Ever said that? Most people have said this at least once or twice in their lives. If you’re like me, you’ve said it a lot. Inevitably, when I think I know something, it becomes my motivation for taking some kind of action. In retrospect, it’s more likely that there’s something I really want to do, I justify it and then I do what no one could talk me out of doing in the first place. There are those times though, that I truly feel like I have it right; those, “I got this” moments, that genuinely surprise me when they turn out wrong.
When I was 12 years old I learned a sure-fired way to get every decision I was ever going to make, right. Yes, really! At 12 years old I mustered up enough courage to get out of my church pew and walk to the alter, in front of my snickering friends, with the intent to follow Jesus (whatever that meant). I committed to baptism and a life of service and with Jesus as my intercessor, I would walk boldly into my perfect future. Of course, I was very naive about the perfection to follow but my general concept of using Jesus as my shield was about as “spot on” as a 12 year old could have been. I just didn’t really believe it.
Bottom line, I didn’t believe that God cared enough about my personal decision-making to intervene and lead me to the best decision. I didn’t believe that God would get that far down into the weeds to sort out things I felt I should have been able to do on my own. It wasn’t defiance (it may have turned into that); it was ignorance and neglect for the relationship God required of me. “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him”, James 1:5 (NKJV). If God promises to do this for us (for me and you, personally), the only barrier, is a weak belief system; so weak that we don’t bother to consult God for guidance. “Yet you do not have because you do not ask”, James 4:2 (NKJV). And that’s the wake up call.
We should ask God for everything. Everything! Will we get it right every time? Probably not, but we can be satisfied that, “all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose”, Romans 8:28 (NKJV). As long as we are called according to “His” purpose, we are covered by His grace.
God will get down in the weeds if that’s what it takes to be with you! How do we end up being so wrong when we felt so right? Well, for me, finding myself in the weeds is the first indication and looking around to find that I’m all alone can only tell me one thing: wrong again!

The master of metaphors points a Holy finger at the ironies that confound our closed senses. Showing us, leading us through twists and turns of invisible self-inflicted stagnation. Knowing that the thousand years starts today and we have no idea how many minutes it will truly last. We see the omen and turn around into our own destruction like disobedient escapees, gawking at the spectacle of the special effects. We nearly turn away, almost persuaded but can’t un-know what itching ears desire and even still we yield to our craving hearts and speak forbidden words. Listening intently to falsehoods for a semblance of truth because our Kool-aid flavored truth is filtered through lead-lined piping, dripping sewage into our children’s potential. Visions obscured by images of hoarded possessions; we suffer chronic affluenza, slipping on the abundance of poured out blessings we can no longer recognize. Angrily protesting hypothetical future concessions, we steal and destroy every available resource to ensure acceptable distribution. Taking back treasures we already took in our first-take, we’re taken aback at the blatant challenging of lesser thieves. Remembering that there is a way that seems right, but this can’t be that way, it seems so right. Looking for the good humor in the abomination, scoffing at the insignificance of wars and rumors of wars while earthquakes and eclipse-like blood moons encircle us. 39 straight days of rain would do nothing to awaken us from the sleep in which we saw visions and dreamed these dreams. We’re stumbling over blocks that are blocking our view to the sign we’re still looking for. Sorting through dry bones looking for dinosaur fossils and nervously preparing ourselves to be present at a time when any good Christian should be gone. Not knowing that our recognition gauge is in the red zone; causing us to misread the temperature, we’re chilling at the flashpoint of combustion. Leading us to the day when “hell to pay” becomes hell’s payday.

“When it is evening, you say, “It will be fair weather, for the sky is red. And in the morning, there will be a storm today, for the sky is red and threatening. Do you know how to discern the appearance of the sky, but cannot discern the signs of the times?” Matthew 7:2-3 (NASB)

Yesterday, while on travel in Gulfport, Mississippi, a guy walked up to me and called me by name. At first I didn’t recognize him but after a brief discussion I could see the same young 19 or 20 year old in the face of the excited middle-aged man. He turned out to be a guy who worked for me in the military 22 years ago. After 22 years of separation, I thought it was quite remarkable that a guy I never really knew that well, remembered my name and my age-enhanced face.
Immediately it dawned on me that the possibilities we have to impact people are far greater than anything we could predict or control. Immediately I began to reflect on what my impact might have been 22 years ago. Where was I in my life and how did it project to other people? I look back and see the image of someone driven to succeed. A matter-of-fact, anti-sympathizer with personal goals that were not accommodating to anyone who presented themselves as an obstacle: a bulldozer, clearing a path to promotion. I hope it wasn’t as bad as I remember but my conscious tells me it was probably worse. Although this guy was happy and excited to see me, I’m afraid that I might have been a very flawed example for the young people God put in my path.
So, what’s the point? That I’ve always been a sinner? Well, of course that’s true but if we can flounder through periods of our lives and still have a positive impact on people, even while we may not have understood our purpose, imagine what could be accomplished if we knew our purpose, and we guarded our image. How important is it to protect our image and project our image? It can be infinitely important. “Show yourself in all respects to be a model of good works, and in your teaching show integrity, dignity, and sound speech that cannot be condemned, so that an opponent may be put to shame, having nothing evil to say about us” Titus 2:7 (ESV). God is so good that He can use a good image to protect us or to influence someone who will ultimately impact many others for the cause of Christ.
The armor of God has been a part of my wardrobe for quite some time but, I must admit I have struggled, at times, to grow into it. My image: your image, is either securely protected by your relationship with God or it is exposed to the assumptions, the perceptions and the scrutiny of man. None of those things are important unless they’re true. A guarded image is the assurance that whether people are happy to see you or angry at the mention of your name, you’re covered by God and you’ve done your part and left the seeds of goodness, which God uses to do His will.

  Bondage is the payment Satan seeks to offer dreams of lies that mimmic truths. His pardoning gesture fraudulently appearing to grant your freedom, he prepares to ride your consciousness into your salvation. He disappears to give you space but never leaves the depths of your guilt and helplessness. He awaits your call while he grips your memory to overwhelm the possibilities of perfection with flashes of failure and the impossibility of reconciliation.
But forgiveness is the song that drives mercy’s sweetness through the density of evil’s hardened grip and rings significance to the lost and the lonely; the orphans and the outcasts. It’s the taste of calming grace that quenches raging inward fires; a comforting touch to the untouchable; an embrace to the abandoned. It’s the release of stinging cold steel bondage to the warmth of the radiant sunlight. Soft melodic notes of blessings, replacing screams of horror and dread. Lifting years of weighted baggage from the tortured backs of the overburdened; exhaling the foul taste of poisonous entrapments. Freedom!
Forgiveness is the truth of our merciful inheritance; the outstretched hand of our loving Father. It’s the completion of the futile trial of inadequacy replaced by the ability to do all things.
I think I’ll take it!

“Therefore if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed.” John 8:36 (NKJV)

Boy, I hope it rains today. God, please send us rain; Amen.
If the rains come after that short prayer I would hesitate to claim that God was honoring my petition on the face of that single request. If the rain did not come does that mean that God didn’t hear me at all? If I give up after that, I will never know. If I don’t give up, He will answer.
Really! God answers prayers. Even impossible prayers. In fact, He loves to answer the impossible ones because it means you will have to have more faith in Him to believe that it will happen. What are you praying for? Keep going, keep praying and He will answer.
In Luke 18: 1-8, Jesus gives an example (parable) of the power of persistent prayer. A widow, with no chance of getting what she wanted from a cantankerous old judge, persisted in making her request to the point she wore the judge down and he capitulated. Then Jesus makes an incredible statement about the relationship of her persistence to what our prayer lives should look like.

Then the Lord said, “ Hear what the unjust judge said. And shall God not avenge His own elect who cry out day and night to Him, though He bears long with them? I tell you that He will avenge them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will He really find faith on the earth?” Luke 18:6-8 (NKJV).

He is effectively saying that we should petition Him day and night. He starts the chapter by saying that we should pray and not faint. In other words, never give up because the minute we give up we shut down a legacy of future events God wants to honor. How many stories have we heard about the small church that started in someone’s home and became a huge influential church of power in its community? What if the prayers stopped at the beginning stages? I’m not sure what God would have done but there are many dreams in the heads of people that probably could have become churches; terminated prayer reminders that could have become great businesses; incomplete petitions that could have produced networks of powerful people.
If God is “able to do exceedingly abundantly above all we ask or think, according to the power that works in us” Ephesians 3:20 (NKJV), why would we ever want to shut down the power that works in us, by just quitting?
So, if you’re praying for rain, keep praying until God reigns down. He’s waiting to hear from you.

  You! Yes you! That’s what He said to me. I want to give you everything. Yes, everything. I turned to run but He held me there. Stunned and unable to move I questioned the merits of this message. Crazy, misguided, nonsensical. He can’t really be talking to me and I must be losing my mind in a haze of need and want. This is me, convincing myself that the things I want to do are actually important to Him. This is that craziness from the Baptist church; that holiness from the holiness church; that weirdness from years of dabbling in doctrines and calling it searching: a subliminal TV message? This can’t be real but if it happens again tomorrow, I’m going to have to start believing it.
But tomorrow came today with no hocus-pocus and no abracadabra and not a single audible word spoken but “the Word” in defense of every negative thought, which He positively blocked with an immediate answer. An avalanche of assurance reigned down peace in the midst of chaos; real peace. Peace, wrapped in love, inside assurance; a riddle wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma, yet a guarantee? An open question inside an answer.

Oh, it was me you were talking to God. Go ahead, I’m listening!

Really? If I had a thousand math problems to solve, I could ask God to do them and they’d all be done correctly when I woke up in the morning? I would never be the one to say that couldn’t happen but it probably won’t because that’s a pretty selfish and ridiculous request. Whatever we do though, asking God for clarity is never a bad idea.
What’s that thing that you do? Could it be done better if God had a hand in it? Often we go around gritting our teeth and grimacing in stressful concentration, trying to accomplish something that seems very simple to complete. Some things simply overwhelm us because we are trying to complete them alone; proving ourselves or promoting ourselves. If ever there were a job for God it would be proving and promoting the people He loves. All we have to do is just do the work!
Sounds easy, right? Well, that doesn’t mean the work is easy. In fact, the one thing about getting God involved is that He doesn’t accept shoddy workmanship. “And whatever you do, do it heartily, as to the Lord and not to men” Colossians 3: 23 (NKJV). This verse implies that the work you produce for the Lord is to be done at a higher standard than any of man’s expectations. In other words when you ask God to do your homework, you are basically committing yourself to a higher standard of work.
The average passing grade in American universities is 75% and because all of us are made differently, for some, getting 750 questions of 1000 right might be the difference between staying up all night and giving up in the middle. For some of us it means that if we have the ability to get all 1000 right but we’d have to stay up all night to do it, 75% would definitely not be acceptable. God would expect us to stay up all night and He would provide us the means (and maybe the coffee) to do it. It doesn’t even matter if you’ve never gotten 1000 of 1000 correct before. God’s standard, for you, is higher than man’s; even yours. If the project crashes and burns in the end, there’s probably a point where we insisted on taking the wheel without Him and He allowed us to drive ourselves into the ditch. I’m sure there would be many lessons to be learned from that as well.
God wants to help us with our homework or any work, and we want His signature on the things we do. Evoking the name of Jesus invites Him to join in and give us the stamina and resources to complete what He has gifted us to do.
So yeah, really, God will do my homework, with me and at a higher standard than me. The miracle won’t manifest itself in the mysterious completion of my work but the supernatural ability He places in me to get it done.

Ever come across a person that was just a mess? I mean, when you spoke to the person, you couldn’t grasp how they manage to get from point A to point B, everyday. How did their life become such a conglomeration of conflict and turmoil? They are a toxic combination of moral bankruptcy and religious confusion, topped with combativeness. You can hardly stand to be around them but they desperately need help. It’s useless to try to explain God to them because they obviously don’t know Him and they have a baseless suspicion of Christianity and anyone associated with it. So you miss the role you were meant to play in their lives because you just couldn’t put up with their nonsense and now you feel convicted about it. Guilty!
Did you ever think that your experience with that person was never really meant to be the time for you to jump in; to open that fire hose and blast God’s full force into their face? Or for you to stumble through misinterpretations and half-truths trying to explain exactly what you believe. What if that encounter had nothing (or little) to do with them at all? What if that time was set aside for you to reflect on your own preparedness to handle future assignments?
I think we can agree that God knows what He’s doing and if His mission for that person was urgent; to have the person accept Him now, He wouldn’t have chosen you, in a state of unpreparedness. Maybe that chance meeting was a fork in the road and a warning to be prepared to do a better job of using Him, to share your faith. “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.” 2 Timothy 3:16-17 (NKJV).
Could it be that you were trying to convince them with your logic rather than to allow God to convert them with scriptural truth? Sometimes we don’t realize when we’re in the way. We take it personally when we give good advice and people acknowledge that it is good but then continue as they were. Often people already know what’s wrong, they just don’t know what to do about it. Pointing it out only reinforces their suspicions about Christian self-righteousness. Could it be that you were so personally challenged about their situation that you weren’t able to focus on answering the real questions they had? Could it be that you were offering too much of yourself and not enough Jesus?
Being patient enough to simply pray with someone or share your testimony hardly seems to be enough to us. We often feel like the situation calls for advice, direction and the kitchen sink in order to immediately pull them from their burning crisis. But once you’ve opened a door, you can’t continue to stand in the doorway and still let someone in. You must remove yourself from the process. God only needs us to open the door. He is the key! A battering ram will work in an emergency but why use it if you have the key?

“For we ourselves also were also once foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving various lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful and hating one another.” Titus 3:3 (NKJV)

Let’s talk about love! Talk is cheap but talk about love is money in the bank. Talk to me about your love and let me improve your loving outlook. Yes, Dr. Love specializes in quality love advice; he loves listening “by the hour”. Recommending songs of love, puppy love, loving puppies. Tell him what you love and he’ll give you a strategy for loving it better. The condition of your love can be repaired under the condition that you continue to pay, lovingly. He creates love conditions; manufactures love connections. He can make the fantasy of love, easy like, easy peasy, easy day, easy money$. He can find your love, focus your love, or save your love. In fact with loving contributions he doesn’t need you at all in order to improve your ability to love. You gotta love, Dr. Love.
American culture has marketed love as fantasy, kindness, humanitarianism, sex. Love is the word we use to substitute for desire. It’s what you like, amplified. It’s the love of things; money, animals, cars. The love of people; family, friends, romantic interests; all mushed together in a confusing ball of emotional insecurity. People hate over love, kill over love until love sometimes resembles crazed obsession (because it sometimes is). The love we know is loosely similar to love but not nearly matching.
“Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” John 15:13 (ASV). That really doesn’t sound so easy peasy, does it? The bible defines love this way: “God is love; and he that abideth in love abideth in God, and God abideth in him” 1 John 4:16 (ASV). And what’s the greatest example of love? John 3:16, of course, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life.” There is very little resemblance in the “love industry’s” brand of love and the love of God. In fact, they are totally different in definition. The Greeks have four different words to explain what love is. They are phileo or emotional love, eros, which is sexual in nature, stergein, like the love between siblings and agapeo, which is the highest form of love. Agape is unconditional love or the love of God; it’s sacrificial. No further explanation needed. When God says He loves you, He doesn’t waver. All that He says He can do, He will do. There is no payment for His services and you don’t have to come back for periodic checkups but you’ll want to come back for the free refills. The only way we get to experience love is through the love of our God. We are incapable of it without Him. We merely fabricate hybrid love experiences. God is the “real” Doctor Love and in our efforts to manufacture love we produce something akin to love; something similar but never matching!

If God is love and you don’t have God, you don’t have the fullness of real love!