For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: (Ecclesiastes 3:1, ESV)

There is a time for everything.

There is a time for sharing and a time for silence.

I’ve been in a season of silence the last couple months. Well, on this blog at least.

I just wanted to let everyone know I’m still alive and kicking and will eventually get back to blogging. But now isn’t the time. I’ve been in a time of learning but having nothing to share. Those times are good and ought to be embraced. May the Lord bless you guys in your seeking of Him and may your vision of Christ be continually enlarged. I look forward to getting to this blog in the near future.

I am the Lord’s and now no longer reckon myself to be my own but acknowledge in everything His ownership and authority. That is the attitude God requires, and to maintain it is true consecration. I do not consecrate myself to be a missionary or a preacher; I consecrate myself to God to do His will where I am, be it in school, office or kitchen, counting whatever He ordains for me to be the very best, for nothing but good can coe to those who are wholly His.

May we always be possessed by the consciousness that we are not our own.

- Watchman Nee, The Normal Christian Life

God’s Favorite Place on Earth is different than anything I’ve ever written. It’s a hybrid of fiction and non-fiction.

The premise of the book is simple and 100% Biblical: when Jesus was on the earth, He was rejected everywhere He went . . . from Bethlehem, to Nazareth, to Jerusalem. The only exception was the little village of Bethany.

The curtain opens with Lazarus, who is now ready to die, telling the incomparable story of Jesus’ interactions with him, Martha, and Mary. God’s Favorite Place on Earth blends drama, devotion, theology, biblical narrative, and first-century history. Within each narrative, the common struggles that we Christians face are addressed and answered.

Last year I had the privilege of attending a small conference in Owensboro, KY that Frank Viola spoke at. The sessions were all about Bethany. They were essentially snapshots into this book that he was working on at the time. I wrote about my experience at this conference elsewhere, but I have to say that there is so much wrapped up in Bethany. So much of what God desires for His dwelling place. The message of Bethany is one of the few spoken messages I’ve heard that has really had a life changing impact on me. So if that small conference and couple of messages has that much of an impact, I can’t wait to see the impact this book has.

Frank is asking that everyone wait until until May 1st to order God’s Favorite Place on Earth. Those who wait until then will receive some pretty awesome gifts. You can learn more about Frank’s upcoming book, sign up to be reminded when to order and get a free sample of the book HERE.

I promise, you do not want to miss this book

The Abiding Need Of Faith

“The work of the Holy Spirit is to conform us to Christ, to cause us to take the form of Christ, to form Christ in us; but Christ will always remain other than we are, so that there will never cease to be a call for faith. Do you expect to reach a point in this earthly pilgrimage when faith can be dispensed with? It is a false hope. Faith will be required as much as ever in your last moments in this life, if not more than at any other time. Faith is an abiding thing for the duration of this life. If that is true, that in itself dismisses any hope whatever of our having the thing in ourselves. That was the first sin of Adam, that choice of his, not to have everything in God, but to have it in himself in independence, to get rid of the idea of faith. So he sinned by unbelief, and all the sin that has come in since is traceable to that one thing—unbelief. Faith is the great factor of redemption, of salvation, of sanctification, of glorification; everything is through faith. It undoes the work of the Devil. And faith simply means that we are put into the position where we have not got it in ourselves, we only have it in Another, and can only know it and enjoy it by faith in that Other. Thus Galatians 2:20 always comes with renewed force—”I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me: and that life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith. the faith, which is in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself up for me” (A.R.V.). I live the life in the flesh by faith in the Son of God.

The Lord interpret His word to us.”

Read this book for free online here…

It’s easy to grasp that all of these things came from God, and while we may not understand it all, it reflects Christ’s beauty and glory somehow.

When I really think about it, I feel like it’s harder to see Jesus in the everyday happenings of our busy lives. Things that we see as being of less importance in the grand scheme of things. But does that mean Jesus isn’t involved? Absolutely not. We need eyes to see Him in all things.

For me, it’s easy to get so caught up in my daily routine that I lose sight of Jesus in those things. But what if our attitude toward work, school and everyday responsibility was completely different?

What if we really believed that God has us in the place we’re in because that is where we are best able to glorify Him and know Him at this point of our lives?

What if our attitude toward our jobs, for example, was one of thankfulness and worship toward the King of this universe?

I’m a web designer. That is my job. Can I glorify God by doing this?

According to Paul of Tarsus, I should:

And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. – Colossians 3:17

Should we not work as hard because we believe our particular job doesn’t have any eternal value?

No.

Just as Jesus is the object of all scripture, even the the Old Testament, He is also the object of this entire universe. From the unreachable depths of the galaxy to the “mundane” activities our lives, He is the point of it all.

Now there are also many other things that Jesus did. Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written. – John 21:25

The world could not contain the books it would take to declare all that the Lord Jesus has done, is doing or will do. Christ’s riches are so deep and so vast that we couldn’t begin to comprehend them while still on this earth. You could put this final sentence from John’s gospel into modern terms by adding the internet couldn’t contain all the blog posts, tweets and status updates it would take to declare all the Lord’s riches.

Does this spur you on to seek after Him continually, more and more? It should. We as believers have no reason to ever come to a standstill in our walk with Christ. We can never exhaust all the aspects of Him. Although He is so satisfying we can never get be fully satisfied because there is always so much more. And yet we get so easily sidetracked in discussions and study topics on lesser things. “Christian” things sure. But they are lesser than Christ if they are separated from Him.

His riches are endless. The world couldn’t contain all the books it would take to expound upon His greatness. Christ is all and in all.

God makes it quite clear in His Word that He has only one answer to every human need — His Son, Jesus Christ. In all His dealings with us He works by taking us out of the way and substituting Christ in our place. The Son of God died instead of us for our forgiveness: He lives instead of us for our deliverance. So we can speak of two substitutions — a Substitute on the Cross who secures our forgiveness and a Substitute within who secures our victory. It will help us greatly, and save us from much confusion, if we keep constantly before us this fact, that God will answer all our questions in one way only, namely, by showing us more of His Son. – Watchman Nee, The Normal Christian Life

And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. – Jesus, John 17:3

So eternal life life is knowing God and the Lord Jesus Christ.

I grew up thinking that eternal life was getting to go to heaven, walk on streets of gold and live in a mansion forever. I thought of eternal life in such a self-centered way. But it turns out that “eternal life” isn’t just some infinite length of time that we’ll live for. It’s a type of life. A life with a certain quality, the highest quality in fact. To know the Lord is that life.

We can walk in eternal life right now and on this earth by seeking to know Him. To know Christ is our chief pursuit and it’s full of riches and insight into Him that we can never exhaust on this earth. And then one day we will continue to know Him in eternity.

Let us seek Him and Him alone. Let us not seek after things. Because to know Him is eternal life.

“It [the Bible] does not say that we know this aspect or that aspect about the Lord, but that we taste the Lord. When we drink the milk of the Word, we are actually tasting the Lord. Therefore, the way or us to taste the Lord is simply by drinking the milk of the Word. The Word is not only for us to study or learn, but even more for us to taste. The way the Lord nourishes His body is by His Word. If we desire to enjoy the Lord and be nourished by the Lord, we must come to the Word to taste the Lord.

However, the concept which most of us have of the Bible is that it is a kind of teaching, a book full of doctrines. Thus, we come to the Word with the intention of understanding and knowing something. In all our Christian life, how much of the Word have we taken in as food for our spirit? We must answer honestly that most of us have taken in very little. We must not come to the Bible only to learn and to understand. The Bible is not the tree of knowledge; it is the tree of life! If we take the Word of God as the tree of knowledge, we misuse the Bible because 2 Corinthians 3:6 tells us that the letter kills. We must never take the Bible as a book of letters, but a book of life.

All Christians know that the function of the Word of God is to reveal God to us. Although this is true, this is not its main function. The main function of the Bible is to impart God into us as life and as the nourishment of life. It is not only to give us knowledge about God and His live, but to impart God Himself into us.”

Gallup surveyed over 180 areas last year and found 37.8% of the residents in Evansville obese.  That is compared to a national average of 26.6% obese citizens (and 66.7% that are just overweight).

That’s a huge bummer. To add injury to insult, I found out yesterday that last month the BBC did a documentary on obesity in America and featured Evansville calling it the “epicenter of the problem of obesity in America.”

Dang.

Over the last few years my wife and I have been taken with learning about nutrition, real food, and all that goes along with the topic. Our journey has even led us to take a job (as a team) with Smart Cooking: Tri-State as healthy cooking coaches to show people in our area that it’s possible to have healthy, great tasting food while also saving time and money. A huge reason people eat so terribly, of course, is they say eating healthy is too expensive and they just don’t have time.

In regards to the cost of food, Michael Pollan stated the following in an excellent documentary called Fresh:

Cheap food is an illusion. There is no such thing as cheap food. The real cost of the food is paid somewhere… and if it isn’t paid at the cash register, it’s charged to the environment, it’s charged to the public person in the form of subsidies, and it’s charged to your health. You do get what you pay for with food, as with anything else. - Michael Pollan, Fresh

We’re a city that trades our own health and the health of our children for the convenience of drive-thru windows and highly processed, packaged food, which contain GMOs, refined sugar and grains, and high-fructose corn syrup. That’s why many children in America are at risk for heart attack by age 7. That’s scary! We shouldn’t accept that for ourselves and our families.

My hope is that as the world looks on at Evansville as one the fattest, most unhealthy cities in America, we would rise above and begin taking responsibility for our health and the health of those whose welfare has been placed in our hands (our children, grandchildren, nephews, nieces, neighbors, etc.).