Think About It

Where do we get our spiritual training?   Some of us grew up going to church and learned a lot of the basic Bible stories.   Many of us continue to seek out spiritual education through personal Bible study, Mid-week Bible Classes and weekly lessons and worship services.   All of these are great choices for developing our spiritual selves, but we must be cautious about how we supplement this training.   You see, there is a lot of religion being taught all around us.   While some of it is good, there is a lot of it that just flat misses the mark.   It seems like a lot of people are happy to share their religious expertise, but not all of it is accurate.   Politicians, spiritual leaders, entertainers, athletes, busybodies, store clerks ... and a number of other people are quick to speak for God and godliness, but we must be careful because not all the self-proclaimed experts really are that – experts.   They may have a college degree or have merely ...

The principle of forgiving one another has been around since the beginning of time.   Through the years it has been taught as a founding principle of Christianity and it continues to be vital today.   When someone approaches us and asks for our forgiveness, we need to be willing to grant their request – not just because it is the right thing to do but, according to Jesus, our own forgiveness is based upon our willingness to forgive others. While forgiveness is an important part of godly living there is another concept that is closely related to it that tends to be overlooked.   When someone offends us we need to offer forgiveness, but the idea of “mercy” is even more universal.   We can be merciful to anyone, not just those who directly mistreat us.   A good definition of mercy is “giving people what they want rather than what they deserve”.   No, it is not the antithesis of accountability, rather it is suspending punishment and/or discipline when doing...

          There has been a lot of talk lately about making new laws to protect us from one another ... but, I wonder if that really is the answer to our issues.  While I fully believe the government has a responsibility to do what it can to make this as safe a place as possible, the mere presence of laws don’t guarantee safety.  We have laws prohibiting murder, but people still kill people (some even kill dozens of people at a time).  We have laws against sexual assault, but people are raped or illegally touched every day.  We even have laws banning speeding, distracted driving and drunken driving, but negligent crashes kill people every day.  Yes, we need to good laws – but we need something more ... in fact, we need two things: 1.  We need to be obedient to the laws that are enacted .  A law or rule is only as valuable as those obeying it.  We can outlaw anything and everything, but until we are willing to follow the ...

One of my favorite stories in the Old Testament is the biography of Nehemiah.   Nehemiah was a servant in the Persian king’s palace who came to learn that his ancestral homeland, Jerusalem, was in a shambles.   Multiple invasions and decades of neglect had rendered the once great city a mess.   Nehemiah felt compelled to leave his good job and make a difference for the people of Jerusalem and the Jewish religion.   There are several great moments in the story of the rebuilding of the walls of the city of Jerusalem, but one of my favorites is summed up in this observation, “ So we built the wall  a nd the whole wall was joined  to gether  to  half its  height , for the people had a mind to   work .”.   (Nehemiah 4:6)   As I think about Nehemiah’s influence, I am fascinated by his leadership ability.   You see, it wasn’t the people who made this happen.   Many of them had been living in these conditions for years – th...

I have a question for you ... why do we ask questions?  Now, in the interest of full-disclosure, I am setting you up!  The superficial answer to “why do we ask questions” is to gain information from another person, but is that really why we ask questions?  There are several reasons to ask questions:  Some people use questions to bait someone into a debate.  Others ask questions to make another person appear foolish (because they know they can’t answer the question).  Some ask questions as a way to begin to teach a lesson by helping put people in a contemplative frame of mind.  And, yes, sometimes we ask questions because we want to gather information. I began thinking about this question question while watching the coverage of the Florida school shooting.  I noticed that a lot of questions were being asked – not to gather information – but, to promote an agenda.  The questioner knew exactly how the other person was going to respond befor...

One of the more common approaches to leadership these days is mentorship, but have we ever given much thought to what it means and how to go about doing it?  Often, as leaders, we are open to being mentors but we grow discouraged when people don’t seek us out for mentoring.  Have we ever thought that we might be missing out on mentoring opportunities because we are waiting to be asked rather than taking a proactive approach and reaching out to people we’d like to lead?  Yes, I realize that it can be appear to be a bit arrogant to ask someone if they’d like us to mentor them, but this is where our good reputation pays off – if we have lived lives of service, our offer will be perceived as supportive not manipulative. Once we develop a mentoring relationship, what should we do?  I think there are four steps to mentoring: 1).  Invite our mentees to go out with us as we do what we do .  Let them know when we are going to be active and encourage them to joi...

The other day I was pondering the question, “What does our church believe?” and I learned a pretty insightful lesson.  You see, when I answered this question I came up with what I thought were some pretty solid answers – we believe in the Almighty power and presence of God, we have faith that Jesus is God and was a man, we profess the need for baptism, we accept the infallible inspiration of the Bible through the Holy Spirit and so on – but, it took me a while to get to something that was probably too far down my list ... we love people!  As I pondered my theological processing I was intrigued by how long it took me to get to this observation.  Are people really important to us?  While we must make sure our worship of God is in order, we should never forget our relationship with our fellow man.  Since one of the most deeply-seated human needs is to feel valued; so how much easier would it be to influence people who ask us, “What do you believe?” if we acknowl...