God’s Lessons from HGTV?

During the pandemic I was forced to expand my television viewing experiences. Joni loves HGTV and I slowly began to embrace it as well. Don’t worry men, I balanced it with the NFL Network. I loved to watch Hometown with Ben and Erin Napier as they restored old homes in Laurel, Mississippi. One of their signatures is taking an item that would normally be trashed and repurposing it into something beautiful. I watched Ben and Erin see the beauty in something I would throw away without thinking twice. And then it occurred to me that God is the ultimate repurposer. God can take lives that are broken and even ugly and repurpose them into something beautiful. Satan lies that God can’t use someone like you. The author of lies says you have no value to God. But our loving Heavenly Father sees the beauty in your broken life. In fact, it is times of brokenness when He is most ready
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How To Have An Eternal Impact

This week one of the men I have most admired in my journey died at the way too young age of 57. His passing was sudden, shocking, and completely unexpected. Brad Johnson was one of those people who made you smile every time you saw him, talked to him, heard from him, or even thought of him. I met him when he was a Student Life Pastor in Garland, Texas. I used to call him the Golden Retriever of Pastors because he greeted everyone with enthusiasm, joy, and that signature smile of his. We became friends at a much deeper level when he joined us as a staff member at Waterbrook Bible Fellowship. It was a church plant that Joni and I helped initiate. I got to see the character of Brad Johnson on a much deeper level because church plants are hard. Brad was a consistent confidant and encourager through some challenging times. Most of all he was one
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The Impossible Dream 50 Years Later

Fifty years ago this past weekend a very talented group of cast and crew presented the annual Chillicothe High School musical. For reasons I still don’t understand I was cast as the lead. I had never acted and I was not a trained singer. That stellar resume got me the lead role of Don Quixote. Go figure. The play was called Man of La Mancha and I realize almost fifty years later how daring that choice was for small town Chillicothe, Ohio. Man of La Mancha was pretty edgy for that era. You may know that the play is based on Miguel de Cervantes’s seventeenth-century novel Don Quixote. The musical unfolds as a play within a play, performed by Cervantes and his fellow prisoners as he awaits a hearing with the Spanish Inquisition. Cervantes takes on the character of “mad knight” Don Quixote and he assigns roles for the other prisoners. The musical is best known for it’s signature song “The Impossible Dream”.
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Gratitude is an Attitude

Gratitude is a mind-set, and I am praying that the response of appreciation can become a lifestyle for me, with some practice. It is easy to be grateful for the good things. Accepting with thankfulness the bad and sorrowful takes faith and trust that God is faithful with His children. I cannot claim to be grateful until I can simply say thank you for everything that comes my way, recognizing that every event will bring joy, character, perseverance, or ultimately, glory to God. Roman philosopher Cicero wrote that “gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others.” Hmmm. I can see how that plays out. I forgive others out of gratitude for my own forgiveness. I give grace because I am grateful I was offered grace when I did not merit that gift. I give to those less fortunate out of gratitude for my financial blessings. Cicero might have been on to something. The
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Opening the Gift of Grace

“Lord I crawled across the barrenness to you with my empty cup uncertain in asking any small drop of refreshment. If only I had known you better I’d have come running with a bucket.” -Nancy Spiegelberg  That quote may be the most indicting summary of my misunderstanding of grace for decades. I am indeed Waking Up Slowly to the mystery and majesty of Grace.  Grace. It is a word that has lost some of its power through misuse and overuse. We banter about the ridiculous concept of cheap grace as if we must be wary of receiving a gift from our Father in Heaven. Are you kidding me? If we view grace like a sales pitch for a time share resort we are listening to the wrong voices. There are no strings attached with grace. No fine print. No hidden costs. No promises to lure you in that cannot be delivered in reality. Grace gives you full title to the
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Want to Make a Difference?

I believe that God uses difficult circumstances to grow us in our faith. The lengthy pandemic has given us lots of opportunities to reevaluate priorities in our relationship with God and others. The frightening uncertainty of the past year has also given followers of Jesus a chance to show how faith makes a difference in crisis. The results have been mixed. I used to get angry and judgemental when those who identify as Christians didn’t live up to their title. Now I mainly feel sad at missed opportunities to show how Jesus makes a difference when we trust Him during trials. Christians should have a message of hope during this confusing and anxious season. Jesus followers should be demonstrating that trusting God gives peace and hope in dark times. A song by Thomas Rhett neatly summed up how Christians can be different in a good way. We are called to show a different path and a better way. In a
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The Darkest Day Ever?

There is much written about Good Friday. The sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the Cross is incomprehensible to my puny human intellect. There is much written about Easter Sunday. Christians around the world rejoice and proclaim that “He is risen!”. But there is not nearly as much written about one of the saddest and most confusing days in history. The Saturday between the Friday horror of Jesus on the Cross and the Sunday mystery of the resurrection. Some churches do observe Holy Saturday but it was never a tradition in my faith upbringing. I have been thinking about what that day must have been like for those who dropped everything to follow Jesus. How crushing those events had to be. I imagine the fear they felt that they would also be killed. And for what? On Saturday they feared they had given their careers and their very souls for a false hope. I think in particular of Peter. I identify
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