My friend Don Jacobson has begun a new journey of encouragement and hope. His new site is called God Makes Lemonade. You will read stories that seem hopeless or even tragic and then see how God redeems those situations in some amazing way. Joni and I are humbled and touched that Don chose the story of our precious daughter Katie to be the first featured story. I would be honored if you took a moment to read her story.
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Regular readers of the humble ramblings know that I started my journey in a legalistic church. We were the Monty Python version of church. “We are the knights who say….NO!” We had several volumes of things that were a big NO! Here is a little legalism sampler. NO movies.NO drinking.NO mixed swimming.NO television.NO rock and roll music.NO smoking.NO slacks for women.NO long hair for men. You get the idea. Not surprisingly it took me a while to figure out grace and freedom in Christ. The irony is that there are a few no’s in the New Testament that we somehow overlooked. For example, here is little “no” verse that would have come in handy. So now there is NO condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus. And because you belong to him, the power of the life-giving Spirit has freed you from the power of sin that leads to death. (Romans 8:1–2 NLT) That would have been a refreshing mist of grace to
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We have been outlining God’s Guaranteed Weight Loss Plan. With this plan you can begin to lose the weight of bitterness and anger caused from lack of forgiveness. If you are carrying around an unforgiving spirit it is weighing you down spiritually and emotionally. I know from sad personal experience. Part one and two set the stage and today we wrap up the list. Fact 7: Forgiveness is not denial of the hurt. Pride will often cause us to “not allow the person who hurt us the satisfaction” of knowing we are wounded. That is absurd. Acknowledge the reality of the injury, but make the choice to be healed. Fact 8: Forgiveness eliminates revenge as an option. The late author Lewis Smedes makes a brilliant point about revenge. No matter how much we try “we cannot get even; this is the inner fatality of revenge.” When we start trying to get even, we have lost. How many times must I
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Yesterday I started discussing God’s Guaranteed Weight Loss Plan. With this plan you can lose the weight of bitterness and anger caused from lack of forgiveness. If you are carrying around an unforgiving spirit it is weighing you down spiritually and emotionally. Part one set the stage. For the next two days we will look at some things I have learned (usually the painful way) about forgiveness. Fact 1: Our ability to forgive is rooted in the depth of our gratitude. The foundation of forgiveness is our gratitude for the undeserved forgiveness we have received through Christ. Take some time to meditate about how much you have been forgiven. In the gospel of Luke we read about a sinful woman who washes Jesus feet with her tears and dries them with her hair. Jesus said, “Impressive, isn’t it? She was forgiven many, many sins, and so she is very, very grateful. If the forgiveness is minimal, the gratitude is minimal.” (Luke
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Most of us see New Years Day as a fresh start. Many (or most) of us hope and pray that the New Year will be better. We make steadfast resolutions of how we are going to do better next year. The reality is that January 1st is just another day. We could just as easily resolve on May 18th or August 3rd that we are going to change how we live. But there is something psychologically powerful about the New Year. January is named after the Roman god Janus. He was unique because he had two faces…one to look into the past and one to look into the future. Today Janus the two faced would be a very successful politician. On this January 1st I am sure many of you have made resolutions for the New Year. The most cited resolutions generally include things like exercising more, saving more money, getting out of debt, quitting smoking and reading the Bible all the way through without getting
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This series was well received last year. Some would call this a repeat but I prefer to think of it as environmentally friendly blog recycling with virtually no carbon footprint. Merry Christmas!  Dave As a public service I am providing a shopping guide for things you can give to Jesus on His upcoming birthday. For the internet hall monitors who love to send anonymous and snarky comments I understand that the celebrated date of Christ’s birth is likely off a bit. But since this is when we celebrate we will go with the date assigned by the church fathers and Hallmark. Let’s be honest…giving the King of Kings and Lord of Lords a unique gift is really tough. The last post examined the gifts brought to the young Christ child over 2,000 years by the wise men, I had hoped that examining what the Magi brought might jump start our gift giving ideas.  By the way, there is a plaque that is available with the
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This series was well received last year. You may view this as a repeat. I prefer to think of it as re-gifting. Blessings and Merry Christmas! We are fast approaching the hardest day of the year for most men. Many of us men give gifts to our significant others with fear and trembling. Humor writer Dave Barry relates the confusion most men deal with when giving a gift to their wife. He could tell by her reaction to the gift that she had not been dreaming of getting an auto emergency kit, even though it was the deluxe model with booster cables and an air compressor. Clearly, this violated an important rule, but the man had idea what the rule was, and his wife was too upset to tell him. Barry continues his thoughtful treatise… So why is the Christmas season so difficult for men? There are many complex reasons, by which I mean: women. The problem goes back to the very first Christmas. We
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