When you hike in the woods one of the things you need is a compass. If you try to simply hike in a straight line; trees, rocks and hills cause you to deviate slightly from your course. You may feel like you are still on target but those minor deviations can result in leading you a mile off course. In order to make sure this does not happen, you must periodically stop and recheck your compass to ensure you reach your destination. The same thing holds true in our spiritual life. When we set out to follow Christ we may have a good idea of the direction we are heading. However, as the twists and turns of life get in our way we will make adjustments and if we are not careful, before long we will no longer be on course to follow Christ anymore. In order to stay on course we need to periodically check in by reading God’s Word, spending time listening to His leading, and spending time in prayer. That way we will be sure to stay on target. This week, check in with God and make sure you are still on the path He has laid out for you. 

In the Bible there is a prophet by the name of Jeremiah who had something he was passionate about and had to talk about. God gave Jeremiah a message for His people. The message God gave Jeremiah was not a happy message. God wanted Jeremiah to tell His people that their city was going to be destroyed, the people would be killed, and those who were not killed would be taken captive and forced to live in a foreign land where they would die. I don’t know about you but I don’t like giving people bad news. Jeremiah, on the other hand, said, “But if I say, ‘Forget it! No more God-Messages from me!’ The words are fire in my belly, a burning in my bones. I’m worn out trying to hold it in. I can’t do it any longer!” What Jeremiah was saying was that the message God had given him was so important that he couldn’t hold it in even if he wanted to.

That got me to thinking. God has given me a message to share with people. The message God has given me is good news; it is a message about how much He loves us and the salvation that is available to us through Jesus Christ. But sometimes it is easier for me to talk to people about model airplanes than it is to talk to them about Jesus. This week I am going to make it my goal to talk to people about the most important message in the world. I want to be like Jeremiah and not be able to hold back this message of good news for all people. Will you share the good news with someone this week?

During the majority of my run I had been focusing on the finish line and was totally oblivious to the beauty that was all around me.  As I ran I was so fixated on the finish I did not take time to enjoy what was all around me the whole time. I realized that this was not the only time this has happened to me. How many times in life have you been so focused on something off in the distance that it caused you to miss what was happening right in front of you? Have you ever had someone tell you to “stop and smell the roses?” This happens to us when we focus on things in the future like, “How am I going to pay the rent this month?” or, “What am I going to do if my kid doesn’t straighten up?” We start worrying about things in the future and don’t take time to enjoy today. In the Bible God tells us not to worry about the future. He says worrying cannot add a single hour to our lives. Instead, He says, seek His righteousness and He will take care of your worries. This week the challenge is to seek God today and let tomorrow worry about itself.

That sounds a little silly doesn’t it? When the mechanic tells me my car is not working the way it was made to work she is not judging my car. She is simply pointing out that my car is engineered and designed to function in a specific way and when the car is not maintained properly it cannot work the way it was designed and that is when parts of the car begin to break down.

God created us to work a certain way. Just like my car, when we do not work the way we were created to work, we run into problems. It is not being judgmental to say you are not living the way God intended any more than it is judgmental to say my car is not functioning the way it was designed. The mechanic simply points out the truth of the situation. I have to change something about the way I maintain my car in order for my car to start working properly again. When we are falling short of the way God designed us to function, the Holy Spirit simply convicts us to let us know that there is something we need to change so that we can get back on track spiritually.

Have you ever heard the phrase, “garbage in, garbage out”? This phrase refers to the fact that if you input bad data into a computer then the computer will give you bad answers. You can only expect to get out what you originally put in. For example, if you work out everyday, eat a healthy diet of lean meats, vegetables and fruits, and you don’t smoke or take drugs, then you will be well on your way to having your picture on the cover of a fitness magazine. However, if you eat fried foods everyday and sit on your sofa eating ice cream while drinking a six pack of beer, then chances are you are going to be the one walking by the magazine rack wondering why you don’t see your picture on one of those covers. What you put into something is what you can expect to get out of it.

The same holds true for your spiritual life. If you spend time in God’s Word, in prayer, and praise God for His blessings, then you will have a much stronger faith than if you spend time chasing after the things of this world and worrying about the things of this life. If a tree grows by a stream it has constant nourishment to grow into a good tree. However, if a tree grows next to a toxic waste dump then it’s nourishment will be tainted and tree will be bad. “A good tree produces good fruit, and a bad tree produces bad fruit. A good tree can’t produce bad fruit, and a bad tree can’t produce good fruit.” (Matthew 7:17-18 NLT) What you put into something is what you can expect to get out of it.

When you were growing up did you know anyone who was a renegade? You know, someone who rejected conventional behavior and insisted on doing their own thing? History is full of stories about renegades: people like Martin Luther King, Jr, Nelson Mandela, and Gandhi. People who refused to accept things the way they were simply because that was the way they had always been done; people who were willing to die for what they believed in. Martin Luther King, Jr once said, “A man who won’t die for something is not fit to live.”

The Bible is also filled with stories of renegades: people like John the Baptist, the apostle Paul, and Jesus. These people saw the way conventional religion instructed people to live and they compared that with what they knew about God and they refused to accept the conventional wisdom. These renegades did not accept man’s convention as truth and then try to make God’s commands fit in. Instead, they accepted God’s commands as truth and when they saw that man’s conventions did not match they chose to go with what God said. This what not always easy or popular, but the renegades knew it was right and they chose to do what was right instead of what was popular.

Today there are several issues that conventional wisdom tell us are right. Conventional wisdom then wants to challenge why the Bible disagrees. Thankfully there are renegades today who tell us that our wisdom should begin with God’s Word and question why conventional wisdom does not agree, not the other way around. Whenever we are faced with an argument our first question should be, “What does the Bible say about it?” Once we discover the Biblical answer then we can determine which worldly response matches. If Martin Luther King, Jr had settled for the conventional wisdom of his day we would still be a segregated society. Thankfully, King realized that Biblical truth disagreed with convention and his dream became a reality. Thank God for renegades

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There is a story that Jesus tells in the Bible about a man who owns 100 sheep and while he is out in the field one of them goes missing. The man leaves 99 of his sheep so he can go chase after the one that is lost. When I read that story it seems odd to me that the man would leave 99 sheep that are where they are supposed to be so that he can chase after one that got lost. Don’t you think the 99 are more important? If a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, certainly 99 sheep in the hand are worth one in the bush. What if the 99 wander off while the man is looking for the one? The point of the story is that God cares about you so much that if you wander off, no matter how many other people continue to follow Him, God is going to come looking for you. God loves His children and does not want to loose a single one. Can you think of a time when you wandered away from God and He chased after you? Take a moment to thank Him. Maybe God is chasing you right now. If He is it is because He loves you. Let Him catch you.

“No,” Clyde explained, “I just sit on the bike, I don’t pedal.”

“Oh, I see,” said the staff person. “What else do you do?”

Clyde went on to share, “After The Doctors I go into the group exercise class room.”

The staff person said, “That would be our Zumba class. That class is very popular. How do you like it?”

“I really enjoy the music and watching the people try to keep up with the instructor is very entertaining,” Clyde said. “I don’t actually join in. I just watch.”

It soon became very evident to the staff person why Clyde had not been realizing any improvement in his physical condition. Although he was coming to the YMCA everyday, he wasn’t actually doing any exercise. In order for a person to get any physical benefit from joining a gym, that person must participate in the physical activities the gym has to offer. Just sitting in a gym does not make a person physically fit any more than sitting in a garage makes a person a car.

The same holds true for a person who follows Jesus Christ. If that person reads out of the Bible everyday, talks to God all day long and goes to church every Sunday, but does not allow the Holy Spirit to change his/her heart, then his/her spiritual condition will never change. In order for a Christ follower to strengthen his/her faith and grow to be more like Jesus, s/he has to apply what is in the Bible and obey the leading of the Holy Spirit. Only then will s/he grow strong in faith.

Do people who have more money give more to charity? The answer might surprise you. In terms of the number of dollars the answer is yes. However, in terms of percentage of giving the answer is no. The truth is that as people accumulate more wealth the percentage of their money they give to help others actually decreases. This is similar to what Jesus saw in Mark 12 when many rich people were putting large sums of money into the offering and a poor widow put in only two copper coins. Jesus said the widow put in more than the others because she gave everything she had to live on while the rich people were just putting in what they had left over. It seems like the more money we have the more we need. When a person makes $25,000 a year they find ways to make ends meet but when they get a raise to $30,000 a year they still seem to only be able to make ends meet. Why is that?

Statistics say that anyone earning more than $40,000 a year is in the top 1% of wage earners in the world. 99% of the people on earth earn less than $40,000 a year. But ask a person who earns $40,000 a year if they are rich and you can be sure the answer will be no. In fact, no matter how much money someone earns, if they are asked they would probably say they are not rich. It doesn’t matter if they earn $50,000 or $150,000, nobody thinks they are rich. But oddly enough, everyone knows someone else who is rich. So what is rich? How much money would you have to have in order to feel like you were rich?

The sad answer can be found in Proverbs 18:11 where it says, “the rich think their wealth protects them; they imagine themselves safe behind it.” The reason we do not feel rich no matter how much money we have is because the more money we have the more we depend on money. But notice that the writer says wealthy people “think” wealth protects them they “imagine” they are safe. No matter how much money we have, our hope should not be in riches but in the one who richly provides for us. If our hope is in wealth we will never be satisfied. My challenge for you this week is to consider making Psalm 30:8-9 your prayer. In this Psalm the author tells God not to make him rich because he is afraid if he has too much wealth he will forget about God. Instead he asks for just enough to get through today. Are you brave enough to pray that prayer?

What makes a person a good leader? I have been interviewing potential candidates for a position we have open in our organization. I asked the same question of each candidate I interviewed: How would you describe your leadership style? The answers I received were varied and hearing what the candidates had to say made me reflect on my own leadership journey. As a young person I thought leadership was about the accumulation of power and the exercise of that power in order to get others to do what I wanted them to do. It did not take long for me to realize that form of leadership was painfully ineffective. The truth is leaders cannot get others to do things just because the leader holds a position or a title. The leader may gain compliance in the short term but in the long term the leader will loose those s/he is supposed to be leading. John Maxwell sums up this situation beautifully by saying, “A leader who does not have anyone following him is just out taking a walk.”

What makes a person a good leader? Jesus talks about leadership in Mark chapter 10 where He compares the way worldly leaders act versus the way Godly leaders behave. He said that worldly leaders strive for power so that they can lord that power over their subjects. But Godly leaders know that to be a great leader you must be willing to serve others. Jesus gave us the perfect example of what a good leader should do when He said, “even the Son of man did not come to be served, but to serve.”

A good leader is one who knows that to lead others s/he must lead by example. A good leader is willing to roll up his/her sleeves and wash the feet of his/her followers. A good leader is one who leverages his/her power to help those who do not have any power or authority of their own. Think about the people who fall under your leadership and examine how you are leading them. Are you being a good leader and leading by example? Would you choose to sit under your own leadership? Make sure that you are being a good leader to those that you lead.