Midnight Moments

I love one on one conversations. It's very fueling and inspiring for me. I find, very often, that it is during such interactions with others that God speaks to me. Today I had one of those encounters during a conversation with a good friend from church. We were discussing the issue of grace and sin and whether or not someone can still be identified with his or her sin after coming to Christ. For example, can someone who is a recovering alcoholic or who has same-sex attraction sincerely be a follower of Jesus Christ? Well, I posited the explanation that Scripturally, someone cannot accept Christ as their Redeemer and continue in a life of sin. Paul is emphatic about this throughout Romans 6 (for instance, verses 1-2  Well then, shall we go on sinning so that grace may abound? Absolutely not! We died to sin, how can we continue to live in?). It is a mockery of Christ's sacrifice to free us from the bondage of sin to continue in it. Galatians 5: 1 declares that "it is for fre...

In the aftermath of the Virginia Tech massacre of 2007, candle light vigils were held in honor of the victims. Facebook hate groups were also established directed at Seung-Hui Cho, the shooter who killed 32 people before joining his victims. In 1999, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris targeted and killed 12 students and 1 teacher, along with wounding 21 others and fnally taking their own lives at Columbine High School in Colorado. Just after midnight on July 20th, 2012, movie goers viewing the opening screening of the Dark Knight rises in a theater outside of Denver, Colorado, fled in terror as a lone gunman open fired killing at least 12 people and injuring nearly 60 others. The tragedy and heartache of these events cannot be fully expressed in words on a page. As I caught wind of the news of this shooting, my heart broke not simply for those directly affected but for the world as a whole. We are so quick to point the finger of blame in this instances: after Columbine, attacks on the mus...

There were a few other people in Starbucks that day. I couldn’t tell you what those other people looked like or even where they were sitting. I couldn’t even tell you what songs played on the radio that morning. What I do remember is the joyful glow on her face. I remember the exuberance she talked with as she told her story and how God had redeemed her out of a life of prostitution, drugs, abuse, and a feeling of having no self-worth. I closed out our interview by asking her what the Church could do to more directly help sexually exploited individuals. With no hesitation she told me, “Love, don’t judge.  Accept them for their hardships. Know they’re not going to be perfect. Even if they want to give up, it’s not an easy road. Cultivate relationships; discover where people are on their journey. Don’t make assumptions, positive or negative.” Don’t make assumptions, positive or negative. How often have we done damage in relationship because we were too quick to make assumption...

It’s rare to find anything positive or encouraging in the news these days. Stories of murder, war, rape, genocide, sex trafficking, domestic violence, custody battles, kidnapping, celebrity divorce, and the like don’t exactly leave us with feelings of peaceful happiness. Rather, they leave us with feelings of anger, fear, and despair. For many, these images and stories just reinforce a belief that God cannot exist, and if He does He is a menacing tyrant with no love for humanity.  But I see a very different world. I see a world where there exists a God who loves way beyond what humanity deserves. A world with a God who despite our hatred and maliciousness towards not only one another, but ourselves and the Creator-God who made us, chose to pay the penalty for our rebellious and destructive actions. Somehow in the midst of the destruction, hatred, selfishness, and depravity, God is quietly whispering, “While you were dead in your sins, I died for you” (Romans 5:8). And because...

Winter has finally arrived, a few months late. As I drove behind the lone salt truck in my county yesterday afternoon before the storm hit, I started thinking about Jesus' words in the gospels during His Sermon on the Mount: "You are the salt of the earth, but if salt loses its saltiness how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled under foot." Matthew 5: 13 So often throughout my life when I've heard this verse discussed, the speaker or writer has analyzed the usefulness of salt as a preservative and something to add flavor.  They often use it as a way to illustrate believers in relation to a sinful world. But as I drove on the clear, ice-less roads earlier today, after the salt trucks had done their job, I realized that salt can also be used to keep people from slipping.  Perhaps this could be put under the category of being a preservative, in that (in the context of salting icy roads) it protects peop...

As we ring in a New Year, I'm sure most of us have resolutions we've made and goals we've set to achieve in 2012.  As we evaluate the year that has passed I challenge you to not just celebrate the blessings and achievements, but do some serious spiritual inventory and see where you need to surrender to God.  Is it control over finances or circumstances?  Is it bad attitudes or bitterness? Is is stubbornness or pride?  What is it that's keeping you from experiencing God in an incredible way this coming year?  What is it that's holding you back from impacting the world for the Kingdom of Heaven? Something I've noticed more profoundly in recent days, in myself and believers around me, is a sense of entitlement.  Too many Christians have fallen prey to the American ideal that individuals are "entitled" to anything that makes them happy.  Now, I'm not saying God doesn't want us to be happy, but that is not his ultimate purpose for us.  I believe G...

Spending Christmas back with my family in New York is always an interesting experience after four years of college in Indiana and living the last 3 years in Kentucky.  Saying Merry Christmas is apparently taboo. Even telling sales clerks "Merry Christmas" you're bound to get a dry "Happy Holidays" in response.  And the act of Christmas shopping in general is a bit audacious in lieu of the real purpose of Christmas: to celebrate the birth of Christ.  Sure, historically He most likely wasn't born in December, but December 25th is the traditional day chosen by the Church universal to remember the occasion.  And how do we celebrate it?  By storming down old ladies to get Tickle-Me-Elmo's and training kids from the age of 1 to be materialistic and self centered. Now, this is clearly an overstatement, but I think most of you get the gist of my argument.  Christ has been lost from Christmas.  It's become about marketing and materialism.  And even for tho...