Weekly Updates (Page 13)

Dear Friends, 2019 is more than a week old.  That means you’ve had plenty of opportunity to fail at some of the resolutions you made not that long ago. The impulse we feel for making resolutions is often a good impulse.  It’s a desire for some kind of personal improvement.  There are habits we want to break.  Or character qualities we want to cultivate.  New disciplines.  There are things we know we need to put off.  And things we know we need to…

Dear Friends, Tim Keller (or more likely, someone who manages social media for Tim Keller) posted a prayer on Twitter this week that brought to mind a pretty basic truth about the issues and challenges we face in life.  Here’s the prayer: Lord, I worry because I forget your wisdom. I resent because I forget your mercy. I covet because I forget your beauty. I sin because I forget your holiness. I fear because I forget your sovereignty. You always remember me. Help me to remember you. Amen. Let me chew…

Dear Friends, It’s the season of making resolutions.  A season of pausing, looking back and giving thanks for any spiritual progress we have made in the past 12 months.  A season for looking forward and asking God to show us how we can most effectively serve Him and advance the work of His kingdom in the next 12 months.  This can be a season of melancholy for some, especially if the past year has been marked by more setbacks than victories.  We’re…

Dear Friends, Last Christmas, in the waning days of Advent, as we waited to celebrate the birth of the Holy Child, these two little ones arrived much earlier than expected: As a church, we prayed and hoped and wept together, asking God to protect the lives of these two.  And now, almost a year later, Violet and Beckett’s mom is reflecting on the past 12 months.  She asked if I would pass this note on to everyone. Hello RCC family,I talked Bob…

Dear Friends, Last week I had a chance to speak to a group of remarkable young people and their families. I was in San Antonio for the final day of competition between participants in the National Bible Bee. I spent most of the day listening to teens and pre teens reciting large chunks of scripture, word perfect. At the end of the day, I watched as a young woman received an award of $50,000 and an additional $60,000 college scholarship…

Dear Friends, I know Christmas isn’t here yet. But I’m already starting to think about 2019. And I’m thinking about 200 short conversations I want each one of us to have in the new year. That’s about four short conversations every week. Four weekly conversations I’ll be prodding you to have with your children or with your spouse or with a good friend. 200 short conversations that I believe can radically impact every aspect of your life in the coming…

Dear Friends, None of us deserves God’s favor. The very definition of grace is that it is undeserved and unearned. I hope that’s not a new idea for you. Our understanding of God’s grace is foundational to our understanding of the gospel, the central message of our faith. But let’s be honest. Somewhere, over and over again in the back of our minds, there is a tape playing that tells us “you really do deserve God’s favor more than most.”…

Dear Friends, The annual day we have set aside to pause and purposefully give thanks for the many blessings we experience is upon us.  Mary Ann shared with me a video from a church in North Carolina that you may have seen already.  It’s a great reminder of how easily we take our daily blessings for granted.  You can click here to watch.  Sometimes the day of thanksgiving can become, shall we say, “less than festive” when dinner table discussions turn to current events…

Dear Friends, Our study of Esther this fall has had us exploring the question of what it looks like to live lives of faithfulness to God in a pagan culture.  I think you’d agree that the subject is relevant in our day. A few weeks ago, I referenced what I think is a key New Testament text on this subject.  It’s from the Apostle Peter, who told believers in his day (and in our day as well) to “abstain from the passions…

Dear Friends, “But some doubted.” That phrase jumped out at me this week as I heard someone reading the familiar “Great Commission” verses from the end of Matthew’s gospel. Usually, people will start reading at vs. 19, where Jesus declares to His disciples that “all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” (a comforting reminder on the day after an election). But on this occasion, we backed up and read the verses that set up Jesus’…

Dear Friends, Most people today who are visiting a local church come with a consumer mindset or orientation. They make decisions about where to worship based on the amenities and the services offered. Is the nursery well staffed and clean? Check. Do they have a good youth group? Check. How’s the worship team? Check. Is the preacher a good speaker? Check. Do I like the color of the carpet in the sanctuary? Check, check, check. Years ago a former pastor…

Dear Friends, Eugene Peterson’s father was a butcher. He had a shop right off of Main Street in Kalispell Montana, just a few blocks from where the family lived. Eugene used to accompany his father to the shop, and as he tells in his book The Pastor, he learned much about ministry by watching how his father cared for his parishioners. They never congregated for corporate worship, but the local butcher shop was a part of the Kalispell community. “I…

Dear Friends, I honestly never expected I would ever have anything to do with Christian radio.  And then I heard Chuck Swindoll. In the summer of 1978, I was asked by friends in our church if I would house sit for them while they went on a three week vacation.  As a recent college graduate who was basically couch surfing my way through the summer, I was more than happy to have access to a real bed for 21 whole days. Before they…

Dear Friends, You realize that everywhere you go, you’re packing a concealed weapon, right?  And I’m guessing in the last week, you’ve had an occasion to use it.  I hope there wasn’t too much damage done. I’m talking about your tongue.  The small, flexible muscle in your mouth can do a lot of damage.  Or a lot of good. Your tongue, James says, is a small member capable of great things.  It is, he says, “a restless evil, full of deadly poison.”  If you’ve been…

Dear Friends, I saw a post on social media this week suggesting the need for what the author called “the uberization of American Christianity.”   The author wasn’t using the word uber the way Nietzsche used it.  He wasn’t saying that we all need to be some kind of super Christians.  He was using the term in the modern day, ride sharing sense of the word uber.  Uber, as you no doubt know, has completely disrupted the decades old taxi business.  From the first appearance…

Dear Friends, I saw a hashtag on twitter this past week about why people who were sexually abused might fail to report the event and it prompted me to write this note.  Sadly, I’m sure some of you can relate to what I’ve written. Dear #WhyIdidntreport, I have to confess, it hit me like a hard slap in the face.   I read the tweet from Beth Moore this weekend.  The one that included your hashtag. It was a simple tweet.  One sentence, actually.  It said…

Dear Friends, At some point in your life, you have undoubtedly been to the theater.  Maybe it’s been something as simple as a school pageant or a play.  Or maybe you’ve been to Broadway or the West End in London and seen a professional production of some sort. The first time I was ever in Manhattan was in December of 1990.  I had flown from San Antonio to Newark on a Saturday for a Monday business meeting.  I added the extra day to my trip so…

Dear Friends, I’ve spent the last three days in Nashville at the Getty Music Sing! 2018 Conference.  I was there with about 8,000 of my closest friends (including this rowdy group). (present, but not pictured is our photographer, Matt Gurney) The conference was all about the subject of worship:  Personal, family and corporate.  And it was about where music, and specifically, the book of Psalms, fits into how we worship. I drove home this afternoon, processing much of what we heard and…

Dear Friends, “The main thing in life,” someone has said “is keeping the main thing the main thing.” So what’s the main thing?  That’s a good and important question. I became a Christian during the days when a group that called itself the Moral Majority was quite prominent.  After more than a decade of a whole lot of sex, drugs and rock and roll that openly subverted the traditional Judeo Christian ethic, there were a whole lot of people who wanted our culture to…

Dear Friends, If you’ve ever been to a wedding, you’ve heard the familiar words of Genesis 2:24:  “For this cause, a man shall leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” Dr. Dan Allender says that 90% of the issues couples face in marriage can be traced back to a failure to leave on the part of one or both partners. Failure to leave? For a married couple to be able to “cleave” (stick together) and “become…