Continue reading »]]> This was a recent interview with Pastor Rick Warren.   I really thought he nailed most of this interview.  They covered a ton of issues: politics, healthcare, Mormonism, same-sex marriage, salvation, physical fitness, etc.

I’d love to get your reactions to the interview.  Where did he get it right?  Where do you disagree?  Why does it matter?

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We’ve all got people we call ‘friends’. Maybe even people we call ‘best friends’. But I wonder if our definition of friend is the same as the Bible’s? Check out this one verse from Proverbs on the subject:

• One who has unreliable friends soon comes to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother (Proverbs 18:24 NIV)
• A man of too many friends comes to ruin, But there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother. (Proverbs 18:24 NASB)
• There are “friends” who destroy each other, but a real friend sticks closer than a brother. (Proverbs 18:24 NLT)
• Friends come and friends go, but a true friend sticks by you like family. (Proverbs 18:24 MSG)
• Friends can destroy one another,but a loving friend can stick closer than family. (Proverbs 18:24 GWT)

So many variations on this one verse! But the one constant is the ending: true friends are always there for you. True friends have your back. True friends are closer than family.

Do you have a friend like that? Give him or her a call and say THANKS!

For some more thoughts on friends, here are a couple of verses to consider:

• A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for a time of adversity. (Proverbs 17:17 NIV)
• Faithful are the wounds of a friend, But deceitful are the kisses of an enemy. (Proverbs 27:6 NASB)

Continue reading »]]> Here is an 82 word summary of Miller’s A Praying Life.

We don’t need a praying life because that is our duty. That would wear thin quickly. We need time to be with our Father every day because every day our hearts and the hearts of those around us are overgrown with weeds. We need to reflect on our lives and engage God with the condition of our souls and the souls he has entrusted to our care or put in our paths. In a fallen world, these things do not come automatically.

May your time with your heavenly Father be engaging, healing, worshipful, and expectant.  Enjoy Him as the only thing truly worth everything!

Continue reading »]]> In A Praying Life, Paul Miller explores two common ways we go wrong when it comes to hearing God’s voice in our life and how we can correctly discern when God is speaking to us.

1. “Word Only”—Going Wrong by Not Listening. If we focus exclusively on God’s written Word when looking for God’s activity in our lives but don’t watch and pray, we’ll miss the unfolding story of his work.
2. “Spirit Only”—Going Wrong by Elevating Human Intuition.  Unless Scripture guards and directs our intuitions, we can easily run amok and baptize our selfish desires with religious language (“God told me to marry her . . .”).

Spirit Only people, on the right side of the chart, can separate the activity of listening to God from obedience to God’s Word. Under the cover of “being led by the Spirit,” they can easily do what they want. What they “hear” from God might be masking their self-will. This is emotionalism (a form of Romanticism), which makes feelings absolute.

Word Only people can also separate hearing and obedience by focusing on obedience and ignoring a life of listening and repentance. Listening to and obeying God are so intertwined in biblical thought that in the Hebrew they are one word, shamar. Under the cover of being obedient to the Word, Word Only folks can be rigid. We need to guard against rationalism as much as we need to guard against emotionalism.

We need the sharp-edged, absolute character of the Word and the intuitive, personal leading of the Spirit. The Word provides the structure, the vocabulary. The Spirit personalizes it to our life. Keeping the Word and the Spirit together guards us from the danger of God-talk becoming a cover for our own desires and the danger of lives isolated from God.

Continue reading »]]> I am headed out for another 24-hour “unplug” at Camp Otyokwah this morning.  I’m hoping to unplug from the day-to-day world so that I can refocus on God’s Upper Story.  I want to dedicate some time to be refreshed and be challenged by both the greatness and nearness of God.  My supplies will be my Bible, my iPad, and my guitar.

I’d be honored if you’d pray for me over the next day or so.  Pray for a prepared heart and a listening ear.  Pray for clarity and focus.  Pray for the refreshing that only He can bring and the vision only He has.  And please pray for my family while I’m out of town that Satan would be frustrated in his attempts to attack them.

Thanks.

Continue reading »]]> Ouch…this quote from A Praying Life might hurt a little.  It is short, so read it a couple of times.

“I’ll keep you in my prayers” is the easiest way to back away politely. Roughly translated it means, “I have every intention of praying for you, but because I’ve not written it down, it is likely I will never pray for it. But I say it because at this moment I do care, and it feels awkward to say nothing.”

Allow me to encourage you to do something totally practical:  Pray for people.  Do it right then.  Don’t wait.  Let them hear that you care for them in that moment by hearing you pray for them in that moment.

Continue reading »]]> More from A Praying Life.  There is so much packed in here that I would encourage you to read it twice.  How do we live and pray in light of God’s Upper Story while we are living life in our Lower story?  We need to look for Him, wait for Him, and expect to find Him!

When God seems silent and our prayers go unanswered, the overwhelming temptation is to leave the story—to walk out of the desert and attempt to create a normal life. But when we persist in a spiritual vacuum, when we hang in there during ambiguity, we get to know God. In fact, that is how intimacy grows in all close relationships.

To live in our Father’s story, remember these three things:

1. Don’t demand that the story go your way. (In other words, surrender completely.)
2. Look for the Storyteller. Look for his hand, and then pray in light of what you are seeing. (In other words, develop an eye for Jesus.)
3. Stay in the story. Don’t shut down when it goes the wrong way.

To see the Storyteller we need to slow down our interior life and watch. We need to be imbedded in the Word to experience the Storyteller’s mind and pick up the cadence of his voice. We need to be alert for the story, for the Storyteller’s voice speaking into the details of our lives.

As we wait and pray, God weaves his story and creates a wonder. Instead of drifting between comedy (denial) and tragedy (reality), we have a relationship with the living God, who is intimately involved with the details of our worlds. We are learning to watch for the story to unfold, to wait for the wonder.

Now, on a lighter note, I just thought this was funny…

Continue reading »]]> Sometimes prayer is difficult because we refuse to see our inabilities to affect real, lasting change in our lives or the lives of people around us.  How much time do we spend trying to change our kids?  Parents?  Siblings?  Co-workers?  How often does it work out for us?  Not very often.  Until we become convinced of our own inability to change things, we won’t take prayer seriously.

Other times it is difficult because we forget that God may be need to change us more than He needs to change the person we are praying for.  Here is an example from A Praying Life of how this sometimes plays out when praying for our kids:

Until we become convinced we can’t change our child’s heart, we will not take prayer seriously. Consequently, repentance is often missing. When we see, for example, our son’s self-will, we usually don’t ask, How am I self-willed? or How am I angry? We may even want God’s help so we can dominate our son. We forget that God is not a genie but a person who wants to shape us in the image of his Son as much as he wants to answer our prayers.

Ouch.  Ever find yourself praying for change in others and discover it is YOU that needs to change?  Try this petition for yourself before you ask God to work on someone else:

How can I know all the sins lurking in my heart? Cleanse me from these hidden faults. Keep your servant from deliberate sins! Don’t let them control me. Then I will be free of guilt and innocent of great sin. May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing to you, O LORD, my rock and my redeemer. Psalm 19:12-14

Continue reading »]]> I’ve experienced my fair share of grumbling, disagreements, and disunity…three things that are profoundly ugly to the Lord.

If you find yourself in such a situation, I commend these verses from Proverbs to you.  They speak to the attitudes and actions that promote these things, as well as those that promote unity.

May God use His Word as a mirror to those that dare to read these verses.  Will you have the courage to respond to what you see?

The way of fools seems right to them, but the wise listen to advice. (Proverbs 12:15 NIV)

Where there is strife, there is pride, but wisdom is found in those who take advice. (Proverbs 13:10 NIV)

There is a way that appears to be right, but in the end it leads to death. (Proverbs 14:12 NIV)

The simple believe anything, but the prudent give thought to their steps. (Proverbs 14:15 NIV)

All a person’s ways seem pure to them, but motives are weighed by the Lord. (Proverbs 16:2 NIV)

A perverse person stirs up conflict, and a gossip separates close friends. (Proverbs 16:28 NIV)

Whoever would foster love covers over an offense, but whoever repeats the matter separates close friends. (Proverbs 17:9 NIV)

Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. (Proverbs 18:2 NIV)

In a lawsuit the first to speak seems right, until someone comes forward and cross-examines. (Proverbs 18:17 NIV)