Journey in Grace

I read a blog by David Paul Dorr this morning that really grabbed me.  It’s about judging others and imposing on others our standards of how we think they should think and behave.  Here’s a couple of quotes to peak your interest:

One of the ways we remain blind to our own need of a Savior is our obsession with how other people should think and behave.

It’s blindness. We see “the speck in our brothers eye,” but ignore our the plank in our own. We are judgmental — it’s human nature. We live in the most judgmental age, because we now have more access to what other people are doing. And, of course, one of the most judgmental things we do is call other people judgmental.

I don’t know about you, but this is something I constantly battle and it was so good to read this because it lands on the gospel as the solution and that’s what I need to hear over and over. Go check it out. http://www.davidpauldorr.com/should/

-Mike

I think I’ve finally got my Twitter follow list where I want it. For now.  In addition to several of my friends who tweet, I follow several people I don’t know because they say some really encouraging things that spur me on in my own walk. One of them is Jeff Vanderstelt. I met him briefly at an Acts 29 Bootcamp in Tempe, Arizona in late 2010 and I heard him preach that same day. He finished his message and walked off the stage long before I wanted him to. I wanted to hear more. So I started following him on Twitter. He posted this on June 22, 2011:

Lacking the power of the Spirit? Are u living a life that requires it?

That may not seem like much initially, but I kept re-reading it and thinking about it and after a few short minutes, it became profound. Technically, I suppose it’s both simple and profound at the same time. As an aside, if you’re unfamiliar with Twitter, you only have 140 characters with which to tweet, so you have to get creative. Hence, the “u” instead of “you”. But that’s not why I think it’s profound. His question, “are you living a life that requires it [the power of the Spirit]?” is what makes it profound. Are you living a life that requires it? Are you living a Read the rest of this entry »

Elyse Fitzpatrick made a remark on a recent blog that grabbed my attention in a big way. Talking about regrets in parenting (I can relate to that!), she said:

In addition, we had absolutely no clue how the gospel intersected with daily life. To us the gospel was the door into Christianity and then Christianity was almost exclusively about obeying, getting on down the road of sanctification. I cringe now when I think of how I used our faith to demand obedience and punish them when they didn’t comply.

I believe this way of thinking is more of a problem in Christianity and the church than most of us care to admit.  It’s easy to view the gospel as the door into Christianity – something only unbelievers need – and then once they believe, we begin piling on law and rules for living without any ongoing consideration for the gospel and its place in our sanctification.  We leave the gospel at the door.  The scenario goes something like this: we may share the gospel with someone and if they embrace what Jesus did for them on the cross and believe, our emphasis quickly changes from the gospel and our need for Jesus to rules and our behavior.  It’s easy for our Christian experience to become performance oriented without even Read the rest of this entry »

Lately I’ve been thinking about aging.  A lot.  Now, I’m not obsessed with it, but I do think about it.  A lot.  I seem to have more time to think about things – in the middle of the night when I can’t sleep.  Now this isn’t a blog of complaints about getting old, just observations, just the facts as they pertain to my experience on aging.

For example, my marriage.  While we have always had a good relationship/marriage, things seem to be more peaceful at this stage of life.  We have learned to give each other grace and not nit pick over the little things.  Our focus is more on the cross and how Read the rest of this entry »

Wow! I haven’t blogged since February and here it is almost mid-June. There’s been a number of reasons for that, but they can all be summed up by saying that there has been an intense amount of trials going on in my life that have caused me to realize I had nothing to say. It’s hard to be still and know that He is God (Psalm 46:10) when you’re talking (or typing) all of the time. Add to that the onslaught of social media that screams for my attention, and it’s a miracle I went missing at all. But the last few months have been tough for me and my family personally because of some intense trials that seemed to materialize out of nowhere. They weren’t really out of nowhere because the God who loves me knew they were coming and why. They surprised me because Read the rest of this entry »