Tag Archives: Living well

Posted on

The Winding Road of Faith

by

“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.  For by it the men of old gained approval.”  Hebrews 11:1-2

 

In my late twenties and early thirties, I had two friends with whom I went camping and hiking twice each year.  As we were trying to avoid insects and snakes, we would go late in the fall and early in the spring.  Sometimes we would experience wonderfully warm weather; sometimes it was cold and rainy; the rest were somewhere in between.  Together we enjoyed great vistas, got lost on poorly marked trails, endured wet sleeping bags and very cold showers (as it was off season in the parks), joking about each other’s quirks, met some nice folks and feared a few; but mostly we grew closer through the shared experiences and evenings by the campfire.  Two of the three of us are probably too infirmed to tolerate those trips now, but they will ever live in our memories and be a bond that draws us together.

The walk of faith is a lot like that.  Sometimes we feel great about our faith and our relationship with God.  Other times we have more questions than answers and feel a distance between ourselves and our Lord.   There are the seasons when the battles are raging around us or temptation seems to be impossible to withstand.  Some stretches of our journey seem so clearly marked and well defined while others just don’t make sense and we find ourselves doubting and lost.  In short the path of sanctification is usually a winding road.  While we may understand that God is moving us closer to Him and leading us to our Heavenly home, it’s often difficult for us to see or feel any sense of progress from our limited vantage point with incomplete information.  To that end, there are some situations and their related promises that we would do well to ponder carefully in order to maintain clarity.

Continue Reading »

Posted on

Loving Well

by

“Since you have in obedience to the truth purified your souls for a sincere love of the brethren, fervently love one another from the heart.”  I Peter 1:22

We have two daughters and two grandsons.  I paced a good bit at each of their births and was rewarded by having a newborn placed into my arms.  At that moment, there was nothing but love, joy and thankfulness.  It was easy…all reward and very little, if any, sacrifice.  After all, they didn’t complain, didn’t exert their will, and didn’t ask for much except to be clean and fed.  However, as they grew older, that love would require a fair amount of patience and sacrifice.  It is in the choosing to have sacrificial love, that relationships and bonds are formed.  As Christians, we are called to love well.   Not just within our families, but both in and out of the church body.  Further the call to love is not just when it is convenient.  We’re called to love during our trials as well as our times of ease.  We’re called to love not only the lovable, but the difficult, including our enemies.  Let me be clear, I struggle with this as much as anyone and, as with many of these posts, I’m writing to myself and using this as an opportunity to start refining my own behavior.  However, the fact that loving well may be difficult or inconvenient is not justification to ignore or take likely this direction.  When we’re tempted to take love for granted, put little effort into it because it seems too demanding or we just refuse to love someone that we find despicable, we would do well to consider the following. 

Continue Reading »

Posted on

Looking to Heaven

by

“Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.  No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him.  They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads.”  Revelation 22:1-4

Our four-year-old grandson stayed with us overnight last week so we got to spend a day together.  One of the things that he loves to do is play the game Mouse Trap.  While my wife and I both enjoyed the original game as children, we both find the current version rather tedious.  As Liam and I were playing a third round of the game, I began to feel a bit cranky and the hard floor we were sitting on wasn’t helping.  His elation and my crankiness caused me to consider the varying views that people have about heaven.  You can get a bit of an idea of someone’s spiritual maturity by their expectations for eternity.  Similar to the assumptions regarding what a loving God would include in our lives, many consider the wonder of heaven to be the eternal enjoyment of things that brought them pleasure in this life.  In that sense, what is reward for one person may be punishment for another.  Fortunately, that is not the case.  While I generally avoid conversations about heaven and the subject of eschatology because people tend to assume things that scripture doesn’t speak to as well as attempting to predict what God’s word tells us is unpredictable, I would like to touch on a few fairly clear characteristics of heaven.

Continue Reading »

Posted on

God in His Mercy

Part 3 Compassion

by

“But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ”  Ephesians 2:4-5

“Just as a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear Him.  For He Himself knows our frame; He is mindful that we are but dust.”  Psalm 103:14-15

In the last two posts I discussed my mother’s ability to forgive her father and the relationships with him that it permitted.  I also discussed her stewardship, hospitality and integrity and how they encouraged me and benefited others.  These are a very few of the high points or strengths in her life.  However, as Christ warns us in John 16:33, my mother also bore a fair amount of pain and suffering.  Over the years, I watched as my mother endured physical illness, emotional pain and spiritual trials that God included as part of her life.  One of the complaints that I often hear from people who are suffering is that they are very alone or have little to no help.  Thankfully, I believe that this is the exception in my church home, but within the larger body of Christ, this seems to be a prevalent problem and it was certainly true for my mother.  In my mother’s case, she was seen as an outsider as she was not reared within the denomination and she came from an unchurched family.   Further, she did not feel called as the pastor’s wife to run the social programs of the church and she suffered from depression.  Therefore, for the most part she was condemned for a lack of faith and godliness and, but for a few exceptions and like many, found no real support within the church body.

Continue Reading »

Posted on

God in His Mercy

Part 2 Encouragement

by

“But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ”  Ephesians 2:4-5

“In all things show yourself to be an example of good deeds, with purity in doctrine, dignified, sound in speech which is beyond reproach, so that the opponent will be put to shame, having nothing bad to say about us.”   Titus 2:6-8

My mother was an unassuming woman who was quite intelligent and gifted.  As a surgical nurse for roughly 30 years, she had to be precise and accurate.  As a student she excelled.  She was valedictorian of her high school graduating class and graduated with honors when she had to return to school as an adult while working full time to maintain her nursing licensing after a move from one state to another.  She was also an excellent seamstress and cook.  All of this was done without calling attention to herself as that was never her goal.  For me she was a model of how to live a quiet life minding one’s own business and working with one’s hands (1 Thessalonians 4:11).  Three specific areas that readily come to mind are stewardship, hospitality and integrity.  God in His mercy put her in my life as an example and teacher as well as in the lives of others for their benefit.

Continue Reading »

Posted on

Checking Our Baggage

by

But a man must examine himself, and in so doing he is to eat of the bread and drink of the cup.  1 Corinthians 11:28

Some of my family members tease me about the amount of luggage that I take on a trip.  In my younger days before the health issues took center stage, I used to be able to pack rather efficiently.  However, things are a bit different now.  Because I no longer tolerate cold weather or changes in weather well, my luggage often contains everything from shorts to winter sweaters.  Further, in addition to a case for my toiletries, I have another one just for the medicines that I need or may need.  Consequently there is some concern when we’re flying as I’m worried about the weight limit for checked luggage.  It requires a bit of scrutiny to make sure that I take what I need but not so much that I’m over the limits.  I am most efficient and discerning when I have time to lay everything out that I think I need and then carefully examine it and evaluate what I truly need versus what I can leave behind or risk going without.  If I’m not careful, it’s easy to go over the limits and find myself weighed down with luggage and additional expense.  Life is like that too.  If we don’t examine ourselves and sort out our lives, we often carry around a lot of unnecessary and even harmful baggage.  In the book “The Emotionally Healthy Church, Peter Scazzero compares us to an iceberg.  “About ten percent of an iceberg is visible to the surface.  That is the part of our lives of which we are consciously aware.  Note, however that the Titanic sank because it collided with a section of the submerged 90 percent of an iceberg.”  In other words, many of our problems with other people and how we handle difficult situations is greatly impacted by the 90 percent of which we are unaware.  That is why several passages in scripture, including the one above, call for us to examine ourselves.  It’s not intended to make us feel bad about ourselves, but rather to deal with negative issues so that we can walk more closely with our Lord, enjoy better relationships and, in general, have a better quality of life spiritually and emotionally.

Continue Reading »

Posted on

I Don’t Feel Like It

by

 “Therefore, to one who knows the right thing to do and does not do it, to him it is sin.”  James 4:17

For those of us who live with chronic illness and/or pain, it’s often a real balancing act trying to figure out what we can or should do and what we need to avoid.  We must be careful not to exacerbate our problems by being reckless, but we don’t want to stop living either.  Unfortunately, too many times, it’s easy to avoid doing something we are called to by saying that we don’t feel up to it.  However, this isn’t just about our illness.  It goes much deeper to our attitude and what’s important to us.  Whether we are ill or not, we all face life’s challenges, physical limitations and mood swings.  Too often we find an excuse not to do something and that’s what James is referring to in this passage.  Today is one of those days for me.  I need to write to be faithful to God’s calling, but I don’t feel like rising to the occasion.  Between the weather changing and traveling over the weekend, my body has been crashing and I’m just worn out.  It’s not that I am unable to write, I would just rather not do anything…and there’s the rub.  I’m able but would rather not.  To write will not threaten my wellbeing or overall health so there really is no risk.  So here I am, writing, because it is the right thing to do.   In that light, let’s consider overcoming laziness, using discernment, facing risk, and looking for strength.

Continue Reading »

Posted on

Dropping the Ball

by

“Now it came about when the sons of Israel cried to the Lord on account of Midian, that the Lord sent a prophet to the sons of Israel, and he said to them, ‘Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, “It was I who brought you up from Egypt and brought you out from the house of slavery. I delivered you from the hands of the Egyptians and from the hands of all your oppressors, and dispossessed them before you and gave you their land.”’”  Judges 6:7-9

It’s that time of year again when we move from one calendar year to the next and anticipate the dropping of a well-lit ball atop a skyscraper in New York City.  While some see the change in years as a new beginning, the reality is that it is a continuation.  Many of the New Year’s memes reflect the idea that 2017 will be better than 2016.  Overall and statistically, it will be roughly the same because, as Solomon put it, “there is nothing new under the sun”.

Continue Reading »

Posted on

The Painful Truth of Christmas

by

“And there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon; and this man was righteous and devout, looking for the consolation of Israel; and the Holy Spirit was upon him.  And it had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Christ.  And he came in the Spirit into the temple; and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to carry out for Him the custom of the Law,  then he took Him into his arms, and blessed God, and said, ‘Now Lord, You are releasing Your bond-servant to depart in peace, according to Your word; for my eyes have seen Your salvation, which You have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a Light of revelation to the Gentiles, and the glory of Your people Israel.’  And His father and mother were amazed at the things which were being said about Him.  And Simeon blessed them and said to Mary His mother, ‘Behold, this Child is appointed for the fall and rise of many in Israel, and for a sign to be opposed—and a sword will pierce even your own soul—to the end that thoughts from many hearts may be revealed.’” Luke 2:25-35

December is a festive time of the year with lights, presents, good food and family gatherings. It’s that time of year when children are told the story of Christ’s incarnation in Sunday school and hopefully at home as well.  Many of them will also be involved in Christmas programs that either reenact the story or convey the sentiment of Christmas.  However, the focus will be on all of the happy parts of Christ’s birth while the more sobering bits will be left out.

Continue Reading »

Posted on

Fighting the Chameleon Within

by

You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, be on your guard so that you are not carried away by the error of unprincipled men and fall from your own steadfastness    2 Peter 3:17

I was blessed with a mother and maternal grandparents who had very strong convictions about not letting people and circumstances move them from what their ethics and beliefs dictated.

Continue Reading »