My Christmas List

It was a first for me. It was gentle, it was loving, it was sweet pillow talk, but it was definitely my very first Christmas scolding.

After a great night with my family filling our home, eating way too much (my wife can really rock the holiday turkey), and watching the kids tear into the presents, we collapsed into bed. That’s when the loving reprimand came my way.

“You haven’t told me anything you want for Christmas,” she said.

“I told you I wanted a harmonica,” I responded.

It’s at this point I can’t blog what happened next, I can’t even really describe it in person, but let’s just say my wife has learned to roll her eyes even when they’re closed.

It’s pretty impressive.

The problem is, she’s totally right. I have racked my brain trying to answer her question for weeks. There is just nothing that I want, let alone need, that I could put Continue reading “My Christmas List”

It’s time you got put in your place

One of the hardest words in the English language is also one of the best words: wait.

Psalm 27:14 says, “Wait for the LORD; be strong and take heart and wait for the LORD.”

Great verse, makes a wonderful refrigerator magnet, almost nobody I know lives by it… including the author (insert sigh of desperation here).

But, the benefits of waiting are reflected in the receiving.

When we wait we get what is almost always better for us. In waiting we allow God to do His work. When we wait we are ready to receive the bigger, better, righter (yes, I know it’s not a word) thing that God wants us to have.

When we don’t wait, we move too quickly, too impulsively, too selfishly, and we tend to get the cheap imitation of the thing we really need or want. We too often get less than what God wants for us. We get what we can get a hold of, not what He wants to give.

For example, how many marriages have dissolved because two young lovers just wouldn’t wait? They forced a marriage that was never meant to be.

How about finances? How many of us have ever bought into the “greatest deal ever” only to live in total regret within a few years, months, weeks or even days?

It’s a pattern that’s all too clear. It’s just weird that we don’t learn from it. It’s like a dog who keeps going back to the same human for a good scratching, but every time he goes there he just gets kicked. Yet, he keeps going back.

We’ve got to learn to wait. I don’t know about you, but I’m sick of getting kicked!

Continue reading “It’s time you got put in your place”

There’s no losing, just not winning

I’m not the kind of guy who is willing to settle. In fact, when I hear someone announce victoriously, “Well, at least it’s a wash,” it literally makes my skin crawl.

Maybe its an overabundance of testosterone. Maybe I have an over developed sense of confidence. Maybe I am unapologetically competitive and can’t stand the thought of not winning (you see, there is no losing, just not winning).

In some circles I’m sure they would call it pride and arrogance, yet in others they would call it perseverance and determination. Whatever you might label it, I simply know me, and I know that unless we are moving forward I feel like we’re moving backward.  And, that is not acceptable.

I’m that way in all my relationships, work projects and hobbies. Maybe that’s why the enthusiastic tone I felt whilel reading an article on church growth kind of left me queasy. Continue reading “There’s no losing, just not winning”