How Do I Know God's Plan for Me?

We’ve all had those moments when we let our parents down. Moments when what they had hoped for us just wasn’t in the cards. Now it doesn’t mean it can’t happen one day. But to best know what our parents want, we have to pay attention as young kids.

God has a plan for us as well. He wants some pretty specific things for us. Paul tells us in Ephesians 5 that we shouldn’t make decisions flippantly but consider God’s will in every day life. Seventy times in the New Testament, the “Will of God” is mentioned. Almost every time, one of two of God’s goals for us is mentioned.

The first thing God wants for you is to be like Jesus. We discover how Jesus lived in the four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Our prayer is that we are transformed, holy, new creations who look like Jesus. The process can be painful as God chips away our old selves and his Son is revealed in us. But any pain will be worth the outcome.

The second thing God wants for you is to be with Jesus. God’s ultimate goal is for you to spend eternity with him. By saying “yes” to Jesus and allowing the transformative process of becoming more like him to happen, we have the promise of eternity with God,.

We almost will never get a super clear message of what God is wanting us to do but there are a couple of things we can do to lean in and be more attentive to his calling in our lives. The first thing we need to do everyday is read the Word of God. In the pages of the Bible lie every answer to life you need to know. Whether it is how to have good relationships, or a healthy marriage; whether it is how to handle money and resources or be a great parent. Everything for life is found in God’s word.

The second thing we need to do is listen to God’s people. Being with and around God’s people is so beneficial and rewarding. So many people can give you great advice since they have been down the road a little further. It’s so important since we have been corralled by COVID these past two years that we desire to be together with each other.

When we lean in to both of these ideas, transformation will occur. Know that God’s part is the transformation and your part is surrender. We surrender to God working in our life for his glory. We strive to allow Jesus to remain in us and we in him so that real transformation will occur.

God wants you to be like Jesus and his desire is that you live with him. That’s God’s will. Live into that each and every day of your life. Blessings on the journey.

Jesus is Greater.

I know you hear so much of the noise going on in the world around you. You hear the marketplace wanting your time at work. You hear relationships begging to be poured into. You hear the cancel culture. You hear advertising battling for your last dollar. You hear the government prodding and poking you. So many things are telling you they are the hope for your future. But we all know, Jesus is the only hope we can count on.

In Colossians 2, Paul is reminding us, as Jesus-followers, there are some things we can do to stay focused, to stay ready, to stay anchored. He tells us in his fatherly voice, “I don’t want you to be deceived…” Paul is telling us that there are a lot of voices who will tell you they know what’s best, they know the best answer…just listen to them. But Paul wants to remind us how we stay grounded in the avalanche of information we currently experience in our culture.

Take look at Colossians 2:6-7. Paul is telling us how we can overcome the pressure to follow other voices.

Paul calls us into a real relationship with Jesus. You remember the first time you met your best friend? You may have hit it off right away but it wasn’t a real relationship yet. Those take years to develop. You must experience highs and lows together. You have to journey a while together. You build trust and faith in each other over time. Paul is saying, that’s how it is with Jesus. You must make a decision to live a lifetime with Jesus and develop the real relationship. As you journey, the trust you put in Jesus will prove that He is the only one in which you can hope.

Paul also wants us to think about agriculture and construction. “Let your roots grow down into Jesus…and build your life on him.” Paul is reminding us again, it takes time to gain what you hope for. There is a process to building a house and planting 40 acres. It will take months before either come to fruition. So it is with Jesus. And as Kingdom people, Paul is admonishing us to embrace the process.

In the church at Colossae, they had settled for a transactional moment. Paul calls us to live a transformational life. There is no doubt, each of us have a transaction with Jesus. We give him our past mistakes and he gives us grace, mercy, and forgiveness. But after that moment, our lives are continually transformed into one that looks more and more like Jesus’ life. Transformation is a process. It doesn’t happen overnight.

The church at Colossae had also settled for Jesus as an accessory. Paul calls us to make Jesus a priority. Jesus can’t just be part of your life. Jesus must BE your life. So many of us mistakenly listen to the cultural voices around us and choose it as our savior. We move the cross over and take our career and building wealth as the savior. Or we take our relationships with our kids or our marriage as the thing that will make us right. Or we allow our fear and anxiety take over our life. Or we believe a new president will be the answer and savior. But there is only one savior and his name is Jesus.

So Paul reminds us to focus on Jesus. Grow your roots down deeply into the Son of God. Build your life on the foundation of the King of kings. It’s then you will find everything you hoped for in this life and the next. Blessings on your journey.

There's No Place like Home.

I remember taking some graduated high school seniors on a short term mission trip to Jamaica. We had so much fun teaching the village kids with a VBS style agenda all week. But one of our guys got really sick to his stomach and the last night there wanted me to take him to the hospital. We could not go, he wanted his mom and it was a reminder there is no place like home.

Home is our anchor. For many of us in Texas, we endured the brunt of last week’s winter storm in our home. Some of us did without electricity, gas and water but even so, we had the comfort of being in our home with our family. There’s just no place like home.

As believers in Jesus, we must remember that our home is not here on earth. This is a place we are passing through. We have a built in desire to go back home. Each of us has a God-hole in our innermost being that will never be filled until we are reunited with our creator. Paul tells us as much in 2 Corinthians 5:8, “We are fully confident, and we would rather be away from these earthly bodies, for then we will be at home with the Lord.”

When we are finally at our real home with Jesus, we won’t have to worry about COVID or federal taxes or cancer or out-of-stock grocery stories or death or wearing a mask or anything that is defined by our fallen state. Whatever disability you have to work around, in heaven, it will not exist! Why? Because we’ll be home reunited with our Creator whose promised to make everything new (see Revelation 21:1-4)!

How can we have hope? Because of your identity. You belong to God. This idea goes all the back to the exodus account of God freeing his people from their enslavement in Egypt. And God, through his Son Jesus Christ, has freed us from our enslavement to sin as well. He has brought us from darkness to light. See, our identity is not in your job, or your bank account, or your family name, or your relationships…our identity is in Jesus Christ. The minute you reconcile that idea, your life will be transformed.

The transformation you see reveals itself in your life and how you interact with those you see everyday. The world looks at how you respond to what’s going on around you and says, “Wow! This person is so different. How are they able to respond this way?” So because this world is not your home, you respond in a way that brings Jesus glory. When you are cut off in traffic or when the wait staff gets your order wrong or when a coworker lies to you or when a family member takes advantage of you. Your response is offered in the way Jesus has changed you. You don’t answer the way the world would because your citizenship in heaven requires you answer the way Jesus would.

Your time here on earth is short. Eternity is forever. Live in such a way as to positively draw attention to our brother and king, Jesus. Remind those around you that your been changed. Let your actions speak loudly that you recognize your home is not here but in heaven. Blessings on your journey.

Feeding your Soul

Peace. Easy feeling. Energized. Whole. These are the ways you feel when things are as they should be. As a follower of Jesus, we can look at his life to discover how we might attain to and get that peaceful, easy feeling. Jesus himself was at one with God. He had moments of alone time, talking with God. Moments when he was in the Hebrew Bible and debating those who had different ideas of what it meant to be a peace with God. He served those everyday with whom he interacted. He had close friends who believed in him, shared meals with him, and interacted with him on a daily basis. He worshiped every weekend at the synagogue or the Temple. He was a man at peace with God.

Jesus tells us how to be at peace as well in Mark 12:30-31. He says, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength….love your fellow human the same way.” If you are going to allow Jesus to beautifully interfere with us, in what ways do you fulfill Jesus’ calling? I wanted to take a minute to pull back the curtain on my life. While I don’t profess to have all the answers and I am still discovering how to be better transformed into the image of Jesus, here are a few things I do to lean in personally to the calling and I’ve found it to bring me peace and a centeredness that nothing else has done.

In John Ortberg’s Soul Keeping book, he talks about a discussion he had with Dallas Willard. Dallas explains our life has concentric circles. He explains it as follows and I’ll add what I do to discipline these areas of my life.

Dallas says the inner most circle is your WILL. Based on Mark 12, I call it heart. I love to sing. I do a lot of singing in my car while driving. People may look at me funny at any given red light but I just smile because it centers me. Every day, I’m also in the Word of God, becoming intentional about the person Jesus has called me to be. This summer I spent a lot of time in Ephesians. In Ephesians, Paul reminds us of what God has done for us which should lead us to a life transformed. I also love to hang out with friends who encourage and live in uplifting ways. My goal is to surround myself with positive Godly influence. If you are a negative person or always talking poorly about people, you don’t get any time with me. I love creating with my hands. I am made in the image of the Creator so I believe we are called to create. I have a company called Weathered Canvas. You can find it on FaceBook.

The next circle is your MIND. I train my mind by reading both spiritual books and God’s Word. I’ve got written goals published on my desk so anyone on staff can hold me accountable. One of my goals is to read 20 books this year. I also write a blog once a week (which you are reading) and I’m writing my next book. I also teach a parenting class and a marriage class during the course of the week.

The next is your BODY. I committed to working out each week although I’m not doing it as often as I hoped. I have a membership at the local YMCA with my wife. We also walk a three mile stretch around our neighborhood when weather permits. I have committed to getting better sleep so I try to go to bed about 10:30pm every evening. I also try to not eat everything I see, especially after 8pm.

And finally, the last one represents your SOUL. I have a realization that my soul is connected to God so it’s at the center of who I am. It pulls together every other piece of me to fall in step with the story God has set out for me to live. Deep down, my soul longs to be connected to Jesus and people who are also moving in that direction. By doing all three of the things above, I better reconcile myself to become more like Jesus day by day.

Each of these pieces of me, heart, soul, mind and body, come together to make the whole me. It was all created to give God glory and fall in love with Jesus. When you commit to giving God glory in every aspect of your life, it’s only then that you’ll discover peace. My hope is you’ll commit to transformation. It doesn’t have to be over night but one move in a positive direction one day is the step needed to create change in you. Blessings on your journey.

Speak truth in love.

I know you have been on the wrong end of someone who is trying to correct you but with the seemingly most evil intention. As they reprimanded you, you saw the anger in the eyes, heard the demeaning tone of their voice and the self-righteous pedestal they stood on. You walked away from that interaction with a new realization. You made a decision to stay away from them at all cost. Instead of a friend or family member who had your back, you placed them in a metaphorical phone booth you’d never call if you ever needed anything in life.

Now they thought fear and anger and belittling would get your attention, make you change, transform your direction in life. But in fact, it did the opposite. And, by the way, that is not at all how Jesus calls us to interact with each other.

James, the half-brother of Jesus, reminds us that the tongue is hard to control (James 3) and it’s so true. Paul calls us to a different way of living, the Jesus way in Ephesians 4:29-5:1. Paul reminds us in that text that kind of behavior is of the world and it brings sorrow to the Holy Spirit. That is an emotional response for the Spirit of God. I know God listens to our conversations and he’s hurt that his followers would speak to each other with anger, fear, loathing, and a belittling attitude.

Paul encourages the church (that’s us) to mature in our faith and be more like Jesus. He calls us to ignore cultural tendencies and cultural scripts in Ephesians 4:14 and says when we mature in Christ, we’ll be different. In verse 15 Paul says speak truth to one another in love. It’s so important we continue to speak the truth of how Jesus has called us to follow him but with the understanding first, I have the love of Jesus in my very soul…that my heart is full of love and grace and mercy for those with whom I’m interacting.

Paul shows us what this looks like as he writes the church in Corinth. This congregation had some issues and Paul is trying to get them to be the church that Jesus would want them to be. Although he is correcting them all through the letters, he uses phrases like “my beloved children” and “my brothers and sisters”. He’s reminding them of his love for them and his desire that they act and live like Jesus has transformed them.

So some questions you can ask yourself as you step into the lives of people you’re trying to influence for good. “Is my motive to help or to hurt?” Often we want to “pay back” someone for the way they spoke to us. We are called to help one another.

“Am I saying this because it will make me feel better or help them?” Sometimes, we just want to get something off our chest because we’ll feel better and say it in such a way we leave a train wreck in our wake.

Finally, “What does my tone communicate?” Body language and intonation make up as much as 93% of what we say. Our tone can build bridges or walls. If we truly want transformation, Jesus calls us to build bridges.

So be people who speak truth IN LOVE. Be Jesus. Be kind. Use every opportunity to change the world for the better. Blessings on your journey.

A Lifestyle of Worship

Worship has been around for ages. We all worship something. It may not be God but each of us have a god to which we give our time, talent and resources. But there is only one God that is truly worth all that we have to offer. He is the creator of the universe and the creator of you and me. He’s the one that gave up his Son in order to save us from ourselves.

For many of us, we grew up thinking that worship was a Sunday morning event. The “holy hour” on any given Sunday morning was the time we could truly worship the King of kings and Lord of lords. But we are reminded that is not the true.

Our call is to worship our God every day of our life. Paul says in Colossians 3, “Let the message of Christ…fill your lives…Whatever you do or say, do it as a representative of the Lord Jesus. “ Paul also reminds us in Romans 12 after going to great lengths to explain our lostness and what Jesus did to save us why we should live a life of gratefulness and worship toward him, “Offer yourselves to be a living and holy sacrifice…this is truly the way to worship him.”

Everything we do is worship to God. How we treat people; how we speak; how we live with our families; what our work ethic is like; how we glorify Jesus in the way we live among our co-workers and neighbors. We are called to Love God and love people (Mark 12:30-31). Worship is so much more than a Sunday morning. It’s an everyday event that reflects back how we are so grateful for what Jesus has done for us.

So, may your worship be more than one song on a Sunday morning. May it be every song, every day. Blessings on your journey.