Tag Archives: 2020

Monday Musings: the greatest gift you can give this Christmas season

Tis the season.

Christmas is now less than three weeks away, and I think we could all use a little holiday cheer.

As many of our work parties, family gatherings, and other Christmas traditions are being impacted by the spread of the coronavirus, we all need to double-down on giving the greatest gift we can give to each other and to the world.

Love.

But, not just any kind of love.

Love is such a misunderstood concept in our culture today. Just like everything else in the world, it has been corrupted by sin.

Love is love…or at least that’s what people believe these days.

But, at the core of that belief is a very narcissistic view of life. Basically, love is whatever we want it to be as long as it makes us feel good.

Love is love is love of self.

And, that is definitely not the kind of love this world needs right now.

What this world needs is the kind of love that will last forever.

A love that is patient and kind…especially with those who think differently than we do, and who we disagree with.

A love that is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude…especially when we share our thoughts and opinions on social media.

A love that does not demand its own way…especially when decisions are made that we don’t like or think are unreasonable.

A love that is not irritable and keeps no record of being wronged…especially when we are at home with the people we love the most.

A love that does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out…especially when we have the opportunity to point people to Jesus, who experienced the ultimate form of injustice for us because He loved us more than He loved Himself.

A love that never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance…

This is the kind of love that the world needs right now.

This is the gift that we all need.

May we be a people who love well this Christmas season, and give the greatest gift that we possibly can to a world that desperately needs it.

“Three things will last forever-faith, hope, and love-and the greatest of these is love.” (1 Corinthians 13:13)

Monday Musings: an election week perspective

I voted…

And I hope you did too.

The right to vote is something that we should never take for granted here in America…especially when you consider the millions of people who live in countries where those rights either don’t exist or are unfairly undermined.

Much has already been written and posted about this election, and the last thing I want to do is add to the noise.

But, I do want to say this…

As Christians, we need to be careful where we put our ultimate hope and allegiance on this earth.

The psalmist perhaps said it best in Psalm 118:8-9, when he wrote… “It is better to take refuge in the LORD, than to trust in people. It is better to take refuge in the LORD than to trust in princes.“

There is much at stake in this election…we all know that. But, we all need to be careful that we don’t put our ultimate hope in man to remedy the ills of our nation.

God is the One who “controls the course of world events; he removes kings and sets up other kings.” (Daniel 2:21)

God is the One who gives authority to man to govern and places them in positions of authority to serve. (Romans 13:1 & 4)

And, God is the One who is giving us a Kingdom that is unshakeable. He is the One who will shake all of creation so that only unshakeable things will remain. (Hebrews 12:27-28)

Sadly, the magnitude of this election has made patriotic fervor and nationalism idols for many Christians.

We are putting too much of our hope in shakeable things.

And, we all need to be careful.

I am thankful to live in a country where I can vote…where my voice can be heard and counted.

But, I am even more thankful that this country is not my forever home. I am thankful along with many others who have gone before us that we are all “foreigners and nomads here on earth.” (Hebrews 11:13)

So, by all means, vote. I hope you did.

But, I also hope that you did so with these words from Psalm 146 in mind…

Psalm 146

1 Praise the Lord!

Let all that I am praise the Lord.
2     I will praise the Lord as long as I live.
    I will sing praises to my God with my dying breath.

3 Don’t put your confidence in powerful people;
    there is no help for you there.
4 When they breathe their last, they return to the earth,
    and all their plans die with them.
5 But joyful are those who have the God of Israel[a] as their helper,
    whose hope is in the Lord their God.
6 He made heaven and earth,
    the sea, and everything in them.
    He keeps every promise forever.
7 He gives justice to the oppressed
    and food to the hungry.
The Lord frees the prisoners.
8     The Lord opens the eyes of the blind.
The Lord lifts up those who are weighed down.
    The Lord loves the godly.
9 The Lord protects the foreigners among us.
    He cares for the orphans and widows,
    but he frustrates the plans of the wicked.

10 The Lord will reign forever.
    He will be your God, O Jerusalem,[b] throughout the generations.

Praise the Lord!

Monday Musings: 3 everyday action steps you can take to kill the sin in you

(NOTE: This is a follow-up post to last week’s Monday Musings: the urgency we need in 2020.)

The urgency is real…

If you are not pursuing God every day, you are pursuing death.

So, every day becomes an opportunity for you to say…the old me is gone, and the new me is here.

Every day is an opportunity for you to live with the kind of urgency that seeks to kill the sin inside of you and become who you are in Christ.

Okay, so if you’re like me, you’re probably wondering…

WHAT DO I DO NEXT?

If you are feeling that sense of urgency in your heart that something needs to change when it comes to your everyday sins…

If you’re beginning to understand the gravity of your sin…and how much love that it took for God to send His one and only Son, Jesus Christ, down to this earth, to die for you.

If you’re feeling that kind of urgency right now, and you don’t know what to do with it, let me give you three action steps that you can take today and repeat every day…

Action step one: Confess your sin to God…own it and then repent and turn away from it. (1 John 1:8-9)


Action step two: Tell someone about it…don’t try to beat your everyday sins alone. It doesn’t work. (James 5:16)


Action step three: Cut off the lines of supply to whatever sin you’re struggling with…it’s better to not have to face the temptation to begin with than it is to continually be faced with having to fight it. (Hebrews 12:1)

And, in all of these things, remember this truth written by Paul in Romans 8…

“So now there is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus. 2 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.”

May God give you the will and the strength and the courage to do what you need to do today.

Monday Musings: the urgency we need in 2020

Urgency.

I think we get what it means to live with a sense of urgency right now…at least with some things. Like…

We have a sense of urgency for schools to open back up again IN PERSON.

We have a sense of urgency for the outcome of the upcoming elections.

We have a sense of urgency for more local businesses to stay open.

We have a sense of urgency for all kinds of major cultural issues of our day…everything from abortion to racial discrimination to political and social divisiveness.

Not to mention that we live every day with the urgent feeling that our lives would just go back to normal.

You’re feeling that right now, right?

I think we all are.

We all get the concept of living these days with urgency.

But I’m not so sure that we get it where it matters the most.

Because, while all of the things that I just listed are important and are getting a lot of the attention and angst in our culture and communities these days, none of them address our most basic problem.

The problem of our everyday sins…

Both the obvious ones that are clearly seen and the hidden ones that we do our best to hide.

Both the sins that we commit intentionally and the ones we commit unintentionally.

On our best days, we confess our everyday sins to God and sense the urgency of killing them.

We become what we are…a new creation in Christ.

But, on our worst days, we tolerate or excuse or even ignore our everyday sins and have no real urgency to do anything about them.

And, the danger is that we end up slowly becoming cultural Christians who live our everyday lives more and more like the culture around us and less and less like the God who lives in us.

Instead of becoming what we are, we act like who we were without any real sense of urgency to change.

We get lazy in our everyday faith, while we play the waiting game for things to go back to “normal” or for Jesus to come back and get us out of here.

We forget that the ultimate goal of being a Christian is not just to spend eternity in heaven with God in the future, it’s to become more and more like Him in the everyday now.

And, in order for that to happen, we need to live with the right kind of urgency.

We need to live with the urgency for constant renewal and refreshing.

We need to live with the urgency to pursue God every day, growing in our knowledge of Him.

We need to live with the urgency and understanding that our everyday sin is not something to be excused or tolerated or ignored.

We need to listen to Paul’s words in Romans 8:12-14, when he says…

Therefore, dear brothers and sisters, you have no obligation to do what your sinful nature urges you to do. For if you live by its dictates, you will die. But if through the power of the Spirit you put to death the deeds of your sinful nature, you will live.

The bottom line is…if you are not pursuing God every day, you are pursuing death.

Think about it this way…

When you get up in the morning, and you open up your computer…maybe you’re like me, and you’ve left a bunch of tabs open.

So, you go to your Facebook tab or your daily news tab…and you find yourself staring at yesterday’s news.

WHAT DO YOU DO?

You hit the refresh button…and that is exactly what we need to do as Christians every day if we want to become what we are.

We need to be renewed and refreshed every day so that we become increasingly like Christ and decreasingly like who we were the day before.

Every day is an opportunity for us to say the old me is gone, and the new me is here.

Every day is an opportunity for us to live with the kind of urgency that seeks to kill the sin inside of us and become who we are in Christ.

And, that’s the kind of urgency we all need to live with now in 2020…and beyond.

Monday Musings: 3 questions we should all be asking

Ahhh 2020.

Just when we think we’ve got you figured out (insert your favorite conspiracy theory here)…

And, now the Left Coast is on fire.

Seriously.

Entire cities and towns and even hospitals (hospitals?!) have been evacuated up and down the states of Oregon, Washington, and California.

This year has been one like no other in recent memory…and apparently it’s not over yet.

So, as we watch our land burn (literally)…

As we put our political stakes in the ground and wait for Election Day to save our country…

As we argue and debate and look down condescendingly at anyone who thinks differently than we do about COVID-19 or any other “hot-button” issue in our culture these days…

We should all stop, take a deep breath, and think (I mean REALLY THINK) about these three questions…

Where is God in all of this?

Has God lost control of the world?

If God can make all of this go away, then why doesn’t He?

The answers to these questions could fill a book (or LOTS of books), but I’m intentionally keeping this short.

So, let me just end with these words from 2 Chronicles 7…

13 At times I might shut up the heavens so that no rain falls, or command grasshoppers to devour your crops, or send plagues among you. 14 Then if my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sins and restore their land. 

If God might shut up the heavens or send plagues to get His people’s attention, don’t you think He might also send a global pandemic or throw countries into political and social unrest or allow fires to burn?

Because if He did, then we need to stop arguing and complaining and fighting against it all and do more of this instead…

Humble ourselves.

Pray.

Seek the Lord.

Turn from our wicked ways.

And then trust God to forgive us of our sins…and heal this land.

Monday Musings from Psalm 37

March 2020.

A month and a year that won’t be forgotten any time soon…or ever.

March 2020 started like any other “normal” month, but halfway through everything went sideways.

It started in the United States with the NBA shutting down its season on a Wednesday.

By Friday, schools were closing their buildings.

That Sunday, it was churches.

And the dominoes continued to fall with theaters and restaurants and parks and pretty much any “non-essential” public space closed or heavily restricted by the end of the month.

Fast forward six months and September is starting like a new “normal” month.

The NBA season is back…playing games in a bubble.

Schools are starting back up again…online (at least for now).

And churches are slowly starting to gather again indoors with guidelines for social distancing.

Same with many businesses and public spaces.

Welcome to the new normal.

As many of us go kicking and screaming into the final stretch of 2020, we need to stop and listen to the wise words of King David in Psalm 37.

Beginning in verse 7, he writes…

“Be still in the presence of the LORD, and wait patiently for him to act. Don’t worry about evil people who prosper or fret about their wicked schemes. Stop being angry! Turn from your rage! Do not lose your temper-it only leads to harm. For the wicked will be destroyed, but those who trust in the LORD will possess the land.”

In a country that is becoming increasingly louder and more polarized may we all as Christians daily choose to…

Be still in the presence of the LORD.

Wait patiently for him to act.

Stop worrying about evil people.

Stop being angry.

And trust in the LORD.

Perhaps if we all choose to live these last days of 2020 like this, we’ll be in a better place to receive whatever God has for us in 2021.

And in a better place to point people to the only One who can bring lasting hope and peace and healing to this broken world.