News & Reflections

Is it time you took a rest?

5 Comments / News & Reflections, Overcoming, Relationship with God, Uncategorized /

For since the world began, no ear has heard and no eye has seen a God like you, who works for those who wait for him! (Isaiah 64:4 NLT)

There is a foundational spiritual principle for realizing inner peace, transformation and breakthrough in life. And it is this, it only happens when we choose to rest and let God do the work. This is a simple truth but it is not easy to do because it is counter intuitive to human reason and how the world operates.

The fact remains, in the spiritual realm and in God’s kingdom it is all about His work from beginning to end. Our relationship with God, His choice of us, our acceptance and forgiveness, our very sonship is based upon His work and not ours. Paul writes “Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. And to the one who does not work but believes (trusts) in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness,” (Romans 4:4-5 ESV)

In God’s economy the operating principle for increase is not driven by earning, but by receiving. Therefore it is God’s delight to “gift” His creation with good things like righteousness and salvation. The main thing that requires of us is not work but trust. There is a big difference between those two, working versus trustin. When that understanding first dawned on me as an unredeemed struggling sinner, and it actually happened when those two verses out of Romans jumped off the page into my heart at a home bible study, it rocked my world. I felt liberated from the frustration and inability on my part to earn acceptance from God and I found myself rejoicing in that fact that what I could not do for myself, God had already done and was offering it as a free gift. His only requirement of me was that I trust Him to do it – to cease from my work and trust Him do the work.

Recently I had to have a minor surgery on my hand. It required submitting myself to anesthesia and the care and skill of my doctor and those who attended him. I would not have done it if I had not trusted the surgeon to do what I could not do myself. Because I was “out” during the whole procedure, it could be said I was ceasing from my labors in “resting” while I trusted him do all the work. As a result, I have become the recipient of a new and better functioning hand.

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Poem for Parker Lee

2 Comments / News & Reflections, Window into my Soul /

Poem for Parker Lee

His name was whispered long before his birth
And those who heard it knew the measure of its worth.
A holy heritage this young prince would receive
A double anointing from on high to him would cleave.

Hanging upon the wall of his future room
Soon to be occupied with his sister whom
Was calling mommy’s tummy by his name
Were the words Parker Lee cradled in a frame.

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In Praise of Solitude

2 Comments / Life Balance, News & Reflections, Relationship with God /

But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed. Luke 5:16 NIV

I just returned from a three day solo retreat spent in a little log cabin located in a remote neck of the western Wisconsin woods. My purpose was to sequester myself away, free from modern amenities, media distractions and human interaction to seek the face of God. Years ago that was an annual practice of mine, looking forward to setting aside time apart from the hustle and bustle of the world, to still my soul and listen intently for the voice of God. Sad to say it had been a number of years since I made that a priority but thankfully my long overdue withdrawal to the wilderness more than met previous expectations.

Spending time in solitude, expressly to delight in God’s presence is a unique experience. It helps when a person can isolate themselves geographically in a nature scape removed from civilization. Cloistered in a simple one room cabin with a window to the wooded winter stillness of white and gray set against the wash of an azure sky, I could not help but sense that God must surely be in this place.

I was struck right from the outset how the utter simplicity and austerity of such a setting so readily strips the worldly traveler of every false dependence and diversion. “What, no internet or cell phone coverage?” No, only silence and the sounds of nature; and the sounds you create through the motion of everyday activity, all woven intricately with the golden threads of your prayer and worship.

For me, my most faithful companions in times alone with God are my pen, journal and Bible. I’ve found reading and pouring over the words of Scripture to be like the sun around which all my reflections and prayers and meditations and worship align their orbits. And then my journaling becomes a natural expression of their reflected light with which God illumines my soul.

It might be said that austerity brings clarity and I have found in such settings that God often poses clarifying questions for reflection and evaluation. Such questions bid the harried sojourner to slip his heavy knapsack to the ground and sit a spell, so as to take an inventory of its contents. Not everything we so dutifully carry has been placed there by God and He wants to once again remind us that “His yoke is easy and His burden is light.”

Here is a list of the clarifying questions I sensed Him bidding me to ask. They enabled me to leave my respite in the woods carrying a much lighter load than when I arrived.

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I want to know Him!

2 Comments / News & Reflections, Relationship with God /

“I want to know Him.” Philippians 3:10

It was some thirty years after walking with and serving Jesus that the apostle Paul wrote these words. Some would think it a bit curious that one as experienced in the things of God as Paul, would still be driven by that one over-arching desire, to know Him better. But it was the all-encompassing pursuit of his life ever since his Damascus road conversion when Jesus first revealed Himself to him in a blinding vision with the words “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.” The unfathomable grace of this Jesus, who would choose to arrest a man from being a persecutor and call him rather to be an ambassador, forever captured Paul’s heart. Paul’s life from that moment on was dedicated to getting to know this Jesus better and better, who had intervened and shown him such unmerited grace and mercy.

Norman Grubb, beloved Christian author of the past century, wrote an autobiography entitled “Once Caught No Escape.” I have often thought that title aptly encapsulates the story of every follower of Jesus who like Paul has been apprehended by His grace. It is lifelong quest to seek to comprehend such grace and mercy calling us out of darkness into His marvelous light, even while we were yet sinners, separated from Christ, without hope and without God. (1 Peter 2:9, Romans 5:8 &Ephesians 2:12)

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I’m giving it ten minutes.

2 Comments / Life Balance, News & Reflections /

I’m giving it ten minutes. Simply starting a postponed project is usually more than half the battle. So I am committing to sitting at my computer keyboard for a mere ten minutes to see if I can at least start to write something. Here goes.

It has been nearly a month since my last blog post. My prolonged silence has been more lack of motivation than anything else. It is not as if I have had nothing to write about. An active thought life and daily experiences continually supply fodder for this writer’s rumination. And it is not as if I have been too busy, which is a common laundry basket in which we throw all our dirty little excuses. No, truth be told, I simply have not as the saying goes “gotten around to it.”

It raises an important question. Why is it often so difficult to overcome inertia, to get something rolling, when that something is the very thing that in the doing causes a person to derive great benefit and satisfaction? One answer is procrastination. Procrastination is a ten dollar word describing how we’re duped into replacing high priority, high return tasks with low priority, minimal return actions. In the financial world, and yours and my world for that matter, such careless investment is a projection for loss. Loss of progress, benefit to others, self satisfaction and respect

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