my wife, I went to have a physical, my first one in several years. Aside from the occasional cold and stress headache, I am perfectly fine. I am a little overweight, but I have been working on that. According to my tests, I have good blood pressure, good good cholestoral levels, good bad cholesterol levels, etc. The only bad thing, besides my weight, was a high liver reading; not very high, just a little high. The doctor wanted me to wait a month and retake the blood tests.  I retook the tests and the liver reading was still a little high. The doctor ordered a sonogram to check my liver and ran extensive blood work to begin ruling out possible causes. After all the tests and the visits to the doctor, it was discovered that I have some slight fatty infiltration on my liver, which accounts for the high blood count. If the fat gets worse, it could possibly lead to serious problems. In short, I need to lose weight. I did not feel sick...

I spent the last week with my family vacationing along the coast of North Carolina (go Heels!). It was a great vacation. I missed two Sundays at our church and had a lot of work to do before I left to make sure everything was in order. I accomplished almost everything I intended to, and the stuff I didn't accomplish, I just left. Normally, when I go on vacation, it takes at least two days to switch from work mode to vacation mode, longer if things are left undone. I vacate for a couple of days and then I start thinking about work again. It was not that way this year. I worked late on Friday, but once work was done, it was done. I was able to let work go and not think about it again for over a week. I have no explanation for this victory, except that God was helping me. I thank God for that help, and all his mercy, love, grace, etc. God helped in another way as well. Many of you are aware of my former struggle with lust and addiction to pornography. The beac...

Wednesday was an interesting day for me. I have a monthly meeting with a few other senior/lead pastors for prayer and mutual accountability. This past Wednesday was our third meeting. Our times together have been helpful and encouraging and God has blessed our praying for one another. I joined this group especially for my need for and conviction about personal accountability in the lives of Christians. I won't speak of what is going on with the other guys in the group, but I will mention what's going on with me. Our times of sharing personal struggles, etc. for prayer have been good, but not great. We have only met two other times, but we are still only sharing surface-level struggles, things that won't be too bad of a reflection on us. This level of sharing is expected, but not really helpful.  Over the last couple of weeks, I feel like the Lord has been speaking to me about taking the next step toward vulnerability with the group. As we went around the group sharing...

What is it with today's business world? My wife and I were commenting today on a situation we faced. She and I had a conference call scheduled for today with a company we are hiring to revamp our church's website. Now, four hours after the time for the call, we still can not reach the company or the rep that we were to speak with. Granted, there may be a good reason for the missed meeting and I have been praying for the rep, in case something is wrong. On the other hand, this has become normal protocol for several of the businesses I have tried to work with here in Maryland. We have gone so far as to get referrals and check references only to sign a contract with a company and have them fail to follow through on their work. This has happened on several occasions. My wife is also a teacher and recounted for me the message she gives to students regarding the importance of punctuality. "When you get in the work world, being late will not be tolerated." Ap...

I recently received a solicitation to view an online parenting book. The book was titled, "A Father's Guide To Raising Daughters". However, it was the subtitle that intrigued me, "A Father's Guide To Raising Daughters: Because I Need One!!!" I felt better knowing that I was not the only one who failed to receive the instruction manual for my kids when they were born. For a while I thought I had figured out a lot of things about raising boys, that is until our second son was born. Even though both of our children are boys, they are nothing alike. They are 7 and 4 years old now, but my wife and I could tell they were two completely different individuals within the first year. They each have their own personality, they express love differently, and they respond to discipline differently just to name a few. So, what we do is take the things that we know and learn/figure out how to adapt them to work with each of our sons. Parenting is certainly an advent...

The more I thought about the peek-a-boo analogy, the more appropriate I think it is. I already mentioned the idea of playing hide-and-seek. There is another aspect to my relationship with God that wasn't mentioned. There are rather frequent moments when God just shows up. For example, I will be driving home after work and all of a sudden, wow! God's abiding presence fills me and the space around me. There is no question, God is there. He is always there, but not always like this. On many such occasions, my physical reaction to His presence is just to cry; not a cry of fear or shame, but more along the lines of the way my wife cries at all the Hallmark commercials. At other times I just laugh. Sometimes the laugh is because at the moment, it strikes me as funny. At other times, the laugh is a laugh of relief because God has reminded me that He is there. How silly I was to think that God did not know or care about what I was facing or going through. The ...

As a new Christian, I recognized that God had sought me out, found me, and saved me. As our relationship grows, it takes on another dimension of this game of hide-and-seek. Somewhere along the road I began to realize that at moments, the roles of the game would reverse; God would hide and I would become the seeker. For my theological friends, I am not saying that God would go away; David declares in the Psalms that there is nowhere we can go to be away from God and God promises to never leave us nor forsake us. Maybe a better analogy would be God playing peek-a-boo with me. It is a humbling albeit humorous thought. Anyway, to this day, there are moments when I am trying to connect with God and I don't feel His presence with me.

As my relationship with God grows I am learning that He enjoys playing hide-and-seek. Early on in our relationship, He was the seeker. I am convinced God's nature includes the character trait of intentional pursuit. In the Old Testament, God reveals Himself as pursuing and calling specific individuals. Jesus, God in the flesh, continues this pattern in the New Testament and adds to it parables like the lost coin, lost sheep, and lost son just to name a few, to help to expose God's seeking nature. God loves people and he pursues relationship with them. God pursues both those who don't realize they are hiding and those who are intentionally running away from Him. I know this because God has been chasing/seeking me for years. I don't know why. I couldn't imagine that perishable, imperfect, finite, people could love me, much less a perfect, holy, all-knowing God. But He does! He loves me enough to pursue me, even when I reject Him. He purs...

I recently came across what has become, to me, a great metaphor. Between 1980 and 1994 Michelangelo's paintings on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel went through another restoration. For years artists and onlookers had assumed they knew what the paintings looked like. The restoration didn't reveal any new images. However, once much of the smoke and dirt that had accumulated on the paintings was removed the true vibrancy of the colors used by the great painter were realized. "This restoration had a profound effect on art lovers and historians, as colours and details that had not been seen for centuries were revealed. It has been claimed that as a result 'Every book on Michelangelo will have to be rewritten.'" ( Restoration of the Sistine Chapel frescoes, Wikipedia) When I heard this story on the radio, it brought something alive in me. I recently started a new sermon series, "ReDiscovering Christianity." The discovery at the Sistine Chape...

Regularly on Sunday nights, there are several people from the church who get together at my house. We eat a little, laugh a little, pray a little, etc; we enjoy being together. One of the other things we do is talk about the Bible. This tends to be accomplished by either a group member leading us in a study/discussion of a particular passage of the Bible, or by our viewing a video and following it with discussion from our Christian perspective. Over the past two weeks we have been trying something different. Two weeks ago, we replaced the Bible study or video with discussions about the sermon we heard on Sunday morning. We begin with a short prayer followed by an ice-breaker. Our ice-breaker is each of us sharing something that is personal, but not invasive; for example, "What is one trait about yourself that you really like?" The ice-breaker is followed by a 45 second recap and outline of the sermon. This is easy for us since I am usually the one who giv...

The last two months have been brutal for me. Several weeks ago I preached a sermon entitled, "distracted by the things that had to be done." The title references a story from the Bible about Mary and Martha. In the sermon I pointed out that Martha was not distracted by unimportant stuff, but by things that had to be done. How do you put aside something that "has to be done?" I think it was Martin Luther that had the answer, "I have so much work to do that I must spend at least three hours in prayer in order to accomplish it all" (my paraphrase). Things were great for me up to that Sunday; or so I thought. Since that Sunday, the Lord has allowed numerous circumstances to line up in such a way that they revealed my need for personal change. The circumstances have forced me to recognize that I had allowed my priorities to get out of order. God has spoken to me through my family life, church crisis, sermon preparation, friendships, leader...