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One Of My Favorite Days

September 12, 2024 / / 1 Comment

Historically this was one of my favorite days. It was still a bit eerie but stands out as quite the amazing day nonetheless.

The skies were still empty. Life still was standing still for the most part.

Businesses were closed in some sectors of the country. Schools weren’t sure if they should open or close. Churches opened their doors wide up to welcome any and all who just needed some form of comfort and hope.

The dust was still covering most of Manhattan. The military mights from across the spectrum of our allied nations were jockeying for prime position to have the greatest impact of retaliation.

But more notable for me was the way we all bled the same color that day.

Today I hear a lot about blues and reds and even the blended purple of states across this nation. But that day our blood flowed the same. Our hearts beat as one.

It was cool to hear God Bless America playing in random places. People were flying the American Flag that had never flown one before. While I have no real stats on this, I’d imagine flag sales went through the roof as the entire nation became one mass of patriotism.

The day before we suffered a catastrophic blow but it wasn’t fatal. Sure thousands would lose their lives that day but the nation as a whole wasn’t crushed. We stumbled. We even fell on our face for a moment. But on 9.12 we could be seen in a kneeling posture regaining composure. We were gathering our whits and evaluating our surroundings.

Together we cared for loved ones. Together we looked out for neighbors. Together we stood to sing our national anthem. Together we paused when we saw a flag flying. Together we lifted the wounded and grieved with those who mourned.

We were stronger because we did it together.

It was truly one of my favorite days. I look around and long for that feeling again. I see how we handle election season and see how weak we’ve become. We’re not weak because we are a weak nation. We’re weak because we’re so divided. I think back to the great fall through the years of the pandemic. We suffered greatly because we didn’t do it together.

You’d think we’d learn, but I fear we’re too self absorbed to learn from one another. The best we can do is lay down our differences and put aside our agendas and focus on those around us.

It truly was one of my favorite days because we lived up to our name. Divided we will fall. But that day united we stood, stronger than ever.

In Jesus Name

February 6, 2023 / / 0 Comments

So for people who say they follow Jesus, this should be a given. Should is the operative word in that phrase. But how often is prayer one of the last things on the list? I know for myself it’s not the first thing I run to when I know it should be! It’s disheartening that I can’t seem to get that part of my Christian walk right.

This week we focus on putting Jesus’ name on everything. We do this primarily through prayer. I don’t want to clutter this thing up with too many words so we’ll keep it short and to the point.

Who will you pray for in Jesus’ name today?

What is going on in your life that needs to be given over to Jesus to take care of for you?

Who in your life is hurting and needs to know the Jesus who cares and loves them?

These are just a few things that need Jesus’ name spoken over them. Buying a car? Put the car in Jesus’ name for a day or two before you get it. Changing jobs? Leave it in Jesus’ name for a night or two and see what he says. Having trouble with illness, loneliness, anxiety? Put Jesus’ name on it tonight and sleep knowing he has it.

Look I get it prayer isn’t some magic potion that as soon as we say AMEN everything goes perfect. But something happens inside of us when we place our concerns, loved ones, troubles in Jesus’ name. It’s a faith thing. It’s a trust moment.

So what in your life needs to have Jesus’ name attached to it today? Praying you today friend.

A Different Way To Worship

November 14, 2022 / / 0 Comments

I should probably start this post by admitting that I tend to live outside the box in a lot of areas. I do things different than some would like. Not everyone will agree with me and that’s ok. Not everyone will like what I have to say and again, you’re welcome to your opinion. If your skin is thin and can’t handle a little challenge, then you’re welcome to stop reading and close this page.

As a pastor, part of my job is to lead worship. What I call worship is the time we spend together as a church family or congregation. We sing songs, read Bible readings, pray, encourage one another, and share life experiences in an effort to grow stronger in our lives as followers of Jesus. I’m writing this from my over 20 years of experience as a pastor. I truly value the many differences we have in the way we go about worshiping but even in our differences I feel something is lacking.

l recently preached a message about worship from the perspective of Psalm 98. I’ve included the message in the YouTube link below. But the point of this post is to summarize the key points of the message. I would argue that worship has three points for us to check off. I refer to them as looking, lifting and surrendering.

Looking

When we begin our time together in worship we start by looking up. This is a recognition that all of our time together finds its meaning from God. We look up to the God who created all things, sent His son to save all of mankind, and now lives in the world through His people. We look up because we are looking to the one who saved us. According to Psalm 98, we look to God for has already worked our salvation. Even in the middle of the Old Testament, even before Jesus was born the writer to the Psalms says that Looking up is great but it’s often where many of us stop in our time together. But worship is about more than just on looking even if it’s at the God of all.

Lifting

When we fully encounter God in this moment we are then left with an option. We can let that be the end of our worship or we can lift up in praise to God. Worship has two key points that are like a good dance. God is the lead. He’s the primary actor in worship and we are called to faithfully respond. After hearing, seeing and experiencing all that God has done for us, we lift up praise to him. And this is where I feel we miss something pretty key.

The way we praise is often restricted. It feels as if we have some sort of fear over how someone else will react to the way in which we praise. But worship is not about our neighbor’s reaction, it’s a recognition of our salvation. So why do we let what someone else might think change how we worship?

Ok so hear me out. I think humankind was built for worship. I think we worship all the time and probably don’t even realize it. Some worship food with a simple yum that’s delicious after a meal. Others worship their favorite sports team as they gather in the stadium. Others worship while they watch the sunrise or the sunset. Still others worship their career or family or friends. We all worship something, someone, all the time. Our worship has degrees. We don’t bow down to the perfectly cooked burger but we sure to make a big deal out of the pregame rituals for our favorite team! You see worship is all around us.

I think the more we know the one we’re worshiping the more intense our worship becomes. Imagine going to a football game to watch a team you’ve never heard of, in stadium you never seen. You probably wouldn’t go head over heals as they take the field. It’s just not the way it works. But if a Buckeye fan walks into the Shoe and hears the band taking to the tunnel, marching across the field, sees the team come crashing through the end zone – that fan will erupt in joyous accolades! I know I do.

But what about worship? We seem content to let worship be so sterile and so somber that it’s devoid of life. From the invocation to the benediction, from the opening song set to the sending message we are in the midst of people who are worshiping the same God. When we look up and take in all that God has done, we really can’t help but explode into some volcano of praise. Instead in our institutional worship settings it’s almost as if we suffer from some form of constipated praise. Refusing to let the praise come forth.

Maybe it’s a hand raised. Maybe it’s an amen in the middle of the message. Maybe it’s closed eyes and a head bowed low in recognition that we’re not worthy of His presence but grateful for it! I’m not saying there’s one way to worship that’s better than another, actually just the opposite.

Worship is about recognizing the goodness, mercy and grace of God. We look up in awe of all He’s done. Then if we truly encounter a God that big and that mighty, then we sure as hell ought to raise our voices and our hands and throw caution to the wind as we give Him the praise he’s due.

Surrender

As we close this out, I want to say a couple words about worship as surrender. When we recognize the goodness of God, lift up our praises to Him, we must also take a moment and set our agendas aside. It’s about surrender. Worship is the recognition that we are not God. He died to save us, without our help. He rose to grant us eternal life, with a word from us. We return in praise for all He’s done then we surrender. We lay our pride aside to follow His will for our lives.

If our worship is lacking any of these parts, regardless of how they look, are we really worshiping a God as great as we think?

Importance of Prayer

November 8, 2022 / / 0 Comments

In the last post, we discussed the idea of prayer. We looked at what it is and why some people who call themselves Jesus’ followers, don’t do the whole prayer thing. I’m not sure if any of the reasons I gave in that post resonate with you or if you have your own reason for not praying, but I think prayer is the most vital part of our lives as Christians that we can’t go without it.

So why is prayer so important? I mean I believe in Jesus and I read my Bible. Is prayer really necessary? Short answer is yes, without a doubt, for sure, unequivocally yes!

Prayer is the ongoing conversation we have with God. It happens at the dinner table or the bed side. It happens when we’re driving and when we’re struggling. We pray when we need something or when we have an unexpected celebration and don’t know where else to turn. Prayer is everywhere.

The wide receiver who scores the touchdown involuntarily points to the sky almost like he’s saying thank you. Sounds like a bit of a prayer to me. The young mom can’t get her child to stop crying so she just quietly whispers what am I supposed to do? Sure sounds like you’re talking to someone. Or the man who stumbles to the bathroom in the middle of the night only to have his little toe make contact with the bed post. His reply…well you know what that is and it sure sounds like he believes in a being that is able to send his bed post to hell. Like it or not that’s kind of a prayer.

Now I didn’t say that any of these are good, right or proper prayers – whatever that really means. I’m not saying that these prayers convey any level of saving faith. They’re just the basic format for communicating with someone outside yourself who you believe is able to address the situation you’re in at that very moment.

But if God already knows what’s on my heart and that I stubbed my toe or my child won’t stop crying, then why do I need to tell him? Am I going to change the outcome? Yes and no.

You’re not going to change God’s mind by wearing him down or anything. Prayer isn’t nagging God til he gives in. But it actually will change the scenario for you. Prayer will at a minimum change your perspective of the situation and allow you to see other options. Prayer is so very important. It’s found all over the place in the Bible. All of the key players in the Bible spend time in prayer, even Jesus does it! And if Jesus feels it important to pray, then it’s probably a good idea, right?

One of my favorite reasons to show why prayer is so important is to use the passage from Ephesians where Paul talks about the armor of God. You have the belt, breastplate, shield, sword, helmet and all the parts of the armor. Each of them correlate to an aspect of the life of the follower of Jesus from the Bible to faith to righteousness. But prayer is embedded in that almost as a throw away phrase that is easily missed. It’s right near the end of the section where Paul says to include prayer. I like to view prayer in this illustration like the chain mail that holds the whole armor set on the body. The breastplate has to have a place to hang as does the belt and sword. It’s like prayer is the webbing onto which all of our other spiritual practices have to fasten. If we don’t have prayer, then the rest of our spiritual lives are in danger of falling apart.

We don’t pray to change God’s mind but to shift our thinking. We don’t pray because God needs to know what’s going on, but because he wants us to know we can come to him. We don’t pray just for the big things or the key events that need special attention. We pray for the little things and for the seemingly insignificant moments in our lives because he’s in those as well.

Next week we’ll address the reasons we don’t pray and poke a few holes in them. Not in a mean or derogatory way but in a way that shows they don’t hold water. And hopefully get us to a place where we feel more comfortable praying and realize its necessity!

For now try seeing prayer as an ongoing conversation you have with God. Start before your feet hit the floor in the morning with something simple – Hey God, thanks for a good night sleep! Then go about your day popping little one liners back at God throughout your day. End with a quick Good night God. And you’ve done it. Pretty simple! Then watch how your perspective shifts throughout the day as you give little and big things back to God realizing how much he cares for you.

So What Should I Pray For?

March 29, 2022 / / 0 Comments

A week or so ago, I wrote a post that said don’t just pray but instead just pray! And I know reading that line might be confusing if you don’t read it in context, so I’ll try to explain for those of you who didn’t read the post. The idea is simple actually. How often is prayer thrown in as a last resort? That’s the idea behind don’t just pray. It’s like we can’t figure it out on our own so we may as well pray because it won’t hurt anything.

That is totally different than knowing that all you can do is pray and starting out that way from the beginning. That’s what I refer to as instead just pray. It means, start from the position that God is the only way not the last resort. Start form the place of reliance on Him instead of DIY-ing it through life.

If just throwing prayer in as a last resort isn’t the best way to handle things, then what things should I pray for? The short answer is everything! The Bible says to pray without ceasing. Pray through the good times and the bad. Pray in moments of plenty and times of want. Pray with you’re feeling lost and alone, but also when you’re experiencing what being loved and cared for feels like. If you read no more than these couple words, know that it is clear prayer is a vital part of the Christian life and we should do it far more often and far more intentionally than we currently do!

But for those of you who want to go a little deeper and get a little more depth into prayer, let’s keep going. Sure we are to pray for everything but really what kinds of things? And how in the world do you do it? These are questions that I hear a lot! I know some people who pray for hours every morning in the dark corner of their kitchen or living room before anyone gets up. This was how my grandpa did things. But I also know some people who are pretty darn ADHD with their prayer life, hello that’s me! We have a hard time just staying focused on prayer while we’re reading one let alone pray for hours in a dark room.

Pray the little things.

One of the things in life that makes me chuckle but also shake my head is when people talk about prayer as if God doesn’t really care about the little things. I know a guy who prays before he leaves his home that he gets a close parking space at the grocery. For a while I thought that was absolutely ridiculous. I mean really? Does God need to worry about where you park?

But then it hit me. I obviously had a wrong view of God. If I truly believed that God was a loving father, then why wouldn’t he want to know about my silly wants? I loved hearing my children tell me about their silly desires when the were kids. As a matter of fact now that they’re growing up, I find myself missing these conversations more and more. I want to know what they’re thinking and what’s going on in their day. I believe God has the same feeling toward us. He wants to know what’s going on. So tell him the little things. Share your frustration with your bad hair day, or your realization that you have no hair kind of day. Share your happiness of the new personal record in weight lifting or speed in running.

God cares about the little things. Share those. He knows them already but just like a good dad wants to hear what’s going in their children’s lives, so also your Heavenly Father wants to hear from you too!

Don’t forget the BIG things.

The other end of the spectrum is that person who doesn’t feel they can ask God for the big thing in life because they’re not good enough or haven’t earned the right to ask God for something of that magnitude. But God wants us to bring the big, huge, gigantic requests before him as well!

I am not going to say that God gets bored freeing up front row parking spaces but come on he’s the creator of the universe. We can probably give him a little more than give me a better hair day tomorrow! Test God with your prayers a little. Ok before you get all weirded out by that statement, it’s not testing to see if he’s real. It’s taking what he’s given you and promised to you and testing his promises. God won’t disappoint. He will, as it says in Malachi 3, open the floodgates of blessing. While that passage refers specifically to bringing our offerings to God, I really think it applies here to our prayers as well. Test God in his promises.

I had a professor once say that prayer is rubbing God’s promises back in his ears. Not that God needs reminding but that we need to be reminded of God’s faithfulness. We need to be reminded of the ways God has already answered us in the past and how he’s still present with us today.

So here’s a question for you to ponder. What are you praying that you actually need God to answer? Understand what I’m asking. What are you praying for that God alone can answer? Are you praying prayers small enough that if you wait long enough, drive around the parking lot enough times, you can find the answer? Or is the prayer of your heart today something that God alone is able to answer?

I think so often we either don’t pray big prayers because we don’t think we can or because we don’t even think that big. But God is a big God. He created all of the world and everything in it, I’m sure he can handle whatever our tiny little brains can dream up. Pray the earth melting, kingdom exploding kind of prayers. Pray for healing when the doctors say it’s not possible. Pray for some miraculous explosion of God’s goodness and mercy to be rained down on you today. Pray something so big that you can’t mistake it is actually God answering when it actually happens.

Ok so there you have it, pray for the bad hair days and the give my bald head new hair moments. Pray for the rain to water the ground and for God to raise up a power house of light and grace in your community. Pray the little things that no one else cares about, but also pray those things that God alone is able to pull off.

In short – pray because it’s more the one to whom you pray than the thing for which you pray.

Please Stop Just Praying

March 16, 2022 / / 0 Comments

You know I have a bit of a love – hate relationship with the phrase our thoughts and prayers are with you. It just seems so very lame! Do we even know what we’re saying? I mean really, the context in which we say this phrase is that we don’t know what else to do so I guess we can just pray.

We treat prayer like it’s a last resort. A natural disaster happens or something occurs that shakes us to the core emotionally, and we say things like I don’t know what to do. All I can do is pray.

Yes you’re right! All you can do is pray! But that’s not a bad thing. Actually, that’s where we should all start. Start with prayer and I mean the real prayers for God to move mightily in a situation. Then wait for His leading. But instead we tend to move, then pray that God will be ok with our movement. Or we like to pray those generic prayers of God be with everyone and bring world peace.

Yeah. I get it. We should want God to be everywhere. But He already is. And we should want there to be peace in the world and in our communities. But when we relegate God to a spiritual slot machine by only coming when we can’t handle the problem ourselves it shows how little we think of God.

Prayer is huge. And I mean huge! When we pray, really pray, with heartfelt words – emptying all of ourselves at the feet of Jesus asking him to do what brings him most glory we will be amazed at what is possible.

So if you see something going on in the world or your community, please don’t just pray. Take time to just pray. Pray first. Pray second. And when you have done everything else pray. Because when all you can do is pray, you are doing more than you can ever imagine! Prayer is tapping into the very power of God. Prayer is not about bending God’s way to match your will. It’s about bending your will to match God’s way.

So pray. And when you think you’ve prayed enough, you should probably go ahead and keep on praying. Because the Bible is pretty clear that prayer might be all you have to offer, but that’s more than you’ll ever need.

Pray For Ukraine

February 25, 2022 / / 0 Comments
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It seems like the right thing to do right now to jump on the bandwagon of the #prayforukraine craze. Don’t get me wrong by any means, we do need to pray for Ukraine. The people of Ukraine are enduring horrible circumstances. I can’t even imagine what they’re going through right now. Having a son in the US Army, I have been watching this scenario unfold continuously and am heartbroken by what these families are going through.

But why stop with Ukraine?

Look around the world for a minute and you’ll see that Ukraine isn’t the only corner of the world that needs prayer. Sure they’re the hotspot for war and fear but there are locations all over the world that have people living in fear. There are people groups near and far who are worried about their lives, livelihoods, families, and homes. Why does it take a war or a natural disaster to move us to create a hashtag to pray for a specific people group? Why do we need devastation to hit us for the church to fall on her knees in prayer?

And why stop with just the tormented innocent? Why not pray for those doing the aggressive acts of violence? If we’re going to do the Jesus thing and pray, then why not pray the Jesus way? Jesus prayed for the hurting and those dispossed from their homes but he didn’t stop there. He prayed for those we call enemies and even for those who persecuted him.

Sure the people of Ukraine need prayers for peace and stability and safety to be certain! But the people of Russia need prayer that God would soften their hearts and call them back to him. The church needs to pray for the hurting to find help but also for those doing the hurting. We pray that they would see God. We pray that they would soften their hearts and come around to see the devastation they are causing.

Unfortunately, what we’re seeing isn’t anything new. And it won’t be the last time a world leader brings devastation on another country for personal gain. This is part of the fallen world in which we live. It doesn’t make it ok or lessen the hurt but it also should help us realize that these things should not surprise us.

Today I encourage you to pray. I encourage you to pray for the hurting and homeless in Ukraine. I encourage you to pray for healing and well being for those displaced during the bombing raids. But I also encourage you to pray for world leaders that they might submit to God’s will. I encourage you to pray for Russia to humbly cease and desist the bombing. With man these things are impossible but with God all things are possible. Pray with boldness. Pray with confidence. Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. This is the Jesus way.

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