Sometimes it all piles up at once and we fall into a dark hole of despair. It takes all of our strength just to not quit. In that dark hole is where we need to remain steady, moving forward, spending our daily time with God, hoping for the dawn.

Even on our best days, we’re broken in enough places that we’re not sufficient for what life demands from us. It takes God to make up the difference. Sometimes I wonder if the night is there most of the time and the day is only an illusion. Or maybe the night is the illusion. How can we know?

We live in a fallen world, filled with falling people. And we all keep falling deeper. There is no bottom. As we look up to Christ and grow spiritually, we move against the fall. When we stop looking up and growing, we begin falling again.

Sometimes on our journey God sends us underground and tells us to grow. We feel like we’re in a dark and closed-in place. We find no comfort in people or our surroundings. Then we must send our roots down for nourishment.

God promises to give treasures in the darkness. Although the darkness is frightening and painful, we must not allow it to put us to sleep. We must stay awake and gather its treasures. The dawn will come and the treasures we could have gathered in the night will pass.

Don’t waste your darkness. God is light. Move toward that light.

Run strong and finish well today,
Phillip
From my personal journals

PS Here is a similar post on this subject: Treasures in Darkness

One evening when Gina and I attended a church supper, she noticed an overweight woman sitting at the next table eating a rich dessert. Meaning to encourage me to stay on my diet, Gina said, “She doesn’t think just that one piece of pie will make a difference. But it all adds up fast.”

I appreciated her encouragement. Since then, I’ve done the math and it adds up much faster than most of us realize. Here’s the brutal reality:

If I overeat 3500 calories I will gain a pound.

If I overeat three hundred calories a day, I will gain two and a half pounds a month or thirty pounds a year. That can either be…

• Two Twinkies
• One hot dog in the bun, without condiments
• Two thirds of a cup of granola
• Less than one half of a Whopper
• A snickers bar
• Or three slices of bread.

For a person like me who enjoys eating, that’s depressing. But it is what it is.

Why don’t we hear more about this in church? Why is it so hard to get help from a church? Recent statistics show that a higher percentage of church going people are obese than non-church going people.

I know therapists who are overweight. When I was looking for a therapist who would help me conquer my food addictions I asked them if they ever had conquered an addiction. All the ones I met said no. One therapist, who was overweight himself told me, “Phillip, why don’t stop wallowing around and just eat right?” Have you ever wanted to slug a therapist?

That’s depressing. But again, it is what it is.

And why didn’t our parents or schoolteachers explain that simple math to us?

Are you getting hopelessly depressed? Say it with me one more time: It is what it is.

It’s simply numbers. Like money: if I spend more than I make, I fall into debt and become a slave to the lender. If I habitually eat more than I use, I become a slave to food. I gain weight and my health suffers.

It’s my responsibility to find out how many calories my body needs and make sure I don’t take in more than I use. I can’t blame someone else.

Run strong and finish well today,
Phillip
PS Most of these posts come from my personal journals.

What language did Adam and Eve speak? We assume it was probably Hebrew. It’s also likely that everyone from Adam to Noah spoke Hebrew. (No, I’m not implying that you have to speak Hebrew if you want to talk to God.)

Then something happened. The people decided to build a city and a tower that reached heaven. It seems they wanted to make themselves too important. God didn’t think that was a good idea. So he said to his angels, “Come, we’ll go down and garble their speech so they won’t understand each other.”

So God caused everyone to speak a different language and scattered them all over the world. Whether or not you believe this really happened, here’s the point: Even though you and I speak the SAME language, many times we don’t understand each other. When we try to make ourselves important, our communication gaps spread even wider. I’ve found that self-important people are hard to get close to.

As an experienced writer I’ve learned that big words impress people, but little words communicate heart to heart. This concept is also true in relationships. People who try to make themselves big and important may impress others, but they often cause themselves and others needless pain. When we humble ourselves and meet on simple levels, we understand each other better and connect heart to heart.

Hey, we all mess up. A friend told me that people are like sheep. If you want close relationships with people you need to get used to their manure.

And we MUST communicate until we get through. Look at what happened in Second Samuel ten. One of David’s friends, the king of Ammon died. So David sent men to comfort Hanun, the king’s son. But Hanun’s buddies thought David came with a hidden agenda to overthrow their city. So they took David’s men, shaved off half their beards, cut off half their clothes and sent them away.

This started a war that claimed the lives of more than forty thousand men. It all started over one person misunderstanding another person’s intentions. It sure would have been better if they all got into a room and talked it out. Yeah, the talking might have gotten messy at first, but by the time they finally saw each other’s hearts they probably would have forgiven each other and been the better for it.

Maybe I’m getting to your heart right now. You know just who I’m talking about. You’ve been in a conflict with someone and people are starting to take sides. Why don’t you swallow your self-importance and go talk it out before a lot of people get hurt.

Run strong and finish well today,
Phillip

Notice how God is stretching hard toward the man.

But the man is casual. He appears to be more of a spectator.

“Here I am God. If you can reach me, I’ll connect with you. Ho hum.”

If only the man would lean forward or at least lift his finger.

God is trying really hard to connect with us. But we’re too lazy or hopeless to reach back to him.
We may be crying out for God. But are we reaching?

Stretch!

God is reaching down to you. You may only be an inch away.

Run strong and finish well today,
Phillip
www.runstrongfinishwell.com

You want a better life? Then get out of the rut that says, “The way it has been is the way it’s always going to be.” Dream. Set lofty goals. Climb that mountain!

Sure, pursuing goals is hard work. It’s risky too. After all your hard work, along with time, money, and emotional energy, you could fail. But winning isn’t winning unless losing is a possibility. It’s better to set high goals and not quite reach them than to set no goals and continue drifting downstream. I would rather pursue my wildest dreams and fail than not to try and always wonder what could have been. Many people in nursing homes wish they had risked more for their dreams. Imagine looking back from your eightieth birthday—what will you wish you would have done with your life?

Water boils at 212 degrees. Not 210, not even 211. How do you know if one more day, one more push could get you there? Thomas Edison said, “Many of life’s failures are people who didn’t realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”

I also like what James Allen wrote: “Cherish your visions; cherish your ideals; cherish the music that stirs in your heart, the beauty that forms in your mind. If you but remain true to them, your world will at last be built. The greatest achievement was at first a dream. Dreams are the seedlings of realities.”

If you dream of a better world for yourself and those around you, dare to risk your life for those dreams. Someday you’ll be glad you did. And someday, others will thank you.

So write a list of things you can do today that will challenge you and stretch you a little closer to your dream. Experience the thrill of checking off one item at a time and completing the last item on the list before the end of the day. Then make a new list tomorrow and complete it.

Work hard, risk, weep, and pray.

Run strong and finish well today,
Phillip

PS This is my 200th post to this blog!

There are a few Biblical concepts I have come to understand and trust so deeply that I can rest the entire weight of my life on them.

• When I’m facing problems too big for me and am clueless as to what’s going on or what’s the solution. I ask God to show me how he sees it and give me his wisdom through it. He has never failed me. (James 1:5-6)
• When I’m facing financial problems or our company is running low on work. If I seek God first and fire up my character walk with him, he always comes through. (Matthew 6:31-33)
• That Jesus is the only way to God. I have tried every other way I could find, including some partial versions of Jesus that added or subtracted stuff. It never worked, and it never gave me full peace. (John 14:6)
• When I’m depressed and have lost my peace. That often means I’m not being completely honest with myself about something. Once I get honest, the clouds go away. (John 3:19-21)

It’s like the thrill of standing at the edge of a cliff and falling backwards, trusting that God will catch me every time. I’m guessing that each of us has little trust pockets like this. It’s in those areas where we trust God that completely that we experience supernatural results.

I wish I could come to understand and trust God that deeply in every area of my life.

Run strong and finish well today,
Phillip

How likely is it that you’re going to meet someone’s real self at church? We ask each other, “How are you?” But most of us don’t really want to know or say.

What about in our family? So many people marry who they thought the other person was, or who they wanted them to be, and then wake up the day after the wedding to the real person.

How likely is it that you’re going to meet your real self? We’ve found so many distractions and self-medications that keep us from facing who we really are.

Very few people will disclose their real self to others, God, or themselves. Instead, we have created more and more places to hide. Texting, Facebook, and other media let us become close friends from a distance, but we can disappear whenever the relationship feels like hard work. Hollywood creates imaginary relationships for us to passively watch. They’re acting, we’re watching, and no one’s actually connecting.

All of this makes our planet a lonely place to live.

“The solution’s simple,” we say. “Just take away the mask.”

But here’s the problem. So many times when we let people behind our mask, they hurt us. Many of us got hurt for the first time way back when we were little children.

And here’s another problem. I know how self-centered and clumsy I can be. I’m afraid I could hurt you. Then you will either hurt me back or leave me because that’s all I deserve.

I want a close, connecting relationship with you. I think you want one with me. But I’m afraid and so are you.

Safe, healthy relationships are rare, aren’t they? They take a lot of hard work.

Run strong and finish well today,
Phillip

I used to love/hate theological debates because there was an unspoken perceived notion that whoever wins the debate gets on the good side of God.

The truth about theological debates is that they don’t make up my identity. My relationship with Christ does.

Some people are transactional with God, others are relational. I was transactional with God for most of my life. What does it mean to be transactional with God? It means that if I do this and this and this, God automatically does that and that and that. God’s favor comes from what I do. It has a few pitfalls:

1. You never completely know where you stand with God.
2. Even in the brief minutes when you know, you’re not completely sure how to stay in good standing with him.
3. It’s hard to find two sincere God seekers who agree for very long on what it takes to get and keep God’s favor.

I like the relational approach better. True, some of what I think is a relationship with God could be only in my imagination. That happens in any relationship. For what it’s worth, I have checkpoints that help me confirm that I really am in a relationship with the real God:

1. Every morning I sit quietly, stilling my mind, slowing down my RPM’s until my thoughts and emotions have become still and I listen for whispers.
2. I absorb a little in the Bible each day and try to carry what I received with me throughout the day. After doing that for several years, it’s amazing how much it has positively affected my life.
3. I whisper and write my prayers to God. When I go back and review past prayers, I’m amazed that my prayers have been answered.
4. I have a few close friends who are on this same journey. We try to meet once a week to share our notes and experiences with each other. We’ve given each other permission to ask hard questions and expect in-your-face accountability.
5. I and we see positive results in real life. To me, the fundamental question about any theology isn’t whether it can be proved in a debate, but does it work in real life?

So there it is. Maybe you can shoot holes in my theology. I’m OK with that. I seriously doubt that either of us is going to change the other in a thirty or sixty minute debate.

Getting back to the meeting at the pub this Thursday. Maybe no one will win any debates. But it sounds like an opportunity to get in some good relationship time.

Run strong and finish well today,
Phillip

Don’t be a perfectionist. Be an artist. I don’t think God is a perfectionist. Otherwise we would be hopeless. God takes what we give him and makes it into something living and beautiful. Then he rests.

Be like God. Take what he gives you and make it into something living and beautiful. Then rest. That’s the highest and best thing you can do with your life.

Run strong and finish well today,
Phillip

PS I’m still here, still writing. Sometimes I need to take a break to recharge. The best is yet to come!