Gaining Your Spoil
We were put on earth to contribute, not just consume. What a narrow existence it is to reduce this gift to eat, breathe, and drive cars. Scripture says, “We are … created for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.” These good works are your service to the world. Whenever you serve others in any way, you become what you are created for.
I like what the poet Mary Oliver said, “I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.” When everything is finished, we should have gained spoil. We aren’t supposed to finish empty-handed, without contributions to our names and legacy. Where’s your spoil?
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Preach
Nobody likes a fake. Even in our airbrush culture, we despise counterfeits and crave authenticity. Everyone wants to be real. If you want to tell someone, be authentic, and you want to be up to date with slang, then you say, “Keep it 100”, which means keep it 100 percent, as in keep it 100 percent authentic. If you’re keeping it 100, you’re keeping it real. You’re authentic. You’ve got integrity. You’re being true to yourself. Who you are on the outside is who you are on the inside. You’re not a faker or a poser.
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Adulting in God's Eyes
There’s a difference between being a kid and an adult, a child and a parent. Scripture says, “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish things.” When do we grow up? When do we become an adult? 1 Corinthians 14:20 says, “Brothers and sisters, do not be children in your thinking; rather, be infants in evil, but in thinking be adults.” This is like the time that an irate woman burst into the bakery and said, “I sent my son in for two pounds of cookies this morning, but when I weighed them there was only one pound. I suggest you check your scales.” The baker looked at her calmly for a moment and then replied, “Ma’am, I suggest you weigh your son.”
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Blessed By Happiness
Does life have to be just right before you’re happy? We say of course not, but let’s be honest. If things aren’t going our way, we have a hard time turning on the positive vibes. It’s not like we mean to be this way. It’s just natural. Or it’s learned. We’re busy, or we’re bored. We have important things on our mind, or we think of trivial matters. We have other people we’re worried about, so we feel powerless, concerned, anxious. Sometimes we think being stressed and burned out is the appropriate response to life as it is. After all, there are plenty of bad, tough, dangerous, concerning things going on all the time. A reasonable person should act rationally and accept that the world is a bit of a soul crusher and a spirit sapper and a heart breaker. Life is serious business—and happiness is, well, it’s for those who don’t comprehend the nature of things.
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Have the Nerve to Serve
Often people define greatness in terms of power or possessions, prestige or position. If you can demand service from others, you’ve arrived. Being a servant is not what we aim for. There is danger, however, in seeking to be served and not to serve. Scripture famously says, “Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.” Even so, if you had to ask whether someone wants to be out front, up top, a leader and not someone stuck behind, down under, or a follower, she or he would say, “Give me what I deserve.”
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Get Into Shape
We all want to be successful in our lives, but the Lord seeks you to accomplish something with your life. It’s easy to get trapped in urgent matters. We lack confidence to go beyond what we know we can get done. Getting to a place of comfort in life has its advantages. But these are the way people live who don’t live with a deeper commitment to God. It’s okay faith that says I believe so and so two thousand years ago did something extraordinary. Biblical faith however says I believe I can do something today or tomorrow that is out of the ordinary for me here and now.
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Pack Mule Patty
Now there’s no doubt that each of us has some carrying to do, but God isn’t interested in turning us into pack mules. Many of us are loaded down. When we’re too burdened, we can’t get up to see the good things that the Lord is trying to give us. Don’t let yourself get weighed down. Scripture says, “But those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.” We’re supposed to be able to walk and then run and even fly. If you’re carrying more than your share then you’re left just crawling.
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Got a Light?
You are the light of the world- don't add to the darkness.
How you live sends a message to those around you. Your life is your message. People are watching how we 1ive, how we respond to adversity, what we do when we're the winner and someone else loses. Can we speak truth with grace? Are you learning how to watch what you say? Can we let someone else lead and we follow? Do you know how to be gracious? Is your heart growing bigger over time? Are you willing to serve for the good of others?
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Make Patience a Priority
During a long car trip home once again, I stood in line inside a Starbucks waiting to order a coffee. Not just because I do that when I’m stop in like this on a trip but also because the car line was at least 15 cars long. Ok, so quick aside: what the heck were 15 carloads of people doing Sunday afternoon waiting in their cars at Starbucks? First, why couldn’t they turn off their cars, cut the CO2 emissions and go inside to get their coffee? Seriously, the line was at least 15 cars long. We’re talking easily half an hour in that line while the inside line was less than half that time. Second, I had a darn good reason to be at Starbucks on Sunday afternoon at 5p.m. needing coffee. I still had over five hours to drive after already driving 7 hours to get home. I couldn’t go home and make my own coffee for fifty cents rather than pay $4.50 or more. Why would so many people pay so much money, wait in a line for so long, when they can do that at their own homes? I must be missing something.
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Feel Better
What we feel isn’t just a feeling. It’s a guide. It’s connected to what we think about something, and it dictates choices and possibilities. Handling our emotions well permits us to live well. Not doing it well tanks us. When scripture tells us to be nicer, better, kinder, it’s important to listen and build your life on this message. Ephesians 4:31-32 says, “Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.” That’s the direction you want to go. We want to feel better.
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God and the Gay Christian Part II
Can someone do me a favor and count the number of verses the six texts total? I get seven, but that can’t be right. Surely, there must be more to this. Seven verses and millions and millions of lives have been altered, impacted, reduced, damaged, ruined over centuries in almost every known family, tribe, town, state, and country on the globe. How could only about nine sentences exert such an outsized impact in humankind's history? Should they have? Must they still? On the face of it, the obvious answer is of course not. It's unjust/unfair to let so few sentences have so much say. To let so much power rest on so few words speaks of the capability for good or bad that humans have to build political and social frameworks that rise, in this case, in favor of those in power and are exerted to the detriment against those who have less say, much less in fact.
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