Intentional Encouragement

     After all the events surrounding the death and resurrection of Jesus, the disciples fully expected that He would restore the national kingdom of Israel and free the Jews from Roman domination.  Instead, according to the end of the gospel accounts and the early part of the book of Acts, he gave them a simple command...and left to go back to Heaven.      For the time being, let's skip the details surrounding his departure and their amazement at the whole thing and focus on His command to them.  It's worded in several ways, but basically Jesus said: "You will being going locally, regionally, nationally and worldwide to be witnesses about me.  As you do; make disciples."      A simple command.  It can really be synthesized to those 2 words...make disciples.  I talked last time about what a disciple is.  You can go back and read that post here if you want to.  The question I want you to ask ...

     "Moses spent his first forty years thinking he was somebody. He spent his second forty years learning he was a nobody. He spent his third forty years discovering what God can do with a nobody."      When I read about the great heroes of the faith, I am impressed to see that all of them thought themselves to be "nobodies."  In fact, in some cases, they spend a good deal of time learning how little they are before they are used of God in any significant way.  I think of the example in the quote above, but also of David, tending those sheep in the wilderness.  Abraham lived in the desert when God called him and travelled a great distance before he came to the place of God's blessing.  The entire nation of Israel (after they left Egyptian slavery) spent 40 years in the desert learning the lesson that God was the one who was in charge and who had everything figured out.  Over and over again, we see people spending time le...

     I'm thankful for my "day job."  Since leaving our previous pastorate 2 1/2 months ago, I have had the responsibility of thinking about work in a different way again.  I worked hard as a pastor (and will again, when God opens the door).  I spent long hours in my office and also on "off hours."  I carried the burden of the ministry on my shoulders in a way that those outside of vocational ministry cannot understand.  My average work week was 50 hours or so and I took only one full day off each week.  I received a fair salary for my work and enjoyed my life.      But now I'm in the "real" world of work.  I leave about 6:30 or 7 depending on whether I'm working an hour away or a half hour away.  I work hard (physically).  I get home about 10 hours later.  I have no time during the day to care for any business that needs accomplished.  I'm working during business hours and can't just take 15 ...

     I wrote this post about 2 years ago, but not many people were following or reading back then and I still feel like the words are valuable.  I hope they will be a refresher to you:      I've been thinking today about a phrase I used occasionally when I helped to coach middle and Jr. High school basketball a few years ago. "The best offense is a good defense." When I was going through school, I couldn't handle the ball very well, so I learned to play pretty good defense. My logic was that if we can keep the other team from scoring; we won't need to worry about scoring too much to beat them. A couple of good zone defensive strategies; and good understanding of a man-to-man defense; some good conditioning to keep up and the rest will take care of itself. No need for a lengthy playbook with all those different plays intended to dazzle the opponents and run up the score.      Well; shame on me. First of all;...

I was reviewing a few of my early posts to this blog, when there were very few people following or reading.  I have decided to occasionally re-post one of those posts and offer them for your encouragement.  Here's a reminder about God's grace that was a lift to my spirit this morning.  Hopefully it will be to yours as well. I read a statement a while back that struck me.  Patrick Morley was commenting on Paul's words in Ephesians 4:1; "I...urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called."  Pat's emphasis was that God gives us sufficient grace to live this worthy life.  Then he made this statement: "Most Christians under-apply their grace." While I'd like to think that it's not applicable to me :-), I really like that phrase.  I wonder if it resonates with you.  We sometimes keep our gratitude for grace reserved for our salvation experience.  That's certainly worth focusing on.  If it weren't...

            I was recently looking over an article I wrote for another occasion and thought I'd reproduce it here.  Forgive the rather large quote to begin with but you'll see what I'm after.             “An air-monitoring station atop a California mountain has detected wind-borne particles that drifted across the Pacific Ocean from coal-fired power plants and smelters thousands of miles away. Some experts predict that expanding economies in other nations could one day account for a third of the pollution in California . The US , however, remains the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, and other countries are feeling the effects of America ’s energy consumption. An Associated Press report quoted atmospheric scientist Dan Jaffe: “There is no place where you can put away your pollution anymore.” Every nation shares the world’s atmosphere and is affected by the actions o...

Sunday evening, I met with our college students for our weekly Bible study.  Right now we're going through Galatians.  The topic for the evening was that we still live by faith after we are saved.  We don't get saved by faith and then live by our own strength.  Paul mentions Abraham in Galatians 3 as an example.  We spent a little bit of time reviewing Abraham's walk of faith (the ups and the downs). The fact that Abraham had several experiences in his life that were major steps backwards and that he is still referred to as the father of faith has caused me to think today about some other people in the Scripture who had opportunities to begin again.   Their stories are varied, but the truth is the same.   Our Heavenly Father is “the God of the second chance.”   In general terms, we could look at the children of Israel throughout the Old Testament and observe that God gave them repeated opportunities to start over. Jonah is a great example.  ...