Stopping to Think

  "There is no such thing as love or worship that is merely private." Anthony Esolen, Life Under Compulsion, pg 212

Remind them to be submissive to rulers and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready for every good work, to speak evil of no one, to avoid quarreling, to be gentle, and to show perfect courtesy toward all people.  Titus 3:1-2 The World We're In We're coming, as a nation, out of the most contentious election cycle in a number of years. While negative ads and trying to make it seem like voting for the other side would be an awful idea are nothing new, this year did seem to elevate the level of rancor that we've seen, at least compared to elections that I've observed (which reaches back to Clinton/Dole, 24 years ago). But while this tactics are certainly nothing new, it seemed the volume was pushed up to eleven this year. Part of that, undoubtedly, was that fact that this is 2020. The year of coronavirus, the year of shutdowns and a massive economic downturn, the year of rising deaths and the burden of facing all this trauma disconnected from so many we know and love. If y...

  It’s 5:30 am. The morning is in transition from the grey of first light into something more approximating daylight. I look out over the porch, through a gap in the pine trees, to the wheat field across the road. I remember them mostly growing bluegrass in that field, but maybe wheat prices are up this year. Or maybe they thought they would be before the COVID mess. My baby girl is laying on the floor to the right of me, intermittently sucking on her bottle and pulling it away to smile. She’s so happy. I wish he could have met her. This is the first morning I’ve slept in this house, my grandparent’s place, since my grandpa died last December. I came out in June when we did a belated memorial service, but the house was packed with family from all over the country, so I just crashed at my brother’s place in town.  We never called them our “grandparents”, always Grammie and Pak. When or how Pak became our equivalent for grandfather I’ll never know for sure, though I’m told it wa...

Preface: This isn't "writing" per se, this is the first of three posts that will be lesson outlines from the VBS our church is conducting this week. The titles are, Where Did I Come From? , Am I Important, and How Can I Be Okay ? My hope in sharing is that if you work with kids, or simply are interested in answering these questions for yourself, you will be edified. Am I Important? Have you ever felt small and unimportant?  Did you know you are important to God? God cares about little things and little people, because God values all people.  What did we talk about yesterday? Creation Who remembers what the most important part of creation was? People; Gen 1:27, 31.  Gen 2: 7-9 , how did God make man? Where did God put him? 15 , why did God put him in the garden? Remember how people are supposed to take care of God’s world? 16-17 , God gives them a rule. How many rules? 1 rule! What is the rule? Remember that, it’s important. 18-23 , God didn’t want Adam to be alone, so wha...

"True love always costs the one who loves." Pastor Fred Gums Commonplace Monday is a series of posts wherein, on Monday mornings, I share short quips, sentences -perhaps as much as a paragraph- which I have collected in my various commonplace books and files. If I wrote down or recall where it came from I will certainly give attribution. However, sometimes I write down things and not where they came from. So if you see anything like that here and recognize it, that's what comment sections are for.  

"Private devotions can help us love God more, but they have nothing to do with if, or how much, He loves us." Commonplace Monday is a series of posts wherein, on Monday mornings, I share short quips, sentences -perhaps as much as a paragraph- which I have collected in my various commonplace books and files. If I wrote down or recall where it came from I will certainly give attribution. However, sometimes I write down things and not where they came from. So if you see anything like that here and recognize it, that's what comment sections are for.  

I taught 1 Peter 3:7 this morning. I think I wound up drawing a lot of the same conclusions that Piper does from this text, though I do wish I had seen it before I taught. Very worth the half hour or so of your time. http://www.desiringgod.org/messages/men-love-and-lead-your-wives

"Rose early to meet with him whom my soul loves." Robert Murray McCheyne   I think about that quote from McCheyne now and then. How dearly that man loved his God; and he fostered and kindled that love by rising early to meet with the maker and lover of his soul.    There is a flippant, lightweight, Jesus-is-my-boyfriend kind of Christianity that exists  in many evangelical churches. This can be displayed in music full of sappy emotionalism and empty platitudes: "Jesus makes me happy all the time", "Jesus, lover of my soul, Jesus I've lost all cognitive control." It also can be found in devotional literature that focuses little on the person of God and doctrines such as His holiness or His majesty, contrasting them with my sinful estate; rather the focus is on how He feels toward me, with little to say about why He might feel that way or what He might expect of me. These things are really easy for me to pick on, and frankly i...

Throwback Thursday is a series of posts, wherein I will on (some) Thursdays post a piece of writing from back in the day. Generally not from this blog. I will edit lightly for readability, but my intention is to allow each piece to stand basically as written. Over the years my mind has shifted on many things, as my knowledge of life, the Scriptures, and myself has grown. I'm not in the business of hiding this fact, so these will probably (at least on occasion) contain some things which even I think are crazy. Originally posted on Facebook as, "Anything over 50 on gravel is dumb. Anything over 70 is scary.", December 4, 2009 at 2:23pm Public Friends of Friends Friends Friends except Acquaintances Only Me Custom Good feed South Lake Youth Ministries See all lists... Le Mars, Iowa Area Plummer, Idaho Area Family US Postal Service Acquaintances Go Back The title has nothing to do with the note, but I thought it might grab some attention. So last night I went and sa...

Monday, March 28th marked six years since one of the best people I have ever known left this world for the next. I still miss him. Here's what I wrote six years ago today. Originally posted on Facebook as "To: Alex" March 30, 2010  ·   To: Alex Flamin' Joe's runs, pool nights, going to the casino to eat at 1 am, and a million other things we did. The long chats about women, good beer, cigars, the good old days of football, what we were gonna do with our lives, and what God had been teaching us...yeah, gonna miss those. I didn't even realize how much you had touched my life until I drove to town today and realized almost every place I looked I had a memory with you there, and I could hear your voice making wise cracks the whole way. Life just won't be the same without you, man. I want to thank you for being the friend you were. No matter what was going on in either of our lives, I knew I could turn to you when I needed someone...

"Untold numbers of professing Christians waste their lives trying to escape the cost of love. They do not see that it is always worth it. There is more of God's glory to be seen through suffering than through self-serving escape." John Piper Commonplace Monday is a series of posts wherein, on Monday mornings, I share short quips, sentences -perhaps as much as a paragraph- which I have collected in my various commonplace books and files. If I wrote down or recall where it came from I will certainly give attribution. However, sometimes I write down things and not where they came from. So if you see anything like that here and recognize it, that's what comment sections are for. Anyhow. Hope you enjoyed week's installment.

Throwback Thursday is a series of posts, wherein I will on (some) Thursdays post a piece of writing from back in the day. Generally not from this blog. I will edit slightly for readability and grammar, but my intention is to allow each piece to stand basically as written. Over the years my mind has shifted on many things, as my knowledge of life, the Scriptures, and myself has grown. I'm not in the business of hiding this fact, so these will probably contain some things that even I think are crazy. Notes from Fuel 2/13/2010, with some elaboration. Originally posted on Facebook, February 14, 2010 Well, I was gonna post the notes I had for my message, but I meandered a bit from them, so I re-worked them and elaborated on them a bit. A lot a bit. In fact this is taking that message as a basis and basically going into what God has taught me in the last two days. My base text was Revelation 3:12-22 (NIV) "To the angel of the church in Laodicea write: These are the words of...

Commonplace Monday is a series of post wherein, on Monday mornings, I share short quips, sentences -perhaps as much as a paragraph- which I have collected in my various commonplace books and files. If I wrote down or recall where it came from I will certainly give attribution. However, sometimes I write down things and not where they came from. So if you see anything like that here and recognize it, that's what comment sections are for. Anyhow. Here's this week's installment : I wasn't looking for someone perfect. I was looking for someone I could love. Unknown

Commonplace Monday is a series of post wherein, on Monday mornings, I share short quips, sentences -perhaps as much as a paragraph- which I have collected in my various commonplace books and files. If I wrote down or recall where it came from I will certainly give attribution. However, sometimes I write down things and not where they came from. So if you see anything like that here and recognize it, that's what comment sections are for. Anyhow. Here's this week's installment : Most love is not expressed sexually--nor should it be.   Fred Gums

I open with a question: Is it inconsistent to call for the removal of Confederate flags (from state-owned properties, as well as Christians dissociating themselves from this flag voluntarily), while not calling for similar treatment of Old Glory? This question has been raised all over my Twitter feed, and perhaps most prominently in a blog post by Douglas Wilson . The US flag does, after all, stand for a number of reprehensible things itself. In our past we have the horrors of slavery...quite the same ones as the Confederacy, come to think of it. We have the massive injustices of murder, land theft, and more of the Native peoples of North America. Currently we murder our babies in the millions. And of course I'm just hitting the lowest of the low notes. So, is there a difference? I believe the answer is, most definitely, yes. First of all, as Wilson labors in his post, flags mean a lot of things, including what a nation should  be. We might say, aspires to be. All men ...

Preface: This will be far shorter than it ought to be, and grew out of what I intended to be a reply to a comment on my comment on my wife's Facebook status related to the releasing of a movie about a number and a color (confused? I am). The gist of the question I want to answer is this: who determines what does or does not go in the bedroom?  What is sex? Before we can address what is "okay" sexually, we have to first lay a groundwork, or perhaps better, a framework for understanding this issue in light of the Scriptures. If you read this blog very often then you're probably aware that I care a lot about what God says in His word, as I believe it is the only place we can go to find out how this life really is supposed to work.  The first question we need to ask is, "what is sex?" The first place we look in answer to that question is the opening part of Genesis: So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; And God bl...

I intend to be brief here. In recent days a young woman named Brittany Maynard has made headlines with her campaign for "death with dignity" laws, and for her moving to Oregon recently so that she might take advantage of theirs. Diagnosed with cancer at age 29, Brittany has decided to end her life on November 1st. Many people, including my fellow Christians, are distraught over this. Over her personal choice to end her life, and over the legality of doctors assisting her to do so in Oregon and four other states. That we have become a culture willing to celebrate self-murder, as it used to be called, is indeed very disturbing. I do not wish to argue those concerns, but rather applaud them. Exodus 20:13 is very succinct on this subject, "You shall not murder." We don't have the right to kill another person (we can discuss times of war and capital punishment another day). You also do not have a right to kill yourself. Why? Because our bodies do not fundamentally ...

A brief thought here. God never says "love yourself," "accept yourself," or "I think you're wonderful." He says, "You're made in My image, which makes you valuable beyond belief. You are also desperately wicked and broken and deserve to be under my wrath in hell forever. But I love you. Not because you deserve it. You don't. You don't deserve my love or anyone else's. But I choose to love you. I sent my Son to die for you and reconcile you to myself. I'm better than self-love and self-acceptance, and I'm better than love and acceptance from others. I am the greatest person and reality in the universe, and if you will embrace me as your greatest treasure, you will come to see that your need for approval elsewhere isn't actually a need. It is a desire that will shrink until one day, when I perfect you, it will be gone." Check Romans 3, 5, 8, and 9. This is important. Self-love is one of Satan's biggest ploys ...