The sermon begins in the parking lot.
Jesus didn’t command his followers to feel something. He commanded them to do some things.
Nobody matures past his or her need for prayer and meditation.
Pay the price. Embrace the vision. After all, everybody ends up somewhere in life. You have the opportunity to end up somewhere on purpose.
To get from where we don’t want to be to where we do want to be requires two things: time and a change of direction.
One gets to the place one wants to be the same way one got to the place one didn’t want to be – by putting one foot in front of the other and moving in a specific direction.
The best way to know if someone is prepared to commit is to examine his or her prior commitments. If you want to know how someone will behave tomorrow, take a look at what he or she did yesterday.
When you try to exercise authority within a department that is outside your core competencies, you will hinder everything and everyone under your watch. If you fail to distinguish between authority and competence, you will exert your influence in ways that damage projects and people. To put it bluntly, there are things you are responsible for that you should keep your nose out of.
With this approach, every message should have one central idea, application, insight, or principle that serves as the glue to hold the other parts together.
They ask what I often refer to as the best question ever: “In light of my past experience, and my future hopes and dreams, what’s the wise thing to do?
Pride is what keeps us from celebrating what others have accomplished. Pride is what causes us to keep our mouths shut when we should be pouring on the praise.
What gets our attention determines our direction and, ultimately, our destination. Or if you would prefer the short version: attention determines direction.
Lord, help us to see trouble coming long before it gets here. And give us the wisdom to know what to do and the courage to do it.
Your pain isn’t a trophy to show off. It’s not a story to tell. It’s potentially poison to your soul. To refuse to forgive is to choose to self-destruct.
Tim Keller writes, “When the church as a whole is no longer seen as speaking to questions that transcend politics, and when it is no longer united by a common faith that transcends politics, then the world sees strong evidence that Nietzsche, Freud, and Marx were right, that religion is really just a cover for people wanting to get their way in the world.”13.
Five years from now, our “everybody needs to know” opinions will be all but irrelevant and forgotten. But the damage to the body will be done. And you will have contributed.
How should Jesus-following Republicans and Democrats treat, speak about, and respond to one another? Publicly and privately? The way Jesus treated, spoke to, and responded to those who disagreed with him.
Any admonition that declares that we must rule should be checked with the immediate reminder that Christ did not. It is the cross – not the boardroom, not the Oval Office, and not the box office – that is the absolute center of the Kingdom of God.
The moment our love or concern for country takes precedence over our love for the people in our country, we are off mission. When saving America diverts energy, focus, and reputation away from saving Americans, we no longer qualify as the ekklesia of Jesus. We’re merely political tools. A manipulated voting demographic. A photo op. Again, we lose our elevated position as the conscience of the nation. We give up the moral and ethical high ground.
How we treat, talk about, respond to, and care for one another is the identifying mark of a genuine Jesus follower. Not what we believe.
Our faith is anchored to a miscarriage of justice. The worst possible thing happened to the best possible person.