Posts with the tag “faithfulness”

Ralph Waldo Emerson identified the rarest of human capacities: the ability to be surrounded by opinion, pressure, and consensus and still know your own mind. He called it keeping the independence of solitude in the midst of the crowd. Twelve spies saw the same land. Ten came back saying it cannot be done. Two came back saying we will surely overcome it. The crowd followed the ten. It always follows the ten. Scripture says the final generation before the return of Jesus will be characterized by many being misled and most people's love growing cold. The crowd, in the last days, will include many who call themselves believers. Which means the independence of solitude is not a personality trait. It is a prophetic necessity. Read the full post.  Read More

Matt King is drowning and he knows it. His cousin looks at the whole pile of it and calls it what it is: a tough deal. Matt's answer is quiet and honest. "I'm just trying to keep my head above water." Most people know that feeling. But here is what nobody says in those seasons: when you are barely keeping your head above water, you are still making choices. And some of those choices have consequences that reach much further than tomorrow. Moses said it plainly: choose life, so that you and your descendants may live. He was not talking only to the people in front of him. He was talking about every child and grandchild they had not yet had. You are not just surviving this season for yourself. Read the full post.  Read More

In the movie The Intern, a 70-year-old man who had done everything the world told him to do — retire, travel, take up golf — was miserable. So he applied for an internship, walked in with a briefcase and a pocket square, and said: "Musicians don't retire; they stop when there's no more music in them. Well, I still have music in me." That line did not belong in a movie. It belonged in a sermon. Because Psalm 92 says the righteous will still yield fruit in old age. Full of sap. Very green. And God has never once called anyone to retire. Read the full post.  Read More

Long before Revelation, the Hebrew prophets were already using the image of a woman in labor to describe the deepest kind of hope. Not the easy kind. The kind that costs something. Mary stepped into that tradition when she said yes to God before she could see how the story would unfold. No plan. No approval from her community. Just a word from God and the decision of what to do with it. She said yes. She stayed through the cross. She was in the upper room when the Spirit fell. That is what your mother has been doing for you. This one is for her. Read the full post.  Read More