God has blessed my life tremendously. He has blessed me with a gracious relationship with Himself through the redemption He provided through His Son, Jesus Christ (back to this in a minute). He has blessed me with a wonderful family. He has blessed me with a loving church. He has blessed me with caring friends. He has blessed me with a beautiful place to live. He has blessed me with clear instructions through His Word. He has blessed me with life. He has blessed me with opportunities to serve Him. And the list goes on. In fact, most everyone reading this has been blessed in many of the same ways. Now back to redemption…

Redemption is the plan whereby God beautifully reverses the fortunes of those who are not His own. Peter put it like this,

Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. (1 Peter 2:10)

That is the gospel and the gospel is the great reversal. Throughout the Bible we can find different metaphors describing the reversal. Once we didn’t belong, but now we do belong; once we had no identity with God, but now we are identified with God; once we didn’t know who our father was (Satan), but now we do know that our Father is God; once we were lost, but now we are found; once we had no hope, but now we are filled with hope. Isn’t that a beautiful reversal of fortunes?

Peter shares the purpose behind this reversal in the previous verse:

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. (verse 9)

So God changed our lives so that we could tell others how He could do the same for them. This is at least part of why God saved us, isn’t it? Yes it is! Evangelism is not about some new program that the church needs to buy into; it’s not about a certain night when we all “go out” to knock on doors. While those may be helpful they may also become harmful. How? Because it leads the church to think that getting the gospel out into the community is something that we can check off our list of things to do for the week. It can also be dangerous because it leads Christians to practice evangelism once a week instead of making it part of our lifestyle. What about the girl you work with? What if she was to ask about your hope and joy on Friday morning but visitation was Tuesday night? I guess she’s just out of luck for four days, right? No, right then and there we can begin to share the gospel by sharing our story of how God’s marvelous grace rescued us from the darkness and placed us into His beautiful light.

Has God’s blessed you the way He’s blessed me? If so, then why don’t you thank Him and then look for an opportunity to share His blessings with others.

Grace & Peace,

Saturday’s golf tournament was a reminder of why I hate golf and why I love it…at times.

I hate golf because I can’t golf. You see, golf is a mind game as much as it’s a game of athletic prowess. Sure, you need to have ability when it comes to swinging the club and if you’re out of shape then your game will show it. However, you have to remember that you are trying to hit a ball that weighs a little over 1.5 oz and is a little bigger than 1.5 inches in diameter. I can’t even hit an oversized softball! Add to that the fact that they want you to hit that ball on the “sweet spot” of the club you are holding. So here you are, standing on the tee box and you wind up, and with all your might you swing that club to hit that little ball, and what happens? That little ball only goes 20 yards and not in the direction you wanted it to go. Now I’m looking for my ball with the chipmunks. Yes, golf is frustrating, but I know some of you love the game and you’re actually good at it. So I’ll just stick to my once a year game.

But I also love golf. At least I loved it Saturday because I got to spend it with my boys. We were able to spend seven hours of uninterrupted time together and that is a rarity. None of us golf, so the three of us did equally well. One thing I remember about Saturday is that I haven’t laughed with Ben and Blake like that in a long time. Yes, it’s really kind of funny that three grown men who are in relatively good shape can’t hit a golf ball farther than we can throw the chipmunk that was trying to steal our golf balls. I guess what I’m trying to say is that we made a beautiful memory and nothing can take that away from us.

It’s tough when your kids are grown up, living their own lives, taking trips without you, and spending time with their friends on the weekend. As parents we expect that, in fact we want that. But if you spent too much time away from your kids while they were growing up like I did, you long to spend time with them now. That is the boat I’m in. I’ve asked forgiveness from my kids and we’re on track now, but I don’t get to see them like I used to. So when they come into town I try to carve out as much memory building time as I can.

Children don’t raise themselves; they’re just not good at it. They are not equipped to begin life without us. Children need parents. It’s easy for us to neglect our kids. Sure we feed, clothe and shelter them, but that doesn’t mean we’re raising them. They need constant reminders of the importance of God and our love for them. Making memories is one way we as parents can tell our kids how much we love them.

What memory are you making with your kids?

Grace & Peace,

Happy Mother’s Day (a couple of days early)! I hope you’ve all made your plans to properly and biblically honor your mother on this special day. I would encourage you to think of those attributes in your mom that you can praise – her wisdom, hard work, patience, love, grace, perseverance, tenacity, encouragement, foresight, etc. Every mom has something for which we can say “thank you.” So take the time this weekend to tell her how much she means to you. The Bible clearly says that we as children will “rise up and call her blessed” (Proverbs 31:28). In other words, it’s a given, it’s assumed that we will do this…so let’s do it.

Something else we can do this Mother’s Day that we find in the Bible is to remember the lessons she taught us and do them!

…Forsake not your mother’s teaching. (Proverbs 1:8)

We would do well to reminisce on all the little talks Mom had with us and pull out the “wisdom from above” that God was trying to communicate to us. Moms are consistently teaching through their lives and lips. So many tips have come from those lips on cooking or getting a difficult stain out or how to manage time properly or how to show genuine compassion or how to make personal devotions a priority or how to stand under peer pressure, and many countless other valuable lessons. A foolish person hears these wise words and then walks away without doing them (read James 1:22-25). I will take the text from Proverbs 1:7-9 and share some lessons on Sunday morning – so more on that later.

This Mother’s Day we can give the gift of an obedient and wise life to our moms. Solomon wrote this,

A wise son (and/or daughter) makes a glad father, but a foolish son is a sorrow to his mother. (Proverbs 10:1).

Wisdom is simply making choices from a biblical perspective, so foolishness would be the opposite. A foolish child is one who makes decisions based on fleshly desires and earthly pressures. Oh, how many of us have done that (yeah, all of us). But we don’t need to stay parked in despair. Through repentance we can find our way back to wise living. So, let me encourage you to make Mom a glad Mom by living wisely.

Grace & Peace,