Dear friends,
Life certainly teaches us, if we let it. And for the past year, the lessons have been huge for me personally and my family. I’m learning that seconds need to be spent like hundred dollar bills. They are most wisely used on the ones we love. Little else in this life matters.
So…
My son is about 23 now. He used to be kind of small, but he started working out and bulked up quite impressively. And I work out too.
I lift about 250 pounds. Out of bed each morning.
When I was joking with him about his new workout routine, his response stung a bit.
“At least I’m not…
I went to a baseball game this week. For those who know me, you realize this was right up there with catching a falling star and discovering the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
My dad took me to an Atlanta Braves game when I was a kid. We hoped to see Hank…
This year, I took my first trip to the Holy Land. It was life-changing as well as eye-opening.
In the seats directly in front of me sat three Hasidic Jewish men. You know, with the long black coats and long curls of hair down the sides of their faces. As we flew into the early morning…
I had to do something that broke my heart last week. I actually blocked a friend on Facebook.
Blocking him made me extremely sad. But he just couldn't resist getting combative with me every single time I hit his “hot button issues”, even though I always try to stay away from hot buttons. When I…
When I served larger churches, I never really understood what discipleship was. If someone had told me I had to do it, as a minister over hundreds I would have replied, “I don’t have time to do that!”
But as I planted a church, I began opening my life to the people who joined us.…
Of our three children right now, Gracie is the least serious-minded. But she always demands to say the prayer at dinner each night.
At first, it was the prayer she learned in her Christian preschool: “God is great, God is good…” Every night, she’d clasp her little hands together and say the entire prayer, while grinning…
The old man answered the apartment door in his wheelchair. It had been a development from his fight with what appeared to be Parkinson's. I could tell his limited mobility, now in his late 80s, was a continual source of frustration for him.
His wife, a woman several years younger, was there too.
“I’ll let him show…
I remember the first time someone called me “pastor” and it finally felt normal.
Actually, I only thought they were saying “pastor”. I was in a Starbucks I frequent, and someone called out something like “faster”. It could have even been “disaster”, but I’ve been called that before.
But after I turned around to look, I caught…
I just got a text from a friend that shocked me.
It wasn’t as much what they said as who they said it about. You see, the text was about someone we both knew. But its author had accidentally sent it not to its intended recipient, but instead to the subject of the text.
My friend sent…
I recently got a Facebook message from a well-meaning Christian friend:
"God has seen everything you've been going through, and He told me to tell you 'IT'S OVER'! Your trial has ended, and now God's about to open up the windows of heaven to bless you beyond your wildest dreams!!!!!"
(Full disclosure: I may have…
I am so sincerely sorry for your pain.
But...
Your pain is not the only pain in the world
Your pain does not make you right. It doesn’t justify your lashing out
Your pain does not necessarily make you noble or brave
Your pain may indeed destroy you, if you let it
Your pain is a curse...or…