Life Goes On

My in box is crammed with admonitions to attend this leadership conference, buy this leadership book, or be coached to become a more effective leader. I don't hear anyone talking about the importance of "follow-ship". That is anyone but Jesus. If I remember correctly, His command was "Follow Me." Paul picked up on that and encouraged those to whom he wrote to essentially "follow me as I follow Christ". I came across an interesting article in WordSearch; The Discipline of Following Thus leaders are also followers, followers of Christ, and willing to accept the leadership of others. This turns out to be the harder discipline. Almost all aspire to be leaders; few aspire to be followers. Following involves the recognition that we must operate not as a cluster of independent individuals but as the body of Christ. God has designed the body for interdependence, not codependence or independence. On a deeper level, following requires personal humility and...

I'm currently reading David Platt's book "Radical: taking back your faith from the American Dream". In addition to being convicted, challenged and chastised, I've been forced to re-think the process of disciple-making. The truth of the matter is that most of our current disciple making "programs" are extra-biblical at best. There is no place in the Bible that even hints that disciple making involves taking a course, or completing a curriculum. When I look at the example of Jesus, I see Him spending 24/7 with 12 men for 3+years. He taught by word, deed and assignment. The closest I've seen any contemporary plan to that is the pattern that Reach-out Ministries (in the old days) had. That pattern was "I do it; I do it and they are with me; they do it and I'm in the background; they do it and I've moved on." I used to have a sticky note on the dash of my car which read D.D.A.A. It stood for "Don't Do Anything Alone...

Today I'm feeling a lot like Jonah when the plant that God had caused to grow to give him shade suddenly withered and died. Jonah got so upset that he also prayed to die. Here's the dialogue that followed. But God said to Jonah, "Do you do well to be angry for the plant?" And he said, "Yes, I do well to be angry, angry enough to die." And the Lord said, "You pity the plan, for which you did not labor, nor did you make it grow, which came into being in a night and perished in a night. And should I not pity Ninevah, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also much cattle?" So, why am I feeling like Jonah? Today I caught myself praying for God to help me find a misplaced Bible and a power cord for my Kindle. I suddenly realized that I had not prayed for the situation in Somalia, or Egypt, or Afghanistan, and yet I was upset and selfishly praying for God to help me find...

A while back as we were sitting watching TV one evening, we heard a thumping sound seeming to come from under the floor. My wife wondered if we had an armadillo under the house. Several days later she mentioned it to our pest control people and they checked and said, yes, there does seem to be indications that you could have an armadillo. Now these creatures have been known to eat the insulation around the a/c ducts that are under our manufactured home, resulting in hundreds of dollars for repairs. Thus began the armadillo hunt. The Bugs Bee Ware people put out 2 traps near where they thought the creature went in and out from under the house. Two days later there was a creature in one of the traps...an opossum, not and armadillo. A call to the pest control people was made, they came and picked up the creature and set a new trap with some bait this time. Today when we awoke, there was another creature in one of the traps; a raccoon. We called the pest control folks again. Since...

Way back in Biblical times the old men of the city would go every day to the city gates and there mediate disputes, give advise and otherwise counsel those who came for help. Their years of experience, knowledge of the local laws and understanding of human nature were all beneficial to inhabitants of the city. It also kept the courts from being over whelmed by penny ante suits. Today we seem to try our best to put our aged ones out of sight and out of mind. We consign them to nursing homes, assisted living facilities, etc. Anything to get them out of our hair. As we do so, we also lose the benefit of their wisdom gained by years of living. As I was thinking of this I was reminded of the book, "Marley and Me". Only occasionally do we find someone who stumbles upon the gold mine of experience and wisdom locked in the minds of those with lots of "miles" on them. This week I took time to watch the DVD "The New Karate Kid" starring Jackie Chan and Will S...

I remember the story of a man who gave Andrew Carnegy a slip of paper with an idea on it and said, "Try this, and then send me what you think it's worth." The story goes that six months later Carnegy sent the man a check for $25,000. So what was on the slip of paper? A simple idea: write down the 10 most important things you need to do tomorrow. Then rank them in order of importance. Tomorrow begin with number one and work your way through the list, not leaving one until it is done. That idea has served millions of people well over the years. Long before that idea, Jesus Christ presented a better one. In Matthew 6:33 He said, "But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you." Why is it that we find it so hard to do that one thing? Probably, for most, we don't understand what it means to seek first the kingdom of God. Perhaps we have no idea of what the kingdom of God is. Let me share a few thought...

My wife and I were among the thousands who were left stranded by the big blizzard in the NE. Our flight was scheduled to leave on Tuesday Dec. 28th. At bed time on Monday the flight was still scheduled. We awoke on Tuesday, packed and ready only to receive an e-mail from JetBlue that our flight had been cancelled. That began a plethora of phone calls to JetBlue trying to get arrangements made for getting back to Florida. 20-30 of those calls ended with a recorded message telling us that phone traffic was very heavy and that we should call again. The call was then terminated. Finally I was placed on hold and after 1 hour and 5 minutes got to speak with a live person. The earliest flights available, I was told, were on Saturday. We grabbed those reservations and began to make adjustments for an extended stay. We have been at our daughter, son-in-law and 4 grandkid's since December 21. We were to leave on the 28th and the other set of in-laws were to arrive on the same day. N...