She became known as “The Ship That Launched a Nation” by transporting more than 4,500 war-torn Jewish refugees from Europe to their ancestral homeland. I’m talking about the ship named Exodus 1947.
When companies decide where to market their products, they want to get “the most bang for their buck.” Right now that means China: 1.40 billion people with rising levels of discretionary income. It simply wouldn’t make sense for tech companies to market their products to a tiny ethnic group in the Ecuadorian jungle. “Why bother?” such companies might say.
It’s a good thing the Kingdom of God is not a company who bases the spreading of the Gospel on a cost analysis. No life in the Kingdom of God is measured by one value: Everything done in the name of Christ has eternal value.
The late founder of Campus Crusade for Christ, Bill Bright, used to define witnessing this way: “Witnessing is sharing Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit, and leaving the results to God.” I’d like to adjust his words slightly: “The Christian life is following Christ obediently, in the power of the Holy Spirit, leaving the results to God.”
In other words, we don’t measure the perceived results before we act. We act out of obedience to Christ because we know that everything done in His Name has eternal value. Our acts of faithfulness in following Christ are never forgotten by God.
Billionaire Steve Wynn wanted a one-of-a-kind cirque for his signature resort, Wynn Las Vegas. He worked with architects to design an aqua auditorium with encircling seats. For a hefty price, guests could watch aerial wizardry, synchronized swimming, dizzying choreography, mind-bending gymnastics, and dramatic plunges into the perilous pool. The show, Le Rêve, opened in 2005, but was discontinued in 2020.
Like a cirque performer, sometimes we find ourselves at the center of unwanted stress. Life can be frightening and sometimes terrifying. We feel alone, yet like a spectacle. People are watching in perplexity, wondering how far we’ll fall.
Biblical heroes felt that way too. The apostle Paul said, “God has displayed us, the apostles, last, as… a spectacle to the world, both to angels and to men” (1 Corinthians 4:9). And the writer to the Hebrews said, “You were made a spectacle both by reproaches and tribulations” (Hebrews 10:33).
Feelings of fear overcome us all, and as Christians we know we’re not immune to adversity. But I can tell you from Scripture and personal experience that the Lord will never drop us.
When a bespoke tailor rolls out fine wool cloth on the table to cut pieces for a handmade suit, he marks the pattern with chalk, then picks up his shears.
See MoreWe often use the word “good” to describe some tasty treat we enjoy, but in reality there is only One who is good, and that is God. In his article, “God’s Rich Goodness,” Dr. Jeremiah turns our thoughts to the One we adore and is worthy of our praise.
At times our lives can be stressful — too much to do and too little time is often the cause. How do we make time for all we need to do, especially as Christians?
Do you feel contented? Too often we search for contentment in all the wrong places and our possessions can possess us. In his article, “Contentment — When Enough Is Enough,” Dr. David Jeremiah helps pave the wave for living a contented life.
People commonly refer to “owning their home,” when in reality they still owe a mortgage on it. It really isn’t theirs until it is paid for. In these times, that can be a cause for concern. But for our deed in heaven, we have assurance that our home there is truly ours. Learn more about the promise we have of eternal life in Dr. Jeremiah’s article, “Heaven in Deed - Assurance of Ownership.”
Have you ever learned too late of a benefit that was available to you? It is always disappointing when that occurs. Dr. David Jeremiah discusses an opportunity that is waiting for you that you don’t want to miss. Learn more in his article, “Grace—Land of Opportunity.”
All successful sporting teams have one thing in common-they are recruited and play as a team. Dr. Jeremiah discusses how playing on the kingdom's team is unlike any other lineup in his article "Promoting the Kingdom-Being a Team Player."
Have you ever tried running from God? Were you successful? Dr. Jeremiah reveals the futility of running from God in his article "Hideouts and Hideaways - Where We Hide Out From God."
As you review your life, consider what you have shared with your loved ones-principles, memories, dreams and expectations-but have you shared your devotion to Jesus Christ? Dr. David Jeremiah discusses the important topic of leaving a legacy of faith in "Driving a Legacy: Generational Faith."
Have you ever thought about the hands of Jesus? Consider not only the nail-pierced hands but the hands that worked with wood as a carpenter, and yet were gentle enough to heal both the body and the soul. Learn more about this topic in Dr. David Jeremiah's article, "The Carpenter's Hands-The Touch of Jesus."
Have you considered what the wrath of God means to those who don’t know Him personally? Dr. Jeremiah discusses the importance of evangelism in his article, “The Proclamation of the Word.”
Think of all the books that are available to us today, and then consider the Bible—it is God-inspired, yet written by men, and unlike any other book ever written. Dr. Jeremiah discusses this miraculous collection of sixty-six books in his article, “The Inspiration of the Word.”
Helen Palit, a silver-haired activist, founded the non-profit City Harvest in New York City. And over 2,500 donors willingly give mountains of leftover food that the organization distributes to those in need throughout the five boroughs of New York City. City Harvest has collected and distributed over 700 million pounds of food since it was founded in December 1982.
Every sports team in history longs for a perfect season—a record with nothing but a whole number and a zero in the record books. In 2007, the New England Patriots were 16-0, not losing a single regular season game.
One of the most popular children’s books ever written is by Judith Viorst: Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (Atheneum, 1972). Alexander is a red-headed tyke whose day starts like this: “I went to sleep with gum in my mouth and now there’s gum in my hair and when I got out of bed this morning I tripped on the skateboard and by mistake I dropped my sweater in the sink while the water was running and I could tell it was going to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.”
Many companies rely on inspirational conferences to rekindle enthusiasm, enhance attitudes, and restore focus to employees. Motivational speakers and company conferences have their place, but human advice only goes so far. To really find spiritual focus, sit at the feet of the Lord Jesus. Nothing equals the motivation He gives for victorious living, and no one can equal His insight. Best of all, we don’t have to shell out thousands of dollars to hear Him. We can arrange a personal meeting every day.
Oh, the ups and downs of life! Seems like we’re always going up or down, doesn’t it? Every day has its high spots and low points, and every year has its peaks and its valleys. Sometimes we’re on the mountaintop; sometimes in the pits. Sometimes we’re high on life, and then we’re down in the dumps.
Ethan Pierce is a single father in Tennessee who made an appointment with a doctor about his eyes. He was afraid he was going blind. After a series of tests, the doctor had bad news. “There seems to be nothing wrong with your eyes,” he said, “but there’s something putting pressure on your optic nerve. Probably a brain tumor. That would account for your vision problems and your migraines.”
President John F. Kennedy delivered a speech before a joint session of Congress on May
25, 1961, that changed the world as we know it. In it, President Kennedy challenged our nation
to land a man on the moon before the decade was out. President Kennedy felt some pressure for
the United States to take the lead in space exploration. In 1957, the Soviet Union launched
Sputnik, the first of a series of Soviet-made satellites to orbit the earth. And just a month before
this speech, the Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space, orbiting the
earth and returning safely.
The social pundits of our day are under the impression that they developed the concept of globalization; but they don’t seem to realize the Bible taught that concept more than 2,000 years ago. The church has always been an international enterprise established by a Savior who died for the entire world.
Matt Crain was taking a “Philosophy of Science” course at the university. The instructor, a scientist, had a reputation for fairness, but Matt was evidently the only person in the classroom who believed that God created the universe. Weeks passed, and Matt listened in silence, learning as much as he could. On the last week of class, the subject of religion came up, and Matt carefully advocated a Christian position.
Dr. Wilber Smith was a renowned professor, researcher, and author whose lectures and books trained a generation of Christian workers. Near the end of his life, Dr. Smith published his memoirs, entitled Before I Forget, and he began in the preface of his book by sharing a regret.
There are things in life we can’t control or even successfully manage. But, I want to propose a radical concept. As Christians, we can live in absolute security because of one event in history that represents the greatest security breach of all time.
We shouldn’t just live for today, because today doesn’t last very long. We cannot live just for the moment, because the moments are fleeting. There’s an infinite sadness to living a life unfocused on eternity. How we invest our time, energy, labor, and money either guarantees or nullifies our legacy.
Cyrus Hamlin was one of the most fascinating men of the nineteenth century—an educator, a missionary, a statesman, and an inventor. He learned early in life about the joy of making a difference. He was only eleven when he was allowed to go into town alone on Muster Day, a great holiday in Maine, featuring parades and all sorts of exciting activities. His mother gave him seven cents for gingerbread; but as she put the coins in his hand, she said, “Perhaps you will stop at Mrs. Farrar’s and put a cent or two in the contribution box.”
What was it that made the first-century church so powerful, so sustainable, and so revolutionary? Acts 2:42-47 is the classic passage that describes the “benefits” of the early Church of Jesus Christ.
Some days we feel like winners. Other days we feel like losers. But for the child of God, there’s never really a losing season. It’s important to know what the score is. I’d like to point you to the great scoreboard of the Word of God and show you some winning numbers.
For every Christian, the time is coming when we will move into our heavenly homes, assisted by the Lord’s real estate agents—called angels. After carefully studying this subject in the Bible, I believe that angels take believers home to heaven when we die and help us move into our new houses. This is tremendously comforting, and it takes much of the intimidation out of the move. The primary Scripture teaching on this comes from the lips of Christ Himself. In describing the beggar Lazarus in Luke 16, Jesus said, “So it was that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels to Abraham’s bosom,” referring to heaven. Notice that Lazarus wasn’t merely escorted to heaven. The angels carried him there.
On March 17, 1860, an announcement appeared in the Sacramento Daily Union about a new method to convey information from the East in record-breaking time. Fifty horses had been placed at strategic sites along a planned route. Riders would carry packets of mail from one post to the next. Soon, however, the fabled Pony Express was obsolete, replaced by the Transcontinental Telegraph, then the telephone. Now we have the Internet, texting, Skype, and so many expanding means of communication that as soon as we master one of them, it’s consigned to the storeroom of technological antiques. But the world’s greatest communication technology hasn’t changed. We can still uplink with heaven at any time. Our prayers can cover the globe in the twinkling of an eye, and our earnest petitions can fly heavenward.
We all say it, don’t we? “Let’s meet at the church.” Somewhere along the way we began referring to “the building where the church meets” as “the church.”
Have you ever heard of the “Great Disappointment”? It’s one of the most noted events in American church history, and it has an important lesson for us today.
Each of us has a clarifying moment in our lives. Joseph’s clarifying moment occurred on the day his ten brothers filed into the throne room, desperate for food, awed by the splendors of Egyptian royalty, and totally oblivious of his secret identity.
Christians have always been world changers, and our influence has shaped society for two thousand years. Friedrich Froebel (1782-1852), for example, was the son of a Lutheran pastor who often helped his dad in the family garden. As a young man, his Christian beliefs convinced him that children need to learn about God and His world at an early age. Friedrich imagined a school for young children that would allow their minds to be cultivated like a horticulturist tending a garden. He called his idea a Child’s Garden. Because of him, children have been going to Kindergarten for the last 150 years.
Look down at your shirt for a moment—is there a little emblem on the pocket? Or a certain swoosh on your tennis shoes? If you’re drinking coffee while reading this article, is there a green circle with a woman on the cup?
A man named Gary Kildall wrote the first complete software operating system for a personal-style computer. In the 1980s, IBM executives flew to the West Coast with every intention of inking a deal with Kildall to license his operating system for installation in every personal computer IBM would sell. But Silicon Valley legend has it that Kildall never showed up for the meeting, opting to go flying in his newly acquired airplane instead.
Put off by Kildall’s lack of interest, IBM began looking around for another software package and found a small company called Microsoft, founded by a Harvard dropout named Bill Gates and his friend Paul Allen. The rest is business and financial history. Gary Kildall passed up a potential opportunity to be where Microsoft is today.
On February 26, 1829, a Jewish boy named Loeb Strauss was born in a cottage in the Bavarian village of Buttenheim. As a young man, Loeb changed his name to Levi and wound up in California, where he opened a textile company. One day, a gold miner walked into Levi’s shop. “Look at these,” said the miner, pointing to his pants. “I bought them six months ago, and now they are full of holes!” When Levi asked why, the miner explained, “We work on our knees most of the time.”
“What you need is some really strong material,” replied Levi. A tailor was called—and the rest is history. Soon miners across the West were wearing Levi Strauss’s jeans.
It seems to me that we Christians should have the same problem that plagued that miner—worn-out pants—for we ought to do most of our work on our knees.
Have you ever tasted something that has obviously been watered down? Even the finest coffee or tea loses some of its flavor when it is diluted with too much water. A watered down message can lose its potency as well. In the world today, there is an attempt by some to water down the Word of God in an attempt to make it more palatable to the changing morals and attitudes of our culture. But the Bible doesn’t conform its message to public opinion polls. It doesn’t change its doctrines in response to societal consensus. It should never be watered down.
God’s Word is eternal—ever old, ever new, and ever sure. The Bible is as venerable as, “Thus says the Lord,” and as contemporary as, “The Last Days.” It spans the ages, being ageless. We can count on it in every condition: in sickness, in health, in poverty’s vale, or abounding in wealth.[1]In a world of lies, His Word is truth. In a world of opinions, His Word is accurate down to the last jot and tittle.
Because God is eternal, His Word is established in the heavens. Because He cannot fail, His Word cannot be broken. Because He is unchanging, His Word is certain. Heaven and earth may pass away, but the Scripture will endure forever.
[1] George Keith, “How Firm a Foundation,” An American Church Hymnal (Nashville: John T. Benson Publishing Company, 1937).
In recent years, the frequency of hearing accounts of people, cars, or even houses suddenly falling into a large hole as the earth collapsed beneath them has risen. These events are caused by giant sinkholes.
Sinkholes are caused by water saturation. In some cases, underground water pipes burst or leak, causing unseen erosion. In other cases, the culprit is rainwater or underground springs. What’s shocking is the suddenness of the collapse. On the surface, everything looks fine. But beneath the surface, the integrity of the earth has been compromised. When least expected, a sinkhole suddenly forms and the ground collapses.
In 1828, a family named Hermès settled in France and opened a harness shop in Paris. Soon they were selling upscale products to European noblemen, and they haven’t stopped. Today you can still buy expensive, high-quality Hermès products worldwide.
Hermès closed its stores in America for three days a few years ago and flew their employees to an upscale hotel in Princeton. Motivational speakers were there to inspire and reinvigorate the company’s sales force. Hermès recognized that joyless employees wouldn’t be successful selling $2,300 bracelets. They needed motivators to fire up their enthusiasm.
Many companies rely on inspirational conferences to rekindle enthusiasm, enhance attitudes, and restore focus to employees. But human advice only goes so far. To really find spiritual focus, sit at the feet of Jesus. Nothing equals the motivation He gives for victorious living, and no one can equal His insight. Best of all, we can arrange a personal meeting every day.
More than five centuries ago, Johannes Gutenberg, inventor of the printing press, revolutionized the way books were made by creating a system of movable type: Load tiny metal letters into a tray, ink the type, and press the tray of letters down onto a sheet of paper. For five hundred years, books changed very little: pages sandwiched between front and back covers. That was until electronic (digital) books became available. Not only would Gutenberg be dumbstruck at the sight of modern printing presses, he would be even more shocked at how books are distributed digitally. Today books and magazines are easy to store and access. You can take hundreds of books with you, stored in your digital reading device, and read them anytime, anywhere.
While the loss of love is a disheartening experience in any area of life, there is one area in which the consequences are most serious: when we lose our spiritual love for the things of God. I have seen this happen to many Christians in my years as a pastor; and, like all Christians, I have even felt the temptations myself. Without diligence, the fire of love that burned brightly when we first met Jesus Christ can begin to fade and provide lesser and lesser amounts of light in this world.
Henry Dunant grew up a well-to-do Swiss Calvinist home, where he watched his parents do one good deed after another, driven by Christian empathy for the needy. His father labored tirelessly to assist orphans and ex-prisoners, and his mother had a burden for the sick and poor.
This was a time of spiritual revival in Switzerland, and Henry grew up feeling compelled to do all he could to serve Christ. As a teenager, he helped organize young men in regular Bible studies and in projects for the poor. He helped found a chapter of the YMCA in Geneva. In college, Dunant was so preoccupied with his mercy ministries that he neglected to study. At age 21, he was forced out of school by poor grades. He found a job, worked hard, established his own business, and prospered.
When the whole human race was terrified by sin, death, judgment, and hell, Jesus left the heights of the heavens to journey to earth for the likes of you and me.
In John’s Gospel, the phrase Jesus used for this journey was to “come down.” He said, “No one has ascended to heaven but He who came down from heaven, that is, the Son of Man…. For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me… I am the bread which came down from heaven…. I have come down from heaven….” (John 3:13; 6:38, 41, 42, emphasis mine).
This is the greatest mystery of all time, that God is a Trinity, and that the Second Person of the Trinity should “beam” himself to earth on a sacrificial journey from heaven to earth. He was transported through the womb of a virgin as the sinless Redeemer, completely God and a complete man, for the redemption of the world.
The movie character Forrest Gump became famous for saying, “Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re gonna get.” In its simplicity, that statement is profound in its accuracy. It is true, like a box of chocolates that we open and try the various fillings and flavors to pick a favorite piece; we don’t know what each day of our lives will hold. But as believers in Jesus Christ, we have an assurance that He is with us, and the knowledge that all that is good comes from Him. The Bible says that He opens His hand and satisfies His children with good things (Psalm 104:28).
Okay is not a biblical word. Sometimes when we say something like, “Don’t worry; it’s okay,” the other person is thinking, “Funny, it doesn’t feel that way.” It does little to comfort the heart.
Sometimes we’re not OK. I’ve had times when, instead, I’ve felt KO’ed, which is fight jargon for “knocked out.”
My own faith in the Lord Jesus has grown through the years, and I’m grateful for the grace to trust Jesus with hardships and heartaches. But sometimes the blows rain down on us like daggers, and we may momentarily wonder if God exists or knows or cares.
Many of the heroes of Scripture had moments of darkness or despair when it seemed that nothing would ever be okay again. Consider Jeremiah’s lamentation, “My eyes fail with tears, my heart is troubled, my bile is poured on the ground” (Lamentations 2:11), or Job’s cry, “Why did I not die at birth? Why did I not perish when I came from the womb?” (Job 3:11).
Our health depends on wise nutrition. The food we eat is assimilated into our bodies and becomes our nails, skin cells, and blood. In the same way, we are actually becoming—emotionally and spiritually—what we put into our minds. Proverbs 23:7 is the biblical version of you are what you eat. It says, “For as he thinks in his heart, so is he.”
What we read and view has a determining effect on us, and what our children are taking into their minds will determine what they become. Many children and adults have a high-fat mental diet that’s heavy in “screen time.”
It’s easy for any of us to “catch” the philosophy of the world by what we’re reading, watching, or hearing. But the Bible says, “Whatever things are true . . . noble . . . just . . . pure . . . lovely . . . of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy, meditate on these things” (Philippians 4:8).
If you are a follower of NASCAR, you know that drivers don’t just zoom around in circles like hamsters in a cage. Each of the major speedways is unique, having its own turns, curves, and idiosyncrasies. To be a NASCAR driver, you’ve got to memorize every linear foot of the track, knowing the paving surface, understanding the grooves, practicing the turns, and taking advantage of the straightaways.
To run a good race, you have to know what to expect.
The same is true for Christians. We don’t know every specific twist and turn in advance; but the Bible is an indispensable road map, containing God’s infallible version of future events. The One who knows the future as well as the past doesn’t want us to be ignorant or unprepared for the road ahead.
Many people today seek happiness and fulfillment in possessions and pleasure and power and popularity—fleeting riches and temporal satisfactions, but at what cost? Sadly, for many in our culture, materialism has become their god.
This desire for temporal things is in direct contradiction to our Lord’s counsel to His disciples when He said: “For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?” (Matthew 16:26)
During his ministry, Jesus demonstrated His identity through messages and miracles. He wanted His disciples to understand that He was the Messiah, the Promised Deliverer. He preached with great authority—He healed the sick and even raised the dead. He quoted Old Testament prophecies and fulfilled the requirements of the Law. His presence was electrifying to the people of Israel, but even His own family was confused about His identity.
At that critical moment, Jesus took a break from the crowds and led His disciples on a backpacking expedition to the regions of Mount Hermon. There, alone with the Twelve and after months of instruction, He gave them a final exam recorded for us in Matthew 16:13-20. It consisted of two questions.
The greatest love poem ever written is 1 Corinthians 13, the Bible’s love hymn:
Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love,
I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal.
This poem counts the ways in which we love others. In 1 Corinthians 13, Paul said, “This love of which I speak is slow to lose patience; it looks for a way of being constructive. It is not possessive: it is neither anxious to impress nor does it cherish inflated ideas of its own importance. Love has good manners and does not pursue selfish advantage. It is not touchy. It does not keep account of evil or gloat over the wickedness of other people. On the contrary, it is glad with all good men when truth prevails” (Phillips).
If you want to commit this chapter to memory and begin practicing it, it helps to break it down into its three main sections.
While many look to the government, material possessions, drugs, or pleasure, they quickly find that these only lead to temporary distractions on a lifelong quest for happiness.
Never have so many people been so unhappy as they are today. Perhaps the true source of despair and hopelessness among many people today is simply the recognition that life isn’t what it ought to be. Some of the things that promised them satisfaction and joy have not delivered on the promise.
One thing I can tell you for certain is you can’t live very long without hope. Hope is a main ingredient in life. It is the very core of who you are and your existence as a person.
Psalm 146 is called one of the hallelujah psalms, meaning they “praise the Lord.” And the hallelujah psalm in Psalm 146 portrays a wonderful picture of hope. It is an invitation to those who know despair all too well. It presents and opportunity to take another look at the hope that can only be found in God.
Let’s work through this psalm together on three key points, all of them leading to the One who can and will provide.
Do you remember the story of the rich fool in our Lord’s parable in Luke 12? According to verse 13 of that chapter, a man approached Jesus one day saying, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.” Jesus responded with a warning, “Take heed and beware of covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of the things he possesses.”
To illustrate the point, Jesus told the story of a certain rich man whose farms yielded abundantly for several years. The successful farmer kept building more barns to hoard his wealth, and he thought he was set for life. He said to himself, “Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years; take your ease; eat, drink, and be merry.”
But God said to him, “Fool! This night your soul will be required of you; then whose will those things be?” Jesus concluded His story by saying: “So is he who lays up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God” (Luke 12:19-20).
It doesn’t always take a lot to encourage someone. A text message, a pat on the back, a whisper of confidence, a public word of praise, a high five. That’s the secret power of the letters WTG—Way to Go! We can’t say them too often. The people around us, young and old, thrive on words of encouragement from someone who believes in them. Encouragement is a key component in strengthening others…and yourself.
Linen is one of the oldest and most prized of textiles. It has been discovered in caves spanning from Europe to the Dead Sea, and in the tombs of Egyptian royalty. From their time in Egypt, the Israelites learned the value of linen—the knowledge of how to create it and an appreciation for its hard-wearing quality. It was clearly the fabric of choice in the ancient world. What you may not know is that while linen is a desirable fabric, it requires a brutal process to produce it.
In today’s world, the word “master” often comes with a negative connotation as it inevitably leads to the word “slave.” But “master” also refers to other things such as a higher level of education, expertise as work, or ownership of an animal. It can also simply refer to someone in a high rank of authority—such as the captain of a ship. Regardless of difficult situations, the captain is the master of the ship, and all aboard follow his lead.
How often do we try and “master” our own ship of life? We have the One who will safely guide us through everything. But too often we want to take control, not allowing God to lead us through the most tumultuous times in our lives. The question must be asked, Who is your true Master and Commander?
I can’t prove this, of course, but I think God made fall just for family and friends. Anytime is a great time for being with those we love and appreciate, but fall seems special. Think about the reasons why this time of year is a great time for relationships and reunions:
•School. This is a huge one. As much as kids imply that they don’t like school, most kids love the social reunion that returning to school brings. But it’s not just the kids—parents enjoy seeing each other again at school and sporting events.
•Church. Because of travel and vacations, some churches make adjustments to their regularly scheduled programs during the summer. But after summer is over, everything gets back to normal. Suddenly, you’re seeing friends at church and in small groups that you’ve not seen consistently during the summer.
•Thanksgiving. If there’s one event where families and friends connect, it has to be Thanksgiving. It seems people like to celebrate Christmas—at least Christmas morning—with just family. (It’s hard to travel with all those presents, right?) But in America, Thanksgiving is the day we fling open the doors, tell people to bring a dish, spread it all out, and thank God for the blessings we enjoy.
•Christmas. If Thanksgiving is the holiday of food and fun, Christmas is the holiday of love. In spite of the commercialization of Christmas, we can choose to focus on making memories year after year that remind us of God’s amazing gift of love to us. As we attend special events and celebrate the Lord’s birth, we are inevitably drawn closer to those we love as family and friends.
Lump those four dynamics together—school, church, and the two holidays—and fall arrives with more reasons to celebrate than any other season of the year.
You know the feeling well. The hair on the back of your neck stands up. You get goose bumps on your arms. Your mouth feels like it’s full of cotton. Your palms are as damp as wet sponges. That’s what FEAR does!
You certainly felt it as a child. Fear and childhood go hand-in-hand, especially at night—monsters under the bed, strange noises in creaky houses, branches scraping against window screens. We’ve all been there and remember those feelings. But, as you and I know, fears don’t disappear when we grow older—they just change shapes and names. Adults wrestle with fears like heights, the dentist, and identity theft. Those fears keep adults up at night and even make people ask their doctors for something to “calm their nerves.” Fear is real and powerful.
Here’s what happens in a nanosecond: Our five senses send a message (“Danger!”) to the brain’s thalamus, which sends the message to the amygdala. The amygdala does two things: One, it sends a message to the prefrontal cortex (“Help!”), which initiates the “flight or fight” response. And two, the amygdala sends messages to glands to start releasing chemicals like adrenaline and cortisol (the STRESS hormone). Those chemicals raise our heartbeat and blood pressure so we’re ready for the choice: Flight or fight?
Have you ever celebrated a holiday named Memas?
Some people observe it every December 25. For them, the Christ of Christmas has been replaced by a Me-centered worldview. This is a celebrity generation in which everyone wants little flashes of fame and fortune. One of the reasons the average wedding costs $25,000 is because so many couples want to experience for at least a day the kind of endless glamour enjoyed by celebs.
Even Christmas has been affected; and if we aren’t careful, it becomes all about us—our schedules, our diets, our budgets, our wish lists, our time off, our vacation, our parking spaces, our gifts to enjoy or return.
I love the trappings of Christmas as much as anyone; but the truths of Christmas trump the trappings of Christmas, and too many people get trapped in the trappings and forget the truth. How can we enjoy Christmas if we’re the reason for the season?
In a sense, of course, Christmas is all about us. God loved us, became flesh for us, died to forgive us our sins, and rose to give us everlasting life. Christmas is the celebration of what Jesus did for us. But in return, we should make it all about Him: loving Him, serving Him, praising Him, and emulating His attitude of humility.
Here are three words to remember during December. You might write them on a piece of paper to keep in your pocket or purse through the holidays.
I’ve never looked so out of shape—fat, bloated, heavy in the middle, legs like tree stumps, arms like sewer pipes. The next minute, I faced an opposite set of problems: I looked like a ten-foot pole with big feet. My kids laughed, and we all had fun in the hall of mirrors at the county fair. The thin, flexible mirrors, called distortion mirrors, were curved, twisted, and bent so as to warp the images and reflect a distorted sense of reality.
If you want to see real distortion, aim the mirror of our popular culture at the Christmas story in the Gospels. The “holidays” no longer reflect the true meaning of Christmas. John MacArthur, in his The Incarnation of the Triune God, wrote, “Christmas has really become a hopeless muddle of confusion. The humility and the poverty of the stable are somehow confused with the wealth and indulgence and selfishness of gift giving. The quietness of Bethlehem is mingled with the din of shopping malls and freeway traffic. The soberness of the Incarnation is somehow mixed with the drunkenness of this season.”[1]
For the last several decades, I have spent a great deal of time traveling—but the novelty of flying on airplanes wore off years ago. Now I consider flying the same way I do driving through Southern California rush hour traffic: a necessity of life.
Since 9/11, air travel has become more burdensome than ever. What used to take 20 minutes—getting into the airport, confirming your ticket, checking your luggage, and going to your gate—can now take as much as two hours depending on the airport, day of the week, and season of the year.
The changes in airport security have spawned a whole new industry: ways to help people travel light. In other words, the lighter you travel, the easier it is on you traveling through airports. Companies are teaching the traveling public how to “get there and back” with the least amount of hassle.
As I read stories about sudden catastrophes and the damage they cause, I can’t help but think of what Jesus said in Matthew 24:37-39: “But as the days of Noah were, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be. For as in the days before the flood, they were eating and drinking… until the day that Noah entered the ark, and did not know until the flood came and took them all away.”
It’s possible to be in imminent danger without any knowledge of it or sense of urgency, but delay can be deadly. The word “urgent” comes from an old Latin word meaning “to urge.” It means that an event is occurring that is so compelling it requires immediate attention. To hesitate is to be lost.
Over the years, books have gotten nicer and been printed faster over the years, but the basic format has stayed the same. That is, until 1971.
Digital Books
In 1971, Project Gutenberg was created to make electronic copies of important books. Fast forward to 2017 when you can read books on any number of handheld, wireless reading devices.
The day of e-books is here and it is changing our world. Books are easy to access and store. You can take hundreds of books with you, stored in your pocket reader, and read them anytime, anywhere. For publishers, e-books are a dream come true: Once the original digital version of a book is available, an infinite number of digital copies can be sold and downloaded at barely any additional cost to the publisher.
The world intensely watches Christians, especially those who are being proactive about their faith. It wants to see whether Christians are genuine or not. Like the lyrics to Sting’s song: “Every smile you fake. . . I’ll be watching you.”
One way some people avoid the glare of the world’s spotlight is to be inactive instead of proactive in their faith.
In an educational outreach, NASA released a video from the International Space Station to teach schoolchildren the importance of physics and the science of trajectories. Astronaut Don Pettit held up a stuffed version of an angry bird. He blew up a green balloon representing a pig. He stretched a bungee cord across the hatchway and launched the bird, demonstrating the trajectory of its flight.
“Astronauts have to worry about these things,” Pettit explained, “because if you’re in a rocket and, say, you’re trying to get from one orbit and rendezvous with Space Station, you end up going on a curved trajectory and you need to know how to fire your rocket engines.”[1]
I applaud NASA in its innovative efforts to teach science to schoolchildren, but I know an even better lesson. The God of wisdom has given us a book filled with truth about angry attitudes and words. His advice can keep us on a heaven-bound trajectory and help us avoid crash landings.
[1] See “New Angry Birds Announcement from the International Space Station,” Time Magazine (Time Techland) http://techland.time.com/2012/03/08/new-angry-birds-announcement-from-the-international-space-station, accessed March 8, 2012.
Let’s talk numbers in the Bible. Not the Book of Numbers, which is the fourth book of the Old Testament. Nor am I thinking of biblical numerology, though it’s fascinating to study the significance of numbers like three and seven and twelve and forty in Scripture. Any of those subjects would be meaningful; but the purpose of this article is numerical. So let’s crunch the numbers.
Next to the Bible itself, few documents are as hallowed and compelling as letters sent by missionaries of old describing their work. The tradition of missionary letters goes all the way back to the apostle Paul and his famous epistles. Missionary biographies abound with correspondence and stories that motivate us to greater service.
Few of us are called to vocational missionary service in the usual sense of the term, but the word missionary simply means someone charged with the mission of Christ—and that includes all of us who know Him. In His Great Commission, Jesus was appointing each of us to bear His name and advance His cause.
You may have read Franklin Graham’s 1995 autobiography, Rebel With a Cause—Finally Comfortable Being Graham. In his own words, Franklin Graham, son of evangelist Billy Graham and Ruth Bell Graham, tells the story of his own rebellion against the faith in which he was raised by his parents. He looked and acted the part—the cover of the book even pictures him in his leather motorcycle jacket.
But unlike actor James Dean in the 1995 classic, Rebel Without a Cause, Franklin Graham finally embraced the cause he had been rebelling against—the cause of Jesus Christ and His kingdom. Today, Franklin Graham is known around the world as head of both Samaritan’s Purse, the Christian humanitarian relief organization, and the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, succeeding his father in that latter role.
The oldest competition in athletics is the 100-meter dash. It was the featured event at the first Olympics in 776 B.C., and today’s race looks pretty much the same as that one—a handful of runners blasting off the blocks, arms and legs flying like pistons, accelerating with a burst of speed that’s over almost as quickly as it starts.
Each of us has been given our own independent will. It can be competitive or compliant. It can be an asset or a liability. It can also lead us to victory or to defeat depending on how we exercise it. It all depends on how we position our will in relation to the will that really matters—the will of God.
In 1982, an Austrian toothpaste salesman on a marketing junket in Southeast Asia was suffering from jet lag in Thailand. There, he discovered that a drink called Krating (“bull”) Daeng (“red”) gave him a fresh shot of energy. He was so impressed with the drink’s effects that, in 1984, he formed a partnership with the drink’s Thai founder to “Westernize” the product in terms of taste preferences. Thus was born Red Bull Energy Drink—the first product in what has become a huge new category. Red Bull was introduced in Austria in 1987, other international markets in 1992, the United States (California) in 1997, and the Middle East in 2000.
The rest, as they say, is marketing history. Red Bull is not only the originator of the worldwide energy drink category, it is still the leader. In 2016 alone, more than 6 billion cans were sold worldwide. If those numbers appear huge, consider that Red Bull is just one product in a category containing more than 50 brands of energy drinks including 5-Hour Energy, AMP Energy, Full Throttle, Hype Energy, Monster, and others.
When Wayne was just six years old, his father built an ice rink in the family’s backyard in Ontario, Canada. Why? “It was for self-preservation,” his father, Walter, said. “I got sick of taking him to the park and sitting there for hours freezing to death.” All his son wanted to do was play ice hockey. He had been skating and playing hockey since the age of two, and by the time he was six he was competing in youth leagues far above his age group. When he retired from his professional career in 1999 at age thirty-eight, “The Great One” was considered the greatest hockey player ever. Wayne Gretzky knew from the beginning that hockey was his life’s calling.
Celebrated athletes like Wayne Gretzky understand the connection between purpose and passion. The deeper the conviction about purpose in life, the deeper the passion to excel. But I’m not just talking about athletes. Life is filled with people who are passionately committed to fulfilling what they know is God’s purpose for their life.
During the past few months our nation has witnessed devastating natural disasters that demolished entire communities and took the lives and livelihoods of many Americans. Hurricanes Harvey and Irma have negatively impacted millions[i] of people and left behind billions of dollars in damages. As difficult and challenging as these events have been, and will continue to be for multitudes of people, these catastrophic events have allowed our nation to come together to help those affected. In response to Hurricane Harvey alone, companies have promised to donate more than $65 million to help with relief efforts—and that number is still rising. This is not including all private donations and time spent volunteering by people across the United States.[ii] It has encouraged the nation as we have observed neighbor helping neighbor—but we need to remember that we shouldn’t simply be observers when it comes to encouragement.
Practical and purposeful encouragement is something each of us can do, but too often we miss the opportunity in the busyness of our lives. I’ll confess I’m not a natural-born encourager. Often I’m so focused on my day that I don’t notice when others have a need. But I’m learning to be deliberate about it—even when it’s not convenient.
In 1914 Thomas Edison’s laboratory caught on fire. When he realized how big the blaze was, Edison sent word to his family and friends, “Get down here quick. You may never again see anything like this!”
Edison lost 2 million dollars in equipment and the record of a life’s work. Walking through the rubble with his son Charles, he said, “There’s a great value in disaster. All our mistakes are burned up. Thank God we can start anew.”
How many would be able to respond with gratitude after such loss? Giving thanks to God, Edison started anew. Many great inventions came after his laboratory burned.
How can we reap the benefits of a thankful heart all year long?
Sometimes in life, it’s not what you know; it’s who you know. Of course, what you know is vitally important. But think of it this way: The less you know, the more important who you know becomes.
Think about some examples from biblical history:
•A New World: God wanted Noah and his family to be the ones to populate the new world after the Flood. It meant building an ark, loading the animals, collecting food, floating for 150 days, then establishing a new human order. It wasn’t what Noah knew that was important; it was only important that he “walked with God” (Genesis 6:9).
•A New Nation: When it came time for God to create a people through whom to bring a Savior into the world, He chose Abraham. God told Abraham and his family to leave their home and travel to a land called Canaan where God promised to do something great through him. So Abraham left “not knowing where he was going” (Hebrews 11:8). It wasn’t what Abraham knew that was important; it was only important that he was “the friend of God” (James 2:23).
•A New Calling: Jesus told Andrew and Peter, James and John, and others to follow Him, that He would make them fishers of men. They didn’t know where Jesus was going, which meant they didn’t know where they were going. But they laid down their vocations and took up His. It wasn’t what the first disciples knew that was important; it was only important that they had “found Him of whom Moses in the law, and also the prophets, wrote” (John 1:45).
•A New Faith: Paul was confronted by Jesus and commissioned to carry the Name of Christ “before Gentiles, kings, and the children of Israel” (Acts 9:15). Paul had been called to a new faith and had more questions than answers. It wasn’t important what Paul didn’t know; it was only important that he had come to “know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings” (Philippians 3:10).
In each of these instances, people were given a new vision to consider—and very few details. But more important than what they knew was Who they knew. And the same is true when God gives us a vision for a new venture.
Some days we feel like winners. Other days we feel like losers. But for the child of God, there’s never really a losing season. It’s important to know what the score is. I’d like to point you to the great scoreboard of the Word of God and show you some winning numbers.
13-5
If you know Christ as your Savior, the score is always 13-5, as in Hebrews 13:5: For He himself has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” Those words were penned to a group of Hebrew Christians who were growing discouraged by opposition and threats of persecution. In writing to them, the author of Hebrews reminded them of a thrice-given promise made to Joshua.
In the Book of Hebrews, we learn that this wasn’t just Joshua’s promise. It’s a universal promise for all God’s children. The writer of Hebrews told his readers they could claim it for themselves, and so can you.
The word “always” is frequently misused in our everyday conversations, simply because the definition and its application often do not match. The definition of “always” is “at all times.” If you think about it, no one is “always” late or “always” on time, but when we speak of the faithfulness of God, always is the correct word. God is always faithful to His promises, and understanding this attribute is the key to the life of faith that we long to experience.
In times of crisis and fear, we look for a leader in whose courage we can rely and in whose words, we can trust. The problem is, of course, that human leaders are fallible. Though their words inspire us, their lives are imperfect. Their oratory may inflame us, but their thoughts are finite.
We need a leader who never falters, whose words are true, whose power is wisely administered, and whose promises never fail. We have such a leader, for we have the Lord! We can trust Him completely, and this kind of faith drives out fear. His plans and purposes can be relied upon.
King Solomon ruled the nation of Israel in peace for 39 years during the mid-tenth century B.C. At that time, the borders of Israel extended from the Euphrates River to the edge of Egypt. Solomon had more than 40,000 horses and 12,000 charioteers in his possession. Each day ten oxen, twenty head of cattle, and a hundred sheep were slaughtered just to feed his household and his servants. He amassed the greatest aggregation of gold and silver that had ever been accumulated in ancient times. He built great structures and wrote timeless works of literature.
The great teacher and theologian Oswald Chambers wrote, “Your mind is the greatest gift God has given you and it ought to be devoted entirely to Him. You should seek to be ‘bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ’ (2 Corinthians 10:5). This will be one of the greatest assets of your faith when a time of trial comes, because then your faith and the Spirit of God will work together.”[1]
[1] Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest. February 11 reading. http://utmost.org/is-your-mind-stayed-on-god/.
Love letters are the ties that bind the hearts of lovers together; the bridge that spans the chasm that time and distance create. Our separation from our Savior is made more difficult by the fact that we have never seen Him face-to-face. We are like a bride who married her lover from a distance and yearns to be united with Him for the first time.
The apostle Peter speaks of the testing of our faith as we await the arrival of one whom “having not seen you love” (1 Peter 1:8). But we are not without communication from Him. We have a book full of love letters to read, if only we will— letters that tell of His great love for us and what our reunion with Him will be like when He returns for all eternity.
How long would you allow a letter from your long-separated beloved to sit unopened? Not for a second! Yet how long do we allow the Bible, which is full of God’s declarations of love to us, to sit unopened and unread? Jesus is the Bridegroom and we are the Bride. His words of love will keep our heart entwined with His if we will read and cherish them daily.
If you have ever been to a large reception that celebrated the marriage of two very mature, serious, and committed people, then you’ve been blessed. The deeper the love and commitment, the more free and genuine the celebration. The world has seen some pretty amazing wedding receptions, but there is one coming that will make them look amateurish by comparison: the Marriage Supper of the Lamb. The Marriage Supper of the Lamb is mentioned by that name in only one passage of Scripture, Revelation 19:7-9. But in spite of only one mention, it is not hard to understand everything we need to know about the most wonderful wedding reception ever planned. From studies of Jewish biblical culture, we know there were three stages to a Jewish wedding.
One of the most popular vaudevillian teams in the 1920s was Montrose and Allen. Belle Montrose was a brilliant comedienne, and her husband, Bill Allen, played the straight guy. The two kept audiences rolling in the aisles. In 1921, their son, Stephen Allen, was born.
Steve Allen’s earliest memories were of vaudeville. His own television show debuted in 1950; three years later he hosted a late-night program from New York City. It was The Tonight Show, and Steve Allen is credited with virtually inventing late-night television.
Late in his life, Allen became disgusted with his own industry. The entertainment business, he felt, had taken a turn for the worse. I wonder what Steve Allen would say now. Many Christians in Hollywood today are having a hard time finding roles that won’t mar their testimony, and believers everywhere are finding it hard to draw the line between being “in” the world but not “of” it.
It might have happened when you had the lead role in your church Christmas pageant. Or, it might have happened as an adult in a Sunday morning drama…you forgot your lines! It has happened to all of us. Thankfully, there’s usually help from the wings. If it’s a school play or pageant, there’s a teacher or parent standing backstage with the script in hand, ready to prompt the forgetful child. And if it was a community theater presentation, there was undoubtedly a well-trained prompter in the wings to come to your aid and keep the show moving. In that setting, often the audience doesn’t even know what has happened since the prompter’s voice can’t be heard beyond the stage—an ideal situation.
Clothing designers are some of the most creative people on earth. The dress, slacks, pants, jacket, or shirt you’re wearing right now is the result of armies of people working day and night to produce clothing for the world’s 7 billion people. Most garments are mass-produced, and fashion is a global industry that represents one of the largest employers on the planet.
Think of what goes into your wardrobe. From the development and processing of the raw materials, to the designers, to the manufacturers, to the sales force and advertising departments, to the retail outlets—the world of apparel is a huge player in the global economy, providing paychecks for everyone from underpaid seamstresses to overpaid executives at Vogue.
All designers—young or old, local or global—dream of sewing their label into our garments. The designer’s mark is a source of prestige and profit. Sometimes that label is stitched discreetly inside our clothing, but sometimes the logo or designer’s mark is visible on the outside for everyone to see.
Unlike some of you reading this article, I was around long before there were personal computers. That means I recall what some of the first personal computers were like—compared to the more powerful models now.
I’m not a computer genius by any means, but I think I have the following right: For many years, personal computers had only one processor. That means the earliest personal computers could do only one thing at a time. Eventually, the processors were able to handle more than one task at a time—multitasking, they called it. Still, if you were trying to do two tasks at once, both would be slowed down as the processor switched rapidly between the two tasks.
Today, it’s a different world. A college student can be typing up the notes from the video lecture he’s streaming online while listening to music while downloading a movie he plans to watch when the lecture is finished. In other words, there’s some serious multitasking power on today’s computers.
The military operation that killed Osama bin Laden was dramatic but fairly typical: soldiers, helicopters, and guns. The Navy SEALs that carried out the mission represented centuries of military strategy: armed men, on the ground, seeking to take out the enemy.
But later, when another Al Qaeda leader, Anwar al-Awlaki, was killed, the operation was one that armies of past decades wouldn’t have believed. Al-Awlaki was killed in Yemen, but there were no Americans or materials on the ground at the scene of the attack. An armed drone was flying silently thousands of feet above him. The pilot was thousands of miles away at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada using this small, computer-controlled plane deploying a laser-guided bomb.
Yesterday it was called “science fiction.” Today it’s called “technology.” But the Bible calls it “prophecy”!
Steve Jobs didn’t have a lot to say. He didn’t give a lot of speeches, except for a famous graduation address at Stanford University. He was a private man. He didn’t take to the podium to advance his causes except when unveiling his new products.
Yet Jobs changed the history of communication. He made the world accessible to us, and us to the world. He turned “I” into a lower-case phenomenon and squeezed all our bulky entertainment systems into portable devices. Jobs’ mission was delivering as much content possible, to as many people as possible, as quickly as possible, and as portably and affordably as possible.
Steve Jobs wasn’t a perfect man. But perhaps his commitment to his own mission will remind us of our commitment to ours. We’re to rededicate ourselves every day to deliver the Gospel to as many people possible, as quickly as possible, and as portably and affordably as possible.
When Clerow Wilson turned 16, he was ready to get out of foster homes and reform school, so he lied about his age and joined the U.S. Air Force. Blessed with a non-stop personality, he entertained fellow airmen with so many funny stories they claimed he was “flipped out.” The name stuck. Leaving the Air Force, “Flip” Wilson found work as a bellhop and started performing between paid acts at the hotel’s stage show. Before long he was a successful comedian. One of Flip’s most popular characters was Geraldine Jones, whom he portrayed in a dress, a copper-colored wig, and with exaggerated facial expressions. Geraldine was constantly misbehaving, crossing the line, and violating her conscience. But she had a one-sentence explanation for her behavior: “The devil made me do it.” The phrase, “The devil made me do it,” became part of entertainment lore.
I wonder why. On its surface, it’s not a particularly funny line. Perhaps it struck our funny bones because it struck a nerve. We know we’re sinners. We’re bewildered at how easily we do wrong and how hard it is to do right. We need a rationale for our evil habits, or at least an excuse. It’s as good an excuse as any. In some way, this tagline became an expression of national self-justification: “The devil made me do it.”
In 2009, a well-known attorney in Pennsylvania pled guilty to corruption charges. All the details of his case, trial, and eventual sentencing were widely covered in the media. I am not going to mention his name or cite the sources online where you can read about his crime because it is not my purpose to focus on his failure. What I want to do is highlight portions of a letter he submitted to the judge just prior to his sentencing:
“Your Honor, I take full responsibility for my actions and inactions. When I [got involved with the other guilty parties] I knew instantly that was wrong. I had the responsibility to say no and not to assist them in any way . . . I knew better and I lacked the courage to say no. . . . I had the responsibility to refuse them. . .. I had the ability to do the right thing and say no. I was wrong for giving in . . .. I was also wrong not to report this to the authorities . . .. I was both scared and selfish and I will forever regret that decision.
Thank you. Respectfully submitted, [Name].”[1]
These are just some of the penitent words in his letter to the judge. Again—I am making no judgment as to whether the accused genuinely meant what he said or not. But it is worth noting that he chose not to solicit letters from community leaders, friends, family, or others who might have spoken on his behalf. He chose to face the music without appearing to try to influence the judge with others’ support.
If you are a parent with children who’ve attended college, then you have likely sent “care” packages—a box full of toiletries, socks, cookies, new (clean) underwear, and a bit of extra money, too. Or if you support missionaries overseas, you’ve probably mailed care packages to them as well with goodies from home that they can’t find on the mission field. When disaster strikes, Aid organizations rush in to meet the need for people who are hurting, lost, and in need of rescue.
Aid organizations have been around for centuries, but the last several decades have seen an explosion of aid movements around the world. Regardless of an aid organization’s purpose, founder, focus, and constituents, they all begin with two things in common: a need and an idea. Somebody, in the face of a crisis or just lying in bed and thinking late at night, had an “Aha!” moment: “I can do something about that!” They shared the need and the idea, got others involved and excited, and a campaign was born.
Let me tell you about a boy whose love for his mother changed history. This fellow grew up dreaming of joining the British Navy. His brother was a Navy man, and his tales and enthralled young George. The lad began dreaming of a career on the high seas. As soon as he was of age, he signed up. George’s widowed mother opposed the idea, but she reluctantly gave her consent.
But when the day came for goodbye, it was too much for his mother. Seeing him in his dashing uniform, with his belongings on the ship and his vessel ready to sail, she sobbed. She begged him to renounce his plans and to assist her with her burdens in life.
If you have seen the inspiring film Chariots of Fire, based on the life of Scottish missionary and Olympic runner Eric Liddell, you will probably remember these wonderful words that he spoke: “I believe that God made me for a purpose. But He also made me fast, and when I run, I feel His pleasure.” He spoke those words as a response to being criticized for pursuing his interests in track and field before going to the mission field.
I believe we could easily substitute the word “joy” for “pleasure” in Liddell’s statement without changing the meaning at all, for God takes joy and pleasure when His creation manifests its God-given purpose. And if God finds pleasure and joy when we excel in desires that honor Him, shouldn’t we feel the same pleasure and joy? Of course, we should.
I’ve had many mentors in life, but most of them had departed this life when they taught me their greatest lessons. They’ve lined the walls of my study and filled my bookcases with their words of wisdom. I enjoy good books and have profited immeasurably from reading biographies. As you may have noticed, lots of these timeless antidotes show up in my sermons and writings.
To me, reading a good biography is like entertaining a great soul in my home. He or she may live in a different age, speak a different language, and face a different set of challenges; but when I open their stories, I’m sitting down with them for a pleasant visit. In the process, I learn about a world not my own, and I live in times that expand my experiences.
A truly well-written biography is a rare treat; but the best biographies are found in God’s Book. The Bible is filled with great and unvarnished stories of individual history. Think of the men and women we encounter between Genesis and Revelation. When we get to heaven, we’ll already know Abraham, David, Peter, and Paul. Some of us have studied their lives for years, and meeting them will be like greeting an old friend. Think of the Heroes of the Faith described in Hebrews 11—men and women “of whom the world was not worthy” (Hebrews 11:38). Their lives should inspire us to “lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and … run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus” (Hebrews 12:1-2).
When you think of home, what comes to mind? The types of homes available for people living in the United States today varies greatly from the “Leave it to Beaver” model seen on television so many years ago. Many of us grew up in neighborhoods where all the homes were similar in style and size. Move forward to today and homes are built in extremes—everything from massive homes with home theatre systems and gyms—to the tiny home craze where people are down-sizing to enjoy life more. Wherever we live, home has a special place in our heart and memory. But beyond where we call home, there is divine resident who goes and dwells with us a child of God. Here are seven ways that His presence changes us:
At the beginning of the multiple-Oscar-winning movie Gladiator, the Roman general Maximus is readying his cavalry to ride against a Germanic horde in a forest in Europe. He shouts to them, “Hold the line! Stay with me! If you find yourself alone, riding in the green fields with the sun on your face, do not be troubled. For you are in Elysium, and you’re already dead!”
Elysium was a version of heaven that arose among the Greek poets and philosophers and remained popular in Roman times—a place where the righteous and heroic, and those chosen by the gods, would spend a blessed afterlife. If anyone would qualify for entrance into Elysium, Maximus’ brave cavalry would—so they had no fear in the face of possible death. As mythical as Elysium was, its promise was enough to take the fear and sting out of death. When you can laugh at death, nothing else in life deserves to be feared. Hebrews 2:15 tells us that one thing is powerful enough to hold people in bondage all their lives—the fear of death. But the apostle Paul spent an entire chapter of 1 Corinthians explaining how Christ, by His resurrection, defeated death: “O Death, where is your sting? O Hades, where is your victory?” (1 Corinthians 15:55) If Roman soldiers had no fear of death by hoping in a make-believe place called Elysium, how much more should we Christians not fear death based on the documented reality of the resurrection of Jesus? And if we don’t fear death, why should we fear anything else?
In the education and business worlds it is not uncommon to hear the term affirmative action, but what does it mean in our everyday life to affirm someone? Basically, it is a statement or action that encourages someone. The Bible is filled with promises that affirm an endless supply of riches, privileges, joys, and blessings that we’ve never appropriated. These are the promises in the Bible we haven’t claimed. There are levels of peace we’ve not experienced. There are joys we’ve underappreciated. There are answers to prayer awaiting us.
Scripture is filled with affirmations about all God has given us. For an interesting Bible study, read the first half of Ephesians and notice how the words inheritance and riches and wealth and blessing fill the first three chapters of this book: [He] has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ … the riches of His grace … we have obtained an inheritance … the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints … rich in mercy … the exceeding riches of His grace … the gift of God … the unsearchable riches of Christ … the riches of His glory (Ephesians 1:3, 7, 11, 18; 2:4, 7, 8; 3:8, 16).
In Christ we’ve inherited a fortune beyond anything this world can imagine, but perhaps we’re largely unaware of it.
You’ve no doubt heard the story about the two hunters in the forest who were surprised by a huge grizzly bear. They immediately took off running with the bear in hot pursuit. The slower of the two men yelled out, “We’ll never outrun this bear!” The man in the lead yelled back over his shoulder, “I don’t have to outrun the bear. I just have to outrun you!”
Is it cowardly to flee a charging grizzly bear? Not to me! Sometimes “flight” is a much wiser decision than “fight” when it comes to the physical arena of life. But what about the spiritual arenas of life? Sometimes God puts us in fight-or-flight situations so we can learn two things: bravery and trust.
The story that you are about to read is about Joseph, the earthly father of Jesus. In the Bible we learn that, in the face of a shocking revelation, Joseph was a good man. But then we are blessed (and convicted) when we see that he was also a godly man. Joseph has to be one of the best men in the biblical story of redemption.
Sheep are mentioned more than any other animal in the Bible. David watched over his father’s flocks; sacrifices highlighted the lambs brought for slaughter; and Jesus is portrayed as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Imagine—He is both the Good Shepherd and the Passover Lamb!
As one year comes to an end and a new year is before us, our thoughts are often on, “What’s next?” What we are really asking is, “What does God want me to do in 2019?”
There are three domains to consider: Our heart (our character), our hands (our regular activities), and our head (our long-range plans and decisions).
There are moments in our lives that leave a permanent image in our mind. Some may be events in history that we recall what we were doing when we heard the news, such as on 9/11. Others may be more personal events in your life that you will never forget. Clarifying moments jolt us out of our slumber—they force us to respond, to adjust, and to change our lives.
Sometimes those moments come as a result of a problem, an experience of pain, or a blessing from God—either an outright blessing or a blessing in disguise. Sometimes we have an “Aha!” moment when we learn something, meet a person, or travel to a new location where we encounter different cultures.
If you have seen images of men and women reaching out to help people during times of tragedy and need, you have seen that rescuers live with a sense of urgency, for reaching those who are hurt and in danger is an imminent crisis. We commend their selfless devotion to helping whether it is a hurricane, a flood, or a fire—they are there. But for eternity, Jesus is the Ultimate Rescuer. At just the right moment, He rappelled into history, descending from heaven into a dark, dangerous, and despairing world to rescue the perishing.
After His resurrection, rather than remain on earth, He commissioned His followers to go in His Name, seeking the lost and making disciples. That mission has made its way down to you and me, and we need a divine sense of urgency because we don’t know how much longer before Christ comes again. You and I are God’s ultimate rescuers—bringing people to the saving knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Sometimes you feel like a nut!
Sometimes you don’t!
Almond Joy’s got nuts
Mounds don’t!
I can’t help but smile when I read those words. First, let me say that they are the copyrighted property of the Hershey Foods company who makes two of the most popular candy bars in American culture: Almond Joy and Mounds.
The wacky TV commercials used to advertise the two bars played for a couple of decades, and “Sometimes you feel like a nut!” became part of American culture. The commercials always pictured happy people doing funny things and always left you feeling like having a candy bar! Even the name of the Almond Joy is indicative of how one is supposed to feel when enjoying the candy: joyful!
It was the last day of the state high school track and field championships. The most anticipated race would be the men’s 400-meter sprint. Two rivals were on deck: Billy Davis and Ricky Hall. Billy had won the majority of the races in which the two had met during their high school careers. But Ricky was having a stellar senior season. It was Billy’s race to win, but Ricky, the underdog, was the crowd favorite.
When the starter’s gun fired, the crowd erupted with screams. By the 200-meter mark, Billy was leading by a few strides. But suddenly, as if he shifted into overdrive, Ricky moved past Billy and around the last turn steadily increased his lead.
Suddenly, Billy grabbed the back of his right knee, slowing to a hobble and collapsing on the track. As Billy writhed on the track, Ricky broke the tape in victory. Everybody wondered: Did Billy Davis suffer an actual injury in the last stretch of the race, or did he feign a pulled hamstring once he saw he was going to lose?Legend has it that many years ago there was a South African king of the Zulu tribe named Shaka the Lion. When Europeans began to establish themselves in that country, it is said that Shaka didn’t die—he simply went to sleep, to be awakened one day and resume his powerful rule over his people. At least that’s the way the legend was recounted by famous American folk singer, Pete Seeger, on his album With Voices Together We Sing (Live).
Even many younger people today are familiar with the bass chant, “Wimoweh, uh-wimoweh, uh-wimoweh, uh-wimoweh,” over which float the haunting falsetto lyrics, “In the jungle, the mighty jungle, the lion sleeps tonight.” Pete Seeger created the word “wimoweh” as he transcribed the words to the song off an album made by a South African singing group, The Evening Birds. The word Seeger transcribed as wimoweh was really uyimbube, Zulu for “you are a lion”—a reference to the legendary Shaka the Lion.[1]
Our English word noise comes from the Latin word noxia, which means “injury or hurt.” The connection is easy to see. Noise pollution affects our physical and mental well-being, and it’s often detrimental to our spiritual health. Yet we’re surrounded by noise—blaring, jarring, clanging, clamoring commotion.
Thank God for quiet gardens! Whether it is a balcony with a flower pot or a sprawling national park, a garden is a great place to relax all five senses. There is no gentler sound on earth than the rippling of water in a small fountain or brook, or the rustling of trees in the breeze.
We can trace our origins back to a gorgeous garden planted “eastward in Eden” (Genesis 2:8). It was filled with bountiful fruit trees, irrigated by four rivers, scented by a million flowers, and studded with gold.
Rain, wind, and fire—think what life on earth would be like without them. Pretty desperate if not ultimately, impossible.
Rain. Water evaporates as a gas from the earth into the sky where it forms clouds, condenses, and falls to earth as a liquid. That liquid grows our crops, fills our rivers and lakes, cleanses the air and the planet from dirt and dust, and slakes our thirst. Life would not be good without rain.
Wind. We take it for granted, but life would be difficult without it. Wind moves clouds through the sky, making it possible for arid regions to get rain. With the advent of mechanization, wind power fell out of primary use; but now wind has suddenly become a targeted tool for producing electrical energy. Think how different life would be without wind.
Fire. No one knows when the first spark was intentionally struck by a human being, setting ablaze a fuel source, producing heat and light. Wherever fire began, life today would be impossible without it.
The beautiful red-bricked church of St. Andrews in Easton, Maryland, was known for its open door. Generations had gathered at St. Andrews to enjoy food, fellowship, and Sunday worship. So it came as a jolt to most parishioners when the bank foreclosed on the building and sold the property at auction.
Sadly, this is not a rare occurrence. There are thousands of houses of worship in America, and every week a few of them close their doors. The Christian Science Monitor ran a column a number of years ago entitled, “The Coming Evangelical Collapse,” which proclaimed, “We are on the verge—within 10 years—of a major collapse of evangelical Christianity.”[1]
But not so fast! I’m not ready to accept defeat. These are exciting times to be a Christian. The Church around the world is growing at a pace unequalled since Pentecost, and this is the greatest harvest season in the history of Christianity.
While I’m realistic about the challenges facing evangelism today, Christianity has a way of outliving its critics. News magazines and newspapers may soon be a thing of the past, but it’s a mistake to assume that Christianity is dead and buried. Don’t discount the power of God in the hearts of men and women.
Don Cantelon grew up on the Canadian prairie amid the incredible poverty of the Great Depression. Nine years of drought, dust storms, and grasshopper plagues added to the misery. Don’s dad, a prairie preacher, continued as faithfully as he could, living on almost nothing; and inspired by his example, Don himself grew up to become a young pastor. But he, too, received little income from the impoverished congregations he served.
Don met a girl named Ardena who he quickly fell in love with—the two became engaged. He was embarrassed that his fiancée’s left hand was bare, but there was no way he could afford a ring on his church salary, so he waited for an outside speaking engagement to provide a little extra money. Finally, he was asked to speak at a youth convention in Alberta.
Arriving in Alberta, he counted ten cents in his pocket; and when he learned that his assigned accommodations were a long way from the meeting hall, he fretted about the bus fare. As Don ambled down the street, a prayer formed in his mind: “Lord, if I had just five dollars, I think I’d be all right until they give me my love offering at the end of the convention. You see, Lord, I need just enough money for bus fare, a little writing pad, and a cheap pen.” As Don continued walking, he stuck his hand in the breast pocket of his coat and pulled out a love letter from Ardena along with a paper giving information about his trip.
Stuck between the two was a five-dollar bill.
At the end of the meetings, Don was given a modest honorarium. After buying his train ticket and returning home, there was enough left for the tiniest of engagement rings. Don never knew how the money got into his pocket, but he said, “From that point in my life, I found it easier to believe that God would supply all my needs according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:19).[1]
[1] Don Cantelon, The Day I Burned the Hotel Down and Other True Stories (Abbotsford, BC: CeeTeC Publishing, 2002), chapter 18: “The Five Dollar Miracle.”
Working and watching to prevent terrorist attacks is a top priority for government intelligence and security agencies, in today’s world, the more eyes searching the horizon for danger, the better. When I think about the money and work being invested in watching for something that may or may not happen, such as a terrorist attack, I consider how well the church is doing at working and watching. Resources have to be invested in counter-terrorism efforts whether another attack ever happens or not. But in the church’s case, we know of something that is absolutely going to happen in the future—something we should be working and waiting in anticipation of. And that event is the return of the Lord Jesus Christ to earth.
In 1886, Florida was hit by a deep freeze that killed the oranges and damaged the groves. Two brothers with a farming supply business, Sydney and Joshua Chase, used the occasion to purchase some discounted land southwest of Orlando. The brothers called it “Isleworth,” but they could not have dreamed of its worth today. It’s now one of America’s most exclusive gated communities. Isleworth includes a private golf course designed by Arnold Palmer, tennis courts, a full-service spa, swimming pools, fishing in seven lakes, and boat ramps. The residents enjoy their homes, but what if they never left? What if they forgot there was a real world outside their mansions and beyond their gates?
In 1972, an Episcopal priest by the name of Joseph Fletcher penned a popular book that drew many adherents to his perspective on life—it was called Situation Ethics. Following the tumultuous sixties when most of the moral absolutes on which America had been built were either challenged or discarded—this idea gained popularity. For Fletcher—and for followers of situational ethics—one law governed all decisions in life: the law of love—love was the only absolute, inviolable law. All other laws, including those in the Bible, were given to support the law of love. Therefore, any law could be broken in pursuit of greater love.
Here’s the bottom line of situational ethics: the ends can always justify the means. You’re free to do anything in pursuit of what you believe is a greater good. But is that Scriptural? Are we free to let circumstances (situations) dictate what we do? Do some of God’s laws have priority over others—and are we free to pick and choose? Are our values to be based on life’s situations or God’s stipulations?
I don’t see this as often as I used to, but it still happens—the occasional sighting of a car pulled off the side of the road with its hood up, steam billowing from the engine. What causes this unfortunate and untimely interruption in our busy lives? Basically, the water in the car’s radiator has dropped below a critical level and the engine overheats, boiling the remaining water—and thus the clouds of steam. Sometimes the critical water level is crossed suddenly when a radiator hose springs a big leak. But more often than not, it’s the result of a slow, steady, drip-drip-drip. If enough water drains out of the system through a slow or sudden leak, eventually there’s not enough water to cool the engine—and the remaining water boils inside the engine and is released as steam through whatever exit point it can find—usually a radiator hose with a weak spot or puncture.
If you haven’t said it today, you probably said it yesterday or the day before and will likely say it again soon. I’m talking about that favorite phrase, that lame lament, that regretful reason given up by the harried and hurried modern citizen, “I would/should/could but I just don’t have the time.”
I know in my own life, and I’m sure in yours, that there are plenty of things we would like to do if we had more time. So “I don’t have time” isn’t always a lament or an excuse. Sometimes, it’s the cold hard truth. We live busy lives, but there are some truths about time that we need to stay in touch with so that our reasons don’t morph into excuses.
If you’ve played in any ocean, you’ve probably done it—accidentally swallowed a mouthful of seawater. Yuck! Along with sharks and sunburn, swallowing seawater is one of the downsides of a day at the beach. Children learn this at an early age: “Mommy, this water tastes BAD!”
Providentially, I assume, it tastes bad because it’s not good for humans to ingest. And yet seawater, in its natural, balanced state, contains all the chemical elements necessary to sustain life on planet earth. (Remember—ocean animals and plants do just fine living in seawater.)
Seawater contains a perfect balance of around one hundred elements. Many of those elements we’re familiar with: oxygen, hydrogen, calcium, magnesium, iron, and so on. Other elements appear in only trace amounts—less than one hundred parts per million. And some elements have very unusual names: technetium, tantalum, samarium, yttrium, and others. Some, like arsenic, can be deadly in concentrated amounts.
Futurologists have many predictions about what our world will be like in the coming years. They predict that 30,000 drones will be patrolling the skies of the United States next year and that high-speed trains will be operating in the Northeastern U.S. beginning in 2021. And apparently driverless hover-taxis will be transporting people in Dubai in 2022. But transportation isn’t the only area where change is taking place—changes are in store for space too. China is predicted to complete their first space station in 2022, and a lunar mission will drill into the moon’s south pole in 2024. Futurologists are also expecting unemployment will start soaring in 2025. And if you’re becoming forgetful, in 2023, you’ll be able to receive a brain implant to restore your lost memories. And finally, if you’re a chocolate lover, you might want to start saving your money now, as chocolate will become a rare luxury in 2031.[1]
The British government established the Ministry of Information (MOI) on September 4, 1939. Its mission was to generate materials to sustain the nation’s morale during World War II. Since bombings and gas attacks were likely, deaths inevitable, and invasion possible, the MOI resolved to bolster the British by disseminating information helpful to the war effort.
I remember when a whole generation exploded in the 1960s, rebelling against war, materialism, and institutions of all kinds. Colleges were bombed, schools closed by sit-ins, students shot, and America came unglued. The epicenter was in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district (called “Hashbury” by the hippies), where disillusioned, long-haired youth adopted countercultural values, turned on to drugs, dropped out of society, and protested the “establishment.”
Made by a German company that’s been around since the 1700s, a particular sandal became popular with the rise of the hippie movement in the sixties and seventies in the U.S.— Birkenstocks. They appealed to “hippies, academics, and others interested in a more bohemian lifestyle,” and they were nicknamed “Jesus Sandals.”[1]
[1] Margo DeMello, Feet and Footwear: A Cultural Encyclopedia (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO 2009), 39.
On a flight from Phoenix, Arizona, a passenger was randomly selected to have her palms swabbed by the TSA (Transportation Security Administration). To her dismay, the test came back positive for explosives, and she was taken to a private room and questioned. The positive reading was a mistake—a false positive—the result of too much Lubriderm hand lotion, which contained small amounts of glycerin, a component of nitroglycerin, used in explosives.[1]
If there’s anything worse than a “false positive,” it’s a “false negative.” That’s when your medical tests come back with good news but only because the results failed to discover a deadly disease, one that could have been cured if discovered in time. Experts around the world —in medicine, law enforcement, drug testing, and in a variety of fields—are working to minimize “false positives” and “false negatives.”
Ellen Creager, “Hand Cream Can Set Off Airport Security,” Detroit Free Press, November 14, 2013. http://www.freep.com/article/20131110/COL21/311100139/creager-travel-q-a. (accessed November 22, 2013).
Dr. John Rosemond, who specializes in parenting issues, once received a letter from the exasperated mother of a three-year-old girl, whom the mom described as “constantly in motion, gets into everything, won’t stay in her bed at night, won’t accept ‘No’ for an answer,” and so on. In the middle of describing this little unsettling child, the mother added, “I know she’s well intentioned.”
Dr. Rosemond wrote back, saying, “Well intentioned? No, your daughter is not well intentioned. She intends to have it her way, she intends to prove she can outlast you, and she intends to prove she runs the show. She is doing what she is doing with bad intention, and you will not be able to discipline her properly until you stop thinking she is innocent and making excuses for her.”[1]
Henrietta Haas was born in Vienna in 1929. When the Nazi threat drove her family to America in 1939, Henrietta studied retailing in college and later earned a master’s degree in library science. She married her sweetheart, Monroe Milstein, who launched a clothing business after World War II. Henrietta worked as a librarian in a Long Island elementary school, and she used her $75,000 in savings to help her husband purchase a former factory outlet in Burlington, New Jersey, for his clothing store.
Business boomed and Burlington Coat Factory soon opened a second location. The Milstein’s son, Lazer, agreed to run the second store on the condition it be closed on Saturday, his Sabbath. Consequently, the store reopened every Sunday morning, where hundreds of people came to shop on their day off. When the Milstein family sold Burlington Coat Factory in 2006, it was purchased for more than two billion dollars—the $75,000 investment paid great dividends!
As it happens, the Christmas season marks the beginning of winter when people are shopping for outerwear or pulling sweaters out of their closet. Some of us have sweaters, coats, dresses, or ties we wear only at Christmas. Some of them are corny, some are classy; but all of them spur on the holiday spirit.
“Why are people malnourished in the richest country on Earth?” asks an article in an issue of National Geographic.1 It’s an interesting question, especially for people who probably don’t suffer from malnutrition.
According to this article, the number of people who are hungry has grown dramatically in recent years—increasing to 48 million Americans in 2012. Statistics show that in 1980, there were a few hundred emergency food programs across the country, and five years ago when the article was written, there were 50,000.[1]
Does your attention span far and wide? Perhaps it’s time to shorten our attention span and focus more on Jesus. Otherwise our thoughts and opinions may be shaped by the world instead of by the Word.
All of us are shaped and molded by someone. But there’s only one mold by which every Christian should be shaped—the mold and model of Jesus Christ. We’re to be stamped with His image and shaped by His Spirit. The apostle Paul said, “And the Lord—who is the Spirit—makes us more and more like him” (2 Corinthians 3:18, NLT).
In his paraphrase of Romans 12:2, J. B. Phillips said, “Don’t let the world around you squeeze you into its own mould, but let God re-mould your minds from within.”
The website “Ask a Manager” received a letter from a reader who lied during a job interview. Responding to a technical question, the applicant should have said, “I don’t know,” but instead improvised an answer and tried to bluff through the discussion. Afterward the person was anxious about the flub and wondered what to do.
“Ask a Manager” replied: “This is not good, but you probably already know that.” The columnist pointed out that few people object when we say, “I don’t know. I’ll find out and get back to you.” But to be caught trying to make up an answer speaks to honesty, integrity, and judgment.[1]
As Christians, there will be times when we’ll be asked a question for which we don’t have an answer. So what happens when none are forthcoming?
[1] Ask a Manager, http://www.askamanager.org/2011/06/i-made-up-an-answer-in-a-job-interview-what-should-i-do-now.html (accessed June 3, 2014).
Baby Face Nelson was one of the most notorious gangsters of the 1930s. He terrorized small banks in America’s heartland, robbed and murdered with daring abandon, and killed more FBI agents in the line of duty than any other single American citizen.
His brief career reads like a gangster movie—bank robberies, hostages, shoot-outs, police chases, FBI raids, notorious thugs, and narrow escapes. After FBI director J. Edgar Hoover announced that Baby Face Nelson was Public Enemy Number 1, the outlaw lived as a fugitive with his wife and two children in California and Nevada.
“Blood and sand” has two meanings in history—one negative, the other positive. The sand covering the floor of Roman coliseums was turned red by the blood of men and beasts who fought and died to satisfy the boredom of a populace.
But blood and sand were mingled together on another day in history for a point and purpose elevated far above mankind’s base motives: redemption from the Law instead of death by the Law. The blood of Roman gladiators was poured out on Mediterranean sands as a result of Roman law condemning them to die. But the blood of Jesus was poured out on Judean sands to free the human race from spiritual condemnation by God’s righteous Law.
“Doubting” was his nickname. Never mind that prior to his lapse, he volunteered to die with Jesus. Never mind that after his lapse, he took the Gospel to India where, according to our best traditions, he was martyred. We remember him most for his qualms following the Crucifixion, and we call him D. T.—“Doubting Thomas.”
We identify with him. It’s not that we struggle with doubts about the resurrection of Christ. We’re convinced of that. But none of us trusts as we ought. So the Bible gives us Thomas, the forerunner of all who occasionally question; and his story assures us of the patience of our Lord Jesus.
When Jesus spent a final night teaching His disciples in the Upper Room, Thomas broke in with the question they all wanted to ask: “Lord, we do not know where You are going, and how can we know the way?” (John 14:5) On the day of our Lord’s crucifixion, however, D. T. was nowhere to be seen, nor did he meet with the other disciples three days later amid the flurry of rumors and reports of the Resurrection. We can only assume he was embittered and disillusioned, no longer wanting to associate with the Twelve.
The Benissimo (“I Am Fine”) Mask is uniquely Venetian, for Venice is famous not only for its canals and masks but also for its glassmakers. During the Middle Ages and Renaissance, the principal center of European glassmaking was the Venetian island of Murano. Great cathedrals across Europe adorn their windows and mosaics with the superb stained glass from Venice.
It isn’t surprising, then, that the stained glass mask was among the most popular on the city’s Grand Canal. People wearing the mask appeared religious when in fact they were perhaps nothing of the kind.
The Benissimo Mask is equally popular among American churchgoers. On the outside, we often give the appearance that all is well. “I’m fine,” we say if asked. “I attend a great church. I have a marvelous family. My job’s great.”
But beneath the mask is a heart that says, “Things are not all right. My marriage is rocky. My kids are drifting. I’m lapsing in hidden areas of my life. I don’t feel close to God. I’m hurting.”
Could you be wearing this mask? Are you giving others the impression you’re doing better than you really are?
Anyone who follows the international news is used to hearing members of the British Royal Family referred to by only their first name—such as Prince Charles, Prince William, or Queen Elizabeth. Members of England’s (or any) Royal Family follow the centuries-old tradition of having first names and titles only. But modern conventions demand last names as well. But what is the surname for members of the Royal Family? The surname for the Royal Family has been Windsor since 1917. Queen Elizabeth chose to include a reference to her husband’s ancestry, so her descendants have the surname of Mountbatten-Windsor. However, Prince William and his family could use the name “Cambridge,” since he is the Duke of Cambridge, and Prince Harry could use the name “Sussex,” in accordance to his royal title. The name they choose to use does not change their ancestry, it just exemplifies their role in the monarchy.
King Solomon observed, “Riches are not forever, nor does a crown endure to all generations” (Proverbs 27:24). That’s why Jesus said, “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth… but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal” (Matthew 6:19-20). He also reminded us, “Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to everlasting life” (John 6:27). Paul added, “Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth” (Colossians 3:2). And John wrote, “Do not love the world or the things in the world… The world is passing away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever” (1 John 2:15, 17). The message is clear: Our focus should be on eternal possessions and treasures—not on temporal pleasures and pursuits. In fact, the Bible records rewards that will be awarded to the faithful.
Social media has become a place for you and your friends to share life and to be in touch with immediate and extended family members, acquaintances, and each other. It’s a place to share pictures, news, causes to which you’re committed, and other conversational tidbits. Social media has also been an excellent way to reconnect with friends from the past. For these reasons, it’s not hard to understand its incredible popularity. It’s a place to go every day where lots of people know your name and have publicly said they want to be your friend.
But there is another side to putting yourself “out there” in public on social media.
When you are in the midst of financial difficulties, you can easily feel discouraged and experience momentary dejection. Many who are unemployed right now due to the worldwide shutdown may fear they’ll never find another job, but we need to remember this situation is temporary. Our hope is in God—He is our provider—in times like these we need to depend even more on His provision.
God’s Promises
I want to give you a list of Bible verses where God promises to meet our needs. These promises have conditions, of course; they’re given to those who faithfully love and serve Him. They tell us that God will make a way and He will provide for His own.
Al Capone rose from a petty hustler in Brooklyn to become the boss of Chicago’s underworld. In spite of being involved in money laundering, prostitution rings, racketeering, illegal liquor sales, murders, and many other crimes, the authorities were continually confused by the multiple layers of Capone’s activities. The authorities knew he was “the Boss” of the Chicago underworld, but they couldn’t prove it. In the end, Capone was sent to prison for income tax evasion, and that was only because another Chicago mobster turned state’s evidence and testified against Capone.
Confusion always has dangerous effects on one’s ability to enforce the laws of the land or to live according to the spiritual laws of God’s kingdom. Confusion leads to indecision, frustration, passivity, and a lack of progress—and we know that it is not God’s will. The apostle Paul stated: “God is not the author of confusion but of peace” (1 Corinthians 14:33).
U.N. peacekeepers’ official purpose is “to help countries torn by conflict create the conditions for lasting peace.” U.N. peacekeepers are exactly that—peacekeepers, not peacemakers. When there is an armed conflict, the combatants make peace, and U.N. peacekeepers help to preserve it. Primarily, they are observers, ensuring that the terms of peace agreements are kept. In short, U.N. peacekeepers exist to further the United Nations’ mission of maintaining international peace and security. [1]
While America’s love affair with the Empire State Building in New York City will never end, it hasn’t been the tallest building in the world since 1972 when it was eclipsed by the former North Tower of the World Trade Center. In fact, in 2020, there are fifty buildings in the world taller than the Empire State Building. The tallest skyscraper currently is in Dubai, standing 2,717 feet tall!
Attitude can mean the difference between victory and defeat in whatever struggle we’re facing. Morale is half the battle, as historian Robert Mackay writes in his book. According to Mackay, from the outset of World War II, the British Ministry of Information and its partnering agencies “attached great importance to people’s states of mind, measuring the fluctuations in cheerfulness, how much people were interested in the war news and whether they were optimistic about victory or the future more generally.”[1]
[1] Robert Mackay, Half the Battle: Civilian Morale in Britain During the Second World War (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002), 1.
In 2012, a church challenged the children in its Vacation Bible School (VBS) to do something unique: raise $1,750 to dig a freshwater well for a village in the West African nation of Burkina Faso. By the end of VBS they had raised $5,000, almost enough for three wells. The kids’ faith and energy inspired the entire church to get behind the project resulting in $17,500—enough for ten wells.
Most people agree that there is too much strife in our world today. And with strife comes pain and wounds to our soul. Physical warfare actually serves as a metaphor for the spiritual warfare and pain we encounter in our daily lives. For example, the story of the Israelites finding rest in the Promised Land after fighting the Canaanites was used by the author of Hebrews as an image of our own spiritual victory in Christ. And just as there are physical and psychological wounds in physical warfare, there are wounds in spiritual warfare as we journey through this life.
BYKOTA is an acronym sometimes used in our culture. It’s taken from Ephesians 4:32 (KJV): “Be ye kind one to another.” Perhaps it’s a sign that people are getting fed up with the nature of our cruel and critical age. In all our relationships and daily contacts, we have to make a conscious decision: Do we seethe as the world seethes, or do we see people as the Lord sees them?
Many of the successful people and organizations in our world today have created and followed a mission statement. Mission statements say many things: who we are, what we believe, and what we want to accomplish. They become tracks to run on, roads to travel on, and destinations to reach. We hear the most about mission statements in the corporate world. Businesses, governmental agencies, and even churches take the time to define what they do, who they serve, and what makes them unique. The mission statement of Turning Point is: Delivering the unchanging Word of God to an ever-changing world. It clearly states the purpose and priorities of our ministry outreach.
As I’m writing this article, 2020 is in our rear-view mirror but certainly not forgotten from our collective memory. The past year brought about an unprecedented amount of discord in our country and across the world: a contentious election cycle, the global COVID-19 pandemic, protests, and an economic recession. From man’s perspective the past year and our hopes for this year seem dim. But when I look at the sovereignty of God, I suddenly change from a pessimist to an optimist. The future isn’t doomed. We’re here today because God wants us to shape the future. His Word, His people, and His work can still impact today’s culture and shape tomorrow’s world. The best days are yet to come for Christ and His cause. Here’s how we can help SHAPE the future.
Elementary students know that T makes the “tuh” sound—just as people have known for thousands of years. We call that sound “tee” (T) but the ancient Hebrews called it “taw” (t), the Greeks called it “tau” (T), and Romans called it T as well. Our English T borrows its shape from the Roman (Latin) alphabet that so heavily influenced Europe.
But the “tuh” sound wasn’t always represented so cleanly. In the beginning, alphabet letters were simple pictographs representing objects or ideas. For example, the first letter in the proto-Hebrew alphabet is aleph, originally the word for “ox.” So the letter for aleph was originally shaped like an ox head. The second letter, bet, was also the word for “house,” so the letter was shaped like a simple house. And the last letter—taw—was the word for “mark” and therefore had the shape of an X-shaped mark which gradually moved to an upright position like our modern plus sign: (+).
In the first couple of centuries of Christian history, it wasn’t always safe to publicly identify oneself as a follower of Jesus. Though not mentioned in the New Testament, there is archeological and literary evidence for the use of a rough outline of a fish as a way of identifying one’s allegiance to Christ.
Conveniently, the Greek word for fish— ἰχθύς in Greek letters, transliterated as ichthus in English letters—contains letters that create a meaningful Christian acrostic. That is, the letters i-ch-th-u-s form the first letter(s) in a significant word regarding Christ:
No one really knows who wrote the first biography or autobiography, but Augustine’s Confessions is probably one of the earliest examples of the genre. And while there is no way to give a quantitative answer about who has the most biographies written about them, Jesus Christ must be the forerunner. No one knows for certain how many books exist about Him, beginning with the four “authorized” accounts by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Personally, I love reading Christian and missionary biographies. When I read stories of people like William Carey, William Wilberforce, Corrie Ten Boom, C. S. Lewis, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, they become my mentors.
If you like biography and history, you’ll love the Bible. When you pick up God’s Word, you’re opening a collection of the best biographies ever written. Almost every page gives us examples of people whose lives were good, bad, ugly, damned, saved, transformed, inspired, revolting, or world changing. Sometimes these sketches are lengthy, such as the chapters about King David or the apostle Paul. Other times, a person’s life is summed up in a one-sentence biography, such as Paul’s descriptions of his various friends in Romans 16, or the occasional summaries appearing in the Bible’s various genealogical listings.
Fill in the blank (with one word): “God is .”
If you already know how the Bible completes that statement, good for you! But I’m sad to report that you are among a minority of religiously-inclined folks in the United States. While the vast majority of Americans profess to believe in God, a majority of Americans don’t have a very positive view of the God they believe in!
Baylor University’s Institute for Studies of Religion wanted to know what Americans think about God. So, in 2005, they hired the famous Gallup polling organization to find out.[i] A 400-question survey was filled out by 1,721 adults, and the Institute began releasing the results in early 2006. In part, the survey instructions said, “We know that a lot of Americans believe in God, but we want to know what you think God’s personality is like and how engaged God is in the world.” After reading the results, I can only say that most Americans who believe in God don’t know Him as well as they should or could.
[i] http://www.baylor.edu/mediacommunications/news.php?action=story&story=41678 (accessed November 8, 2013).
Are you a Christian? If so, the battle for your faith is raging, and doubt, disillusionment, and discouragement are the weapons Satan employs to distract and detour you in your walk with God.
At some level, the battle for your faith is ongoing. If you yield to his tactics, Satan receives glory, for your unbelief will affect others. Think of how the ten spies faltered in their faith and infected the entire nation of Israel with fear in Numbers 13. Your faith can strengthen others by your testimony, just as your unbelief can weaken them. Our spirituality, or lack thereof, is contagious.
The book of Jude tells us “to contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 1:3). We must keep our doctrine pure, and we must grow in our faith in the truth. In fighting this battle, it helps to know our enemy and to recognize his tactics.
If you search in the “Books” section of Amazon.com using this term—“video games”—you will be shown thousands of books covering every conceivable aspect of the subject: history of video games, catalogs of games, music in video games, video game computer programming, graphic arts, and, most importantly, “how to” books written about individual games.
If I had to guess, I would say the “how to” books are the most popular. Why? Because human beings like to win! We love the thrill of victory and hate the agony of defeat. We want to know all the secret strategies and tricks of our favorite video game without spending thousands of hours discovering them ourselves. So, we look for a guide to our favorite game. Search for a book about your favorite popular video game and you will find more than one from which to choose. Even better—every major game has an online community of rabid fans. Join the conversation and you will learn from hundreds of players instead of just the one who authored the beginner’s guidebook you bought.
Life is a never-ending class in “how to.” Thankfully, reference materials and how-to and self-improvement materials exist in greater quantities than we could ever work through. The challenge is not finding help, but choosing among the plethora of options.
But that creates a different problem: a little thing called trust. If you are looking for help, where do you go? If your question is in the objective realm, then almost anyone’s advice will work. There are some areas in which the beliefs, character, and reputation of a person are not critical. But what if you need help with your marriage, with knowing God, or with raising children—more subjective areas of life? Then, the beliefs, character, and reputation of a teacher are much more critical. It would be wonderful if there were a reference source that was totally trustworthy in everything it discussed. There is such a book—the Word of God.
Each and every day, you and I will find ourselves sitting, standing, conversing or working with someone. But how often do we find ourselves actually sitting with another person long enough to make spiritual contact? When we do take the time, do we make ourselves available to God for His purposes? A friend of mine was required, for a pastoral care class, to spend a night as a chaplain’s assistant in the emergency room of a hospital.
Early one morning, a woman was brought into the ER who had tried to take her own life—or at least that’s what her wounds suggested. After the doctors bandaged up her wrists and got her stabilized, they left her alone in an exam room. My friend ventured into the room to see if he might minister to her in some way. He did the best he could to comfort her and share God’s love with her, when all of a sudden, she blurted out, “Who are you—Jesus?!”
No, my friend wasn’t Jesus. But I have no doubt that Jesus was there in that emergency room, using my friend to bring hope and heart-healing to a woman who needed both. When we, as Christians, sit down next to someone who needs God’s truth and love, we are simply doing what Jesus would do if He were here in the flesh.
The twenty-four-hour news cycle began on June 1, 1980, when media mogul Ted Turner flipped the switch and launched CNN—the world’s first nonstop all-news channel. On that inaugural broadcast from Atlanta, Turner spoke these apocalyptic words: “We won’t be signing off until the world ends.”
Since the world hasn’t yet ended, CNN is still on the air; but now they have lots of competitors—MSNBC, Fox News, Newsmax, and scores of other channels devoted to nonstop breaking news, business news, sports reports, and weather updates. If we’re not near a television, no problem. Our computers, tablets, and smart phones give us constant access to thousands of streaming services and news sites, including some devoted exclusively to Christian and religious news.
The New Testament says clearly that we are “sons of God” (Romans 8:14; Galatians 3:26). So as sons and daughters of God, how should we live in relation to our Heavenly Father? The relationship of God the Father and the Son of God provides clues.
• Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me, and to finish His Work.” (John 4:34)
• “For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me.” (John 6:38)
• So Jesus said to them again, “Peace to you! As the Father has sent Me, I also send you.” (John 20:21)
• Then Jesus answered and said to them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He sees the Father do; for whatever He does, the Son also does in like manner.” (John 5:19)
• “For I have not spoken on My own authority; but the Father who sent Me gave Me a command, what I should say and what I should speak.” (John 12:49)
As the Father’s attention was on the Son, so the Son’s attention was on the Father.
Have every considered, when we’re involved in sharing the Gospel, we’re part of the greatest international enterprise on earth. We are like crewmen on a ship and each of us has our own gifts, talents, opportunities, and positions. When it comes to evanglism, nothing beats the spirit and determination of a crew committed to the Captain and determined to complete the voyage. The crew is the “ye” in the Great Commission. Jesus said, “Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature” (Mark 16:15, KJV). The “ye” is ye and me—it’s us! You and I are called by God to take His cargo—the message of the Cross—to the ends of the earth.
The Personal Responsibility of the Great Commission
The Great Commission applies to each of us, to all God’s children. This is the way Christianity spread in the book of Acts and in the days of the Early Church. The church historian Philip Schaff wrote about the growth of the Church in Roman times: “Christianity once established was its own best missionary… It was a light shining in darkness and illuminating the darkness. And while there were no professional missionaries devoting their whole life to this specific work, every congregation was a missionary society, and every Christian believer a missionary, inflamed by the love of Christ to convert his fellow men…. Every Christian told his neighbor, the laborer to his fellow laborer, the slave to his fellow slave, the servant to his master and mistress, the story of his conversion, as a mariner tells the story of the rescue from shipwreck.”[1]
[1] Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, Vol. 2: Ante-Nicene Christianity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1910), 20-21.
It was God who told Adam and Eve, and later Noah, to “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it” (Genesis 1:28; 9:1). We are well on our way to filling the earth, for sure.
But fulfilling that command has come more as a by-product of something else: trade and exploration. Trade began on land, of course, with famous trade routes like the Silk Road, the Grand Trunk Road, the Amber Road, the Via Maris, and the Trans-Saharan routes linking the continents. But eventually, the spiderwebs of roads found their way to port cities—it was trade by sea that catapulted human development to a new strata.
Prior to the fifteenth century, sea trade was focused on the coasts of Europe, the Mediterranean world, and the coasts of Africa, India, and Asia. But when people realized the world was round, it made perfect sense to try to leave the coast of Europe sailing west and eventually arrive at the shores of Asia. A Portuguese explorer named Ferdinand Magellan set out with four ships to sail around the world (1519). Four years later, his last vessel limped into Portugal, minus Magellan (killed in the Philippines), proving that it was possible to sail anywhere in the world.
Do you stockpile food and water? Do you own a solar-powered generator? Do you have a hard copy of your contact list in case your electronic connections fail? What about a first aid kit and toolbox?
Lots of people are thinking about preparing for the “what if” in life. The Atlantic carried an article about a growing number of survivalists and “preppers” who use Internet sites to swap ideas on storing food, stockpiling supplies, cleaning weapons, and providing emergency medical care in the absence of doctors.[1]
Some people take it further. The Daily Mail reported on a Colorado family who spent vast amounts of money and time preparing for a day when “suddenly, and completely without warning” the world will experience “a total blackout—no electricity, no mobile phones, no banks, no Internet, no TV, no emergency services. Nothing.” The stockpile included drums of food and gallons of water, a solar oven, a generator, a propane burner, a water filtration device, surgical masks, grills, backpacks, solar panels, and more.
According to the news source, it’s all in preparation for a day when the economy fails, the world loses power and energy, communications go dark, and society collapses in chaos with mass riots and warfare.
[1] Colette Shade, “Survivalists Are Using Pinterest to Prepare for the Apocalypse,” The Atlantic, May 15, 2014.
If you’ve ever had carolers show up at your front door at Christmas, there’s a good chance they were bundled with sweaters and had faces aglow with the joy of the season. Perhaps they sang two or three Christmas songs, and I’ll bet I can guess their final selection. Carolers almost always end their impromptu concerts with the departing strains of “We Wish You a Merry Christmas.” It’s been like that for centuries. “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” dates from the 1700s and hails from somewhere in the west of England. It seems to have been written specifically for carolers because after the singers wish us a Merry Christmas in verse 1, they ask for some “figgy pudding” in verse two; and verse three says: “We won’t go until we’ve got some.”
Each year, the president releases his proposed federal budget for the next fiscal year. Usually the proposed budget exceeds the spending cap that has been approved by Congress. We all know what happens in such a case—the two houses of Congress begin long and often acrimonious debates. When they can’t agree on how much the government should spend, we see shutdowns, sequesters, and shenanigans.
All because of a “budget cap.” Caps, or limits on spending, are familiar to every person and household. Even the richest people in the world have a finite number of dollars. You and I are faced with spending caps—let’s call them “Christmas Caps”—every year at this time. We would love to have unlimited budgets for our Christmas celebrating and gift-giving, but there are limits.
Life is full of limits, is it not? We limit our food intake, our time, our involvement, our recreation, and many other areas of life—all for the purpose of living a healthy and balanced life. But Christmas in our culture has almost become the season of license instead of the season of limits. Perhaps a fresh consideration of “Christmas caps” will give you a renewed perspective to what we should value most about Christmas.
Our lives are jammed full of things to do, places to go, tasks to tackle, and obligations to meet. The world is moving faster than the speed of social media, and time is flying through our fingers like rope from a runaway sail. What can we do about it? Let me suggest a good dose of Psalm 90, which is one of the greatest treatises ever penned on the subject of time, eternity, and the span of our lives.
Students today can earn degrees in computer game design, environmental/ecological/sustainability studies, homeland security, cyber security, nanotechnology, new/social media, biometrics, forensics, data science, robotics, biomedical engineering, health informatics, e-business, emergency management, global studies, and more. Looking at the degrees offered by today’s colleges and universities is an indication of the developing opportunities available in today’s market. And there is a plethora of new opportunities for education, vocation, and service in our society.
In the 1980s, Victor Guaminga, an Ecuadorian Christian, was a project coordinator for World Vision in his native country. His village suffered continually from water-borne diseases because of their lack of clean drinking water. So with World Vision’s assistance, Victor developed a plan for constructing a pipeline that would connect his village with a source of clean water.
But the pipeline needed to be run through a nearby village—one with which Victor’s village had been feuding for years. When individuals in the rival village heard about the pipeline, they made it known that they would destroy any pipes that Victor attempted to use for the water project.
Rather than hating or retaliating against the other village, the Christians in Victor’s village decided to launch an evangelistic effort. It took several years, but gradually a church in the antagonistic village came into existence and the project was completed as planned.
There was water for life and the Water of Life because one village chose to love its enemies.[1]
[1] “Example in Ecuador: Forgiveness Unclogs a Pipeline,” World Vision magazine, February-March 1986, 18. Cited in Robert J. Morgan, Nelson’s Complete Book of Stories, Illustrations, and Quotes (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2000), 317-18.
At this very moment, you may be thinking of a recent game you watched where the score came down to the last minute or second. Often athletic enthusiasts will be found jumping up and down at those last-minute events in joy or in despair. Scorekeeping and winning seems to be very important in our culture.
History records that the last known gladiator contest was held in Rome on January 1, AD 404, when Honorius was emperor. The bravery of a simple monk “from the East”—Telemachus, who died attempting to stop the slaughter—became the precipitating factor in ending one of the most brutal periods in history. Three centuries of gladiatorial combat ended that day due to his bravery.
We often hear the term “Freedom Fighter” today to describe a revolutionary who is fighting against an oppressive regime. Telemachus was nothing if not a Freedom Fighter, giving his life for the right of men to live free of the fear of a brutal and unnecessary death.
At times life seems harder than we can bear, especially on days when we’re stunned by grief, worried about the situation in the world, distressed over health or finances, or reeling from waves of trouble. We long for joy in the morning, but sometimes we’re in the darkest night.
In 1 Samuel 30, while fleeing the armies of King Saul, David was attacked at Ziklag by the Amalekites. His family was kidnapped, the town was burned, and his men rebelled against him. Everything that could go wrong did go wrong, and it was David’s darkest hour. He wept till he had no more strength to weep.
According to 1 Samuel 30:6, David responded to his trouble by strengthening himself in the Lord. That simple statement is a sermon to our souls. David was under incredible strain as his circumstances had gone from bad to worse. Yet he refused to give up. He knew how to strengthen himself in the Lord by shifting his attention from his hopelessness to his Helper. Today, we need to remember that all our troubles are temporary, and all our blessings are eternal.
We don’t know when David wrote Psalm 13, but the psalm certainly fits this occasion.
What is it about sunrise that is so inspirational and motivational? Why did David write that “joy comes in the morning” (Psalm 30:5)? Why did Jeremiah say that God’s compassions are “new every morning” (Lamentations 3:22-23)? Why did Isaiah pray that God would be Israel’s “strength every morning” (Isaiah 33:2, NIV)? Why did Zephaniah use the “morning” as a way to describe how God “brings His justice to light” (Zephaniah 3:5)?
The blessing of sunrise is an ancient idea that remains just as potent in our day.
There’s just something about a sunrise that says a new day has dawned. Yesterday, the dark day, is over, and a bright new day is on the horizon. What a beautiful image—one that the biblical writers used to great effect.
If you’re like me, you are concerned about the state of our world. I wonder if what I feel about our world matches up with what I know about our world.
The reality is, we know far more about our world than any generation in history. Since 1993 when the World Wide Web became available to the public, the flow of information on the Internet has grown exponentially. Every tragedy, every disaster, every battle in every war, every moral failure, every immoral trend, everything that happened throughout history, but no one knew about . . . it is now seen every day online. Yes, positive stories are also reported—but bad news sells—and that’s often what we see.
If you follow social media, the term “influencer” is not unfamiliar to you. Some people faithfully follow men and women online, and because of the powerful impact they have on their followers, the “influencer” has a career promoting their opinions and products online. Think of the special people in your life who made a profound impact on who you are—no doubt many of them are remembered because of their close walk with God.
I remember hearing my mother pray for me—it had a powerful influence on me as a young man—and it is a memory I treasure still today. Nothing quite compares to the touch, testimony, and strength of a godly woman. God ordained such women to wield mighty influences over us, and the Bible is filled with examples of their faith. I can’t reference all the women who played such influential roles in Scripture, but I would like to look at four women who impacted the earthly life of the Lord Jesus.
If you liked “The Amazing Race” or “Survivor,” you might be interested to know that so-called reality TV had its beginnings in old black-and-white programs like “Candid Camera.” These were unscripted shows with hidden cameras and microphones designed to show people reacting to practical jokes. Viewers howled as the surprised victims were told: “Smile, you’re on candid camera.”
Reality TV has come a long way since then, and some people obsess about being on such a show. They view it as their ticket to fame and fortune. Several years ago the magazine Psychology Today studied why people watch reality TV, and the results were surprising. “The attitude that best separated the regular viewers of reality television from everyone else,” said the magazine, “is the desire for status.”
Two members of an animal protection group were driving home from an anti-hunting rally when they crashed their car into a deer that ran onto the highway. They announced their intent to sue the New Jersey Division of Fish and Wildlife, saying that the agency’s efforts to increase the deer population resulted in the deer bounding onto the highway into the path of their car.
An Israeli woman sued a television station for making a weather prediction that turned out to be wrong. As a result of believing the television station’s prediction for fair weather, the woman dressed accordingly. However, she was caught in a rainstorm and shortly thereafter contracted the flu, missed a week of work, and incurred expenses for medication. She blamed the television station for her troubles.
Disclaimer: I have cited the cases above not to say who’s right or who’s wrong, but to note a general trend in our society. That is, it seems that nothing is anybody’s fault anymore! It is no wonder that we have become such a litigious society. Americans file more civil lawsuits than any other industrialized country and are home to eighty percent of the world’s lawyers! More than $250 billion is spent annually playing the “blame game” in America—trying to say that something that happened to me is your fault.
•A man lectured about the Spanish surrealist painter Salvador Dali and Catalan culture for 124 hours without stopping.
•A United States Marine did 17,003 push-ups without stopping.
•A man in England did 3,750 pull-ups without stopping.
Some pretty “unique” people have set out to do unusual things without stopping. And as the Bible says: We are to “rejoice always, pray without ceasing, [and] in everything give thanks” (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18). In this article we look at perhaps the most challenging of the three—praying continually.
When it comes to rejoicing and giving thanks, we get the idea that it is possible to “cease” in between occasions of rejoicing and thanking. But “pray without ceasing” has a different ring to it. Paul says we should never cease praying. Ceaselessly means don’t cease; it means don’t stop praying. The Greeks had a clear way of saying these things. The Greek word adialeiptos (without ceasing) is the word for “ceasing” or “leaving” with a negative prefix (“a”) attached to it. The negative prefix means “No” or “Don’t.” So “don’t” plus “cease” sent a very clear message: Don’t stop praying.
The word control often has a negative connotation but think about how important “control” is in your life. I don’t mean the negative dimension of being a controlling person. You want someone in control of the airplane you are a passenger on, so all control is not bad. I mean self-control—the ability to resist impulses and temptations and accomplish the things that are true, noble, just, pure, lovely, of good report, virtuous, and praiseworthy (Philippians 4:8). It’s no wonder that Roy F. Baumeister and John Tierney, in their book Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength, cite research indicating that “poor self-control correlates with just about every kind of individual trauma: losing friends, being fired, getting divorced, winding up in prison.”[1]
[1] Roy F. Baumeister and John Tierney, Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength (New York: The Penguin Press, 2011), 2.
You may not have majored in chemistry in college, and you may have avoided taking chemistry class in high school, but there is no avoiding chemistry! The Periodic Table of elements is a “menu” of what makes up our world. Those one hundred plus elements, plus thousands more man-made chemicals, are all around us. And, by default, they are in us as well—especially many man-made chemicals that can be harmful to human health. Chemicals are everywhere.
We live in a chemical world and there is no going back.
Mark Twain once quipped, “Clothes make the man; naked people have little or no influence in society.” Yes, but who makes the clothes that make the man? Try Savile Row, a prestigious street in London’s Mayfair district for more than two hundred years. It’s been called “The Golden Mile of Tailoring.”
Throughout the 1800s as residents of Savile Row became increasingly fastidious about their appearance, a proliferation of tailors began opening shops on the street. One famous client of the Savile Row tailors was Beau Brummell, a dashing conversationalist and man of fashion. He’s responsible for a style that lives to this day—the modern suit, trousers, and necktie.
Customers like Brummell “spoke for” every detail of their suits, giving rise to Savile Row’s most famous phrase: “bespoke tailoring.”
The word “bespoke” refers to custom-made clothing as opposed to mass-produced garments. If a garment is “bespoke,” it’s tailor-made to the buyer’s specifications, and is "be spoken for." Historically, it refers to clothing and to the individual tailoring that encompasses everything from fabric to style to size to stitching.
None of us like inspections any more than we like pop quizzes in school or checkups at the doctor’s office. We tend to resent going to the emission centers before getting our car tags or having to wait for the city codes division to inspect the electrical work on our house before flipping on the switch. But imagine living in a world without safeguards, supervision, standards, or checkups.
The Bible teaches that we need inspection and examination in our inner hearts as well. David makes this the theme of Psalm 139, which could be aptly titled “A Plea for Inspection.” He began Psalm 139 by saying, “Lord, You have searched me and known me. You know my sitting down and my rising up; You understand my thought afar off. You comprehend my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways.”
He went on to say that we can never escape God’s inspecting eye, nor do we want to. Then in a twist at the end, David prayed, “Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me, and know my anxieties; and see if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”
Psalm 139 begins and ends with inspections. “You have searched me and known me…. Search me, O God, and know my heart.”
When did we last pray like that, asking God to put us on the examination table and probe our hearts? When did we last say, “Lord, audit my thoughts and weigh my motives?” Though we love Psalm 139, we don’t often seriously pray the last two verses.
Like most of the systems in our cars, a tiny icon on the dashboard is all we see of our car’s cooling system—a thermometer-looking icon with an H (Hot) at the top and a C (Cold) at the bottom and a line right in the middle that means “Just Right” (the Goldilocks approach to auto diagnostics: not too hot, not too cold, but just right).
Think about this: The water in the car radiator has to be cool enough to keep the engine from overheating, but hot enough to generate heat for the car’s heater to keep us warm in winter. And there is a complex system of checks and balances that allows that to happen: the car’s thermostat, adding coolant (antifreeze) to the water, the spring-loaded radiator cap, and the radiator fan that draws air through the radiator to cool the circulating water. I’m so amazed that smart people have figured out a way to keep our car’s water at around 190 degrees Fahrenheit—not too hot and not too cold, but just right.
If the water overheats, the engine boils over with billowing clouds of steam. And if it gets too hot due to a lack of water, the engine parts can literally melt together so the engine “freezes up.” And an engine that’s too cool will fail to heat up the engine’s lubricating oil creating more friction and wear, leading to poor gas mileage.
I think you get the point: Consistency is the key when it comes to your car’s water temperature and cooling system.
From the beginning, young children have one primary responsibility: to be obedient and follow the direction of their parents. And parents use one primary tool to move their children in that direction: commands. Hopefully, parents issue commands in a loving and encouraging manner (with lots of praise for a job well done), but that doesn’t change what a command is—the expressed will of an authority figure.
As Christians, we start out as young children. We experience a spiritual rebirth (John 3:3) and need to be taught how to live in a manner appropriate for our Heavenly Father’s household. So we are given commands to help us accomplish the Father’s will for our life. It’s those basic commands that help us learn God’s will for all His children. They also help us begin to sense His individual will for us as we grow in grace and maturity. The very best place to begin seeking God’s will for our personal life is to make sure we are complying with the “To Do” list He has provided for all His children.
Following is a partial list of God’s will reflected in the teachings of Jesus. Following His will is so important that Jesus told His apostles to teach all of His commands to every new Christian (Matthew 28:19-20).
It became the anthem for the 1967 Summer of Love in San Francisco—Scott McKenzie’s song, “San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair).” And the first verse became a clarion call to young people all across the United States:
“If you’re going to San Francisco,
Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair.
If you’re going to San Francisco,
You’re gonna meet some gentle people there.”
Wearing “flowers in your hair” was a reference to the term “flower power” that was coined by the “Beat Generation” poet Allen Ginsberg in 1965. Ginsberg was an active opponent of the Vietnam War and advocate of a peaceful form of anti-war demonstrations where flowers were a symbol of gentle, peaceful resistance.
As the chaotic summer of 1967 wound down, the psychedelic movement wound up. “Flower power” became emblematic of the fragrances of the revolution. Their aroma wasn’t as strong as the incense and drugs being burned, but they remained representative of the movement.
David Hemery was a member of the 1968 British Olympic team. He was scheduled to run the 400-metres hurdles against a group that included the world record holder. In fact, five of his competitors had clocked faster times than he did.
Halfway through the race he was surprised to find himself passing some of the stronger runners. Eventually he didn’t see anyone in his peripheral vision.
As he crossed the finish line, he didn’t know who had won the race. “Suddenly,” Hemery wrote, “I saw Peter Lorenzo, the BBC commentator, running towards me across the track. He shoved a microphone in my hand. My first comment was: ‘Did I win?’” He did, setting a new world record in the 400-metres hurdles.[1]
Hemery’s race was a very short time—48.12 seconds. But when he crossed the finish line, he had no awareness of his victory. All he knew was that he was gasping for breath without a clue as to who won.
There’s a lesson for us in that experience: We should not live our Christian life as if we are unaware of the victory that is ours!
[1] David Hemery, “David Hemery: ‘I didn’t know I had won, let alone beaten the world record,’” Independent, June 12, 2012, http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/olympics/david-hemery-i-didnt-know-i-had-won-let-alone-beaten-the-world-record-7836933.html.
Ladies and gentlemen! Boys and girls of all ages! Welcome to the greatest show on earth!
One image comes to mind when we hear those words—the circus! We see lions and elephants, clowns and trapeze artists, amazing performers and death-defying feats—a kaleidoscope of colorful spectacles amid a three-ring pandemonium.
It all started in the 1700s with an Englishman named Philip Astley, the son of a cabinetmaker. He loved horses and horse riding. And being remarkably athletic, he devised jaw-dropping maneuvers on horseback. People paid to see his equestrian acrobatics. Astley opened a trick riding school in London and concocted a ring surrounded by spectators. By riding around at rapid speed, the riders drew from the excitement of the crowds while benefiting from the centrifugal force that aided their balance. This ring became known as “the Circle,” and the surrounding amphitheater was called “the Circus.”
Against the backdrop of grim news from the frontlines of World War II, three songwriters met in a New York City diner just before Christmas in 1942. Two had written blockbusters. Walter Kent’s wartime song, “The White Cliffs of Dover,” was being sung around the world. The second man, lawyer-turned-songwriter Kim Gannon, had scored a hit when Glenn Miller recorded his “Moonlight Cocktail.” The third man, Buck Ram, was hitless.
New York City’s Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, hosts a standing-room-only service on Christmas Eve and Christmas morning. These Episcopal services seem beyond this world to many who are not used to the candles, choirs, stained-glass windows, liturgy and vestments, and gorgeous music echoing throughout the cathedral. The services are packed every year because they are an oasis of peace and beauty.
Beautiful celebrations of Christmas create a dream-like state; they resurrect the dream announced by the heavenly angels on that first Christmas night in Bethlehem: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward men!” (Luke 2:14)
Nowhere in the Bible do we get a clearer picture of the nature of Babylon than in the book of Daniel. The book bears the name of its author, one of the most prominent exiles who was forced to march to Babylon when King Nebuchadnezzar conquered Jerusalem nearly six centuries before the birth of Christ.
In 1859 Charles Dickens wrote A Tale of Two Cities, a novel featuring events
that occurred in eighteenth-century Paris and London.
The Bible also describes a tale of two cities—Jerusalem and Babylon. Jerusalem, of course, we know as the historical capital of God’s chosen nation, Israel, and the future earthly capital of His Kingdom. Babylon, on the other hand, is the city which the Bible uses as a symbol for the worst of the world’s evils—extreme decadence, cruelty, ravenous power, and implacable contention against God.
Always….
Without Christ, there is never an always. Without Him there’s no lasting hope, and even the greatest love stories come to an end. But with the Lord, there is always an always. The psalmist said, “I have set the Lord always before me,” and Jesus said, “Lo, I am with you always” (Psalm 16:8; Matthew 28:20, emphasis added). The apostle Paul said, “We are always confident… that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord…. We are confident, yes, well pleased rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord… and thus we shall always be with the Lord (2 Corinthians 5:6, 8; 1 Thessalonians 4:17, emphasis added).In April of 1970 during the near-disastrous mission to the moon, fear gripped the world when an oxygen tank on the Apollo 13 spacecraft blew up and crippled the craft, causing the mission to be aborted. In order to gain speed to return to earth, the craft performed a customary “slingshot” movement around the dark side of the moon, using the gravitational pull of the moon to “fling” the craft back toward earth. But for nearly an hour, behind the moon, the three-man crew was cut off from communication with earth. Nearly 250,000 miles from earth, the astronauts could talk—but no one was listening.
Peter Cartwright was sixteen years old in 1801 when he returned late at night from a nearby wedding where drinking and dancing dominated the festivities. His life then took a sudden turn:
Our fragmented world with its nonstop stimuli has created compressed, fragmented thought patterns. Our minds are like haystacks, with a million thoughts blowing through them, along with a few seeds of knowledge and an occasional kernel of wisdom. Most people are ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.
Noah could have used a smartphone! After bobbing around on a worldwide ocean for a year, he had no idea where he was when he and his family disembarked after the Flood. With a smartphone, Noah could have easily used the location finder to determine that they had landed in (what would become modern-day) Turkey, on the side of a mountain called Ararat. Any number of map apps could have given him a bird’s-eye view of their location and how far they had drifted. But there were no GPS satellites circling the earth and nary a smartphone to be had.
In our fragmented times, we ask: How much longer is left for our planet? Are we near the zero hour? How will it all end—the moral collapse of the West, the explosion of terrorism, the fragmentation of the Middle East, the tottering economy, the faltering global order?
Intimidation is a powerful force. Just the very thought of a painful future can change what a person believes.
C. Stacey Woods, who helped launch InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, urged every student to build an interminable legacy.
From our perspective, we can’t help wondering why so many people become spellbound by pomp and power. Yet somewhere within each of us there’s a yearning to be close to a king. Our security rests in knowing there is a Sovereign somewhere with power and wealth who can care for us, keep us safe, and guarantee us a wonderful future.
We have a King who graciously invites us into His presence at any time through the miracle-medium of prayer. When we accept this invitation, we discover four wonderful layers of blessing.
For CNN reporter Sandra Endos, the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan struck too close to home. Her then ninety-year-old grandmother lived in Fukushima City, one of the hardest hit areas. “We spent restless days and worrisome nights wondering how she was doing,” Endos reported. When she finally received a text message, reporting that everyone in her family was accounted for, it was the most encouraging text in the world to Endos.[1]
[1] Sandra Endos, “Reporter’s family in Fukushima taking nuclear concerns in stride,” CNN, March 16, 2011, http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011/03/16/reporters-family-in-fukushima-taking-nuclear-concerns-in-stride/.
Recently, I was reminded of the man who asked his pastor to pray for him. “Pastor,” said the man in a loud tone, “I’d like you to pray for my hearing.”
“Are you having trouble with your hearing?” shouted the preacher.
“Yes. Would you pray for my hearing?”
The pastor put his arm over the man’s shoulder and prayed eloquently for the man’s hearing. Finishing his prayer, the pastor asked him loudly, “How’s your hearing now?”
“I don’t know,” replied the man. “It’s not until next week.”
Laughing—whether it’s from silly jokes or the enjoyment of life—can spread encouragement. All it takes are two assets: the glow of gladness and the lift of laughter.
Video games are designed for players to overcome levels. Which means you must be successful in clearing one level at a time in order to advance to the next; if you fail a level, you have to go back and try again.
When a bespoke tailor rolls out fine wool cloth on the table to cut pieces for a handmade suit, he marks the pattern with chalk, then picks up his shears.
Billionaire Steve Wynn wanted a one-of-a-kind cirque for his signature resort, Wynn Las Vegas. He worked with architects to design an aqua auditorium with encircling seats. For a hefty price, guests could watch aerial wizardry, synchronized swimming, dizzying choreography, mind-bending gymnastics, and dramatic plunges into the perilous pool. The show, Le Rêve, opened in 2005, but was discontinued in 2020.
Like a cirque performer, sometimes we find ourselves at the center of unwanted stress. Life can be frightening and sometimes terrifying. We feel alone, yet like a spectacle. People are watching in perplexity, wondering how far we’ll fall.
Biblical heroes felt that way too. The apostle Paul said, “God has displayed us, the apostles, last, as… a spectacle to the world, both to angels and to men” (1 Corinthians 4:9). And the writer to the Hebrews said, “You were made a spectacle both by reproaches and tribulations” (Hebrews 10:33).
Feelings of fear overcome us all, and as Christians we know we’re not immune to adversity. But I can tell you from Scripture and personal experience that the Lord will never drop us.
When companies decide where to market their products, they want to get “the most bang for their buck.” Right now that means China: 1.40 billion people with rising levels of discretionary income. It simply wouldn’t make sense for tech companies to market their products to a tiny ethnic group in the Ecuadorian jungle. “Why bother?” such companies might say.
It’s a good thing the Kingdom of God is not a company who bases the spreading of the Gospel on a cost analysis. No life in the Kingdom of God is measured by one value: Everything done in the name of Christ has eternal value.
The late founder of Campus Crusade for Christ, Bill Bright, used to define witnessing this way: “Witnessing is sharing Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit, and leaving the results to God.” I’d like to adjust his words slightly: “The Christian life is following Christ obediently, in the power of the Holy Spirit, leaving the results to God.”
In other words, we don’t measure the perceived results before we act. We act out of obedience to Christ because we know that everything done in His Name has eternal value. Our acts of faithfulness in following Christ are never forgotten by God.
She became known as “The Ship That Launched a Nation” by transporting more than 4,500 war-torn Jewish refugees from Europe to their ancestral homeland. I’m talking about the ship named Exodus 1947.
In Dr. Jeremiah’s latest prophecy book, The Great Disappearance: 31 Ways to be Rapture Ready, he examines the next event on God’s prophetic timetable, the Rapture. This is not a book of doom and gloom or a sensational read about setting dates, but one of hope and joy as we see the promise of God’s plan unfold all around us and grasp the power of the prophetic text surrounding the Rapture. Calling this “prophecy motivation,” these 31 easy-to-read short chapters will inspire you to live boldly and expectantly in today’s world.
