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Yearly Archives: 2019
PENNIES FROM HEAVEN
ROCKINGHAM, Nova Scotia, October 6, 2019 – So I’m sitting on a bus in North Charleston, and a young man gets on. After a minute of rummaging through his dozen or so pockets up and down the legs of his droopy pants, he comes up empty-handed: No money for the fare. As I sit watching him, God tells me to take the $5 in my purse and pay his fare. My initial gut response is “NO WAY!”, since the fare is only $2 and putting in a $5 is the kind of excess that blows my very tight budget and messes with my daughter-of-two-accountants’ head. God tells me again to pay his fare (more insistent this time), letting me know that I’ll get it back, so I get up and give the driver my $5 bill. The young man, who’d been on the verge of being kicked off the bus, has now secured a seat and a transfer to get wherever he’s going. He gives me a smile and a thanks, and I sit down and enjoy the rest of the ride.
When the bus arrives at its final destination in Charleston, I hop off and cross the street to get a connecting bus. As I’m crossing, a $5 bill gently blows across my path. I reach down and pick it up. Then God says “See? I told you I’d give it back to you.” (more…)
I’M A LITTLE TEAPOT
ROCKINGHAM, Nova Scotia, October 5, 2019 – I travel a lot. There are a few things that always go with me on my travels, like my hairdryer and my kettle. My hairdryer I use for any number of purposes, such as to heat a cold room or melt cheese on my sandwich or – very occasionally – to dry my hair, but my kettle I just use as a kettle.
Like most of my belongings, my kettle has seen better days. But while it still works, it will be put to work.
This morning, my trusty old kettle stopped working. After five years of nearly daily labor, it just stopped. I unplugged it and plugged it back in, but it was still stubbornly still. No gurgle and pop-pop-pop to indicate it was on its way to a boil. No heat. No steam rising.
Nothing. (more…)
URGENCY!
ROCKINGHAM, Nova Scotia, October 5, 2019 – After Jesus launched his ministry, he was filled with a constant sense of urgency in his mission. He even worked on the Sabbath, which was such a big no-no to the Jewish powers-that-be that they got in his face about it. But Jesus pointed out that if an animal belonging to one of them fell into a ditch, surely they’d break the Sabbath to rescue it, and by that same token people who’ve fallen into spiritual ditches and have been suffering there for years also need immediate rescue, even on a Sabbath. The Jewish ptb didn’t have the same sense of urgency to help people that Jesus had and it showed in their superficial application of God’s laws, so when Jesus told them that the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath, they considered it to be heresy rather than God’s truth.
Maybe not you, but most Christians today have lost their sense of urgency when it comes to hauling people up out of spiritual holes. Jesus never took time off other than to eat and sleep. His focus was 100% on his ministry work because he had a sense of urgency that this work was all that mattered. If we as Jesus’ followers are supposed to model him in all ways, why do we not have a sense of urgency to get the message out to repent and believe the gospel? (more…)
ARE YOU LOW LIKE JOHN THE BAPTIST OR HIGH LIKE JESUS?
ROCKINGHAM, Nova Scotia, September 29, 2019 – The relationship between John the Baptist and Jesus goes much deeper than mere blood. They were cousins, but we only hear of them interacting in the womb, at Jesus’ baptism, and then shortly before John’s beheading. We can assume that, as cousins, they spent time together growing up and then later, as young men, probably passionately debated scriptures, with Jesus (the younger by a few months) likely besting his older cousin at every turn. At Jesus’ baptism at the River Jordan, John is obviously in awe of his younger cousin and openly considers himself to be so low as to not even to be worthy to put Jesus’ sandals on his feet. When John tells Jesus that he should be the one getting baptized, Jesus gently chides him to go ahead with the baptism in order to fulfill scripture. We catch there a glimpse of the younger cousin again schooling his older cousin.
Jesus calls John the greatest of those born of women, but then also calls him lowest in the kingdom (that is, born of the Spirit). What did Jesus mean by that? It almost sounds like an insult, just as John sending his disciples to Jesus to ask if he were actually “the one” sounds like an insult. Did the cousins have a falling-out that is not recorded in scripture? (more…)
WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT DEATH
ROCKINGHAM, Nova Scotia, September 24, 2019 – Death is a funny old thing.
We all have to face it sooner or later, but most people spend their lives either pretending death doesn’t exist or doing everything in their power to prevent it.
Born-agains, on the other hand, actually look forward to death the way Jesus looked forward to death because death means an end to our labours and a release from our pain-prone body and the anti-Christ world that hates us. (more…)
GRAB YOUR WHIPS, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, BECAUSE YOU STILL CANNOT SERVE GOD AND MAMMON
ROCKINGHAM, Nova Scotia, September 18, 2019 – Have you lost your way?
Christianity has lost its way, just as assuredly as the Jews in Jesus’ day had lost their way.
Most Christians use Old Testament measures to gauge prosperity – wealth, health, and longevity – even though Jesus was poor, famished, and died young.
Most Christians also point to the importance of having strong family ties, even though Jesus told us that our worst enemies will be those under our own roof, and that your real family are those who do the will of God, whether they’re related to you by blood or marriage or not.
There’s a profound disconnect between what is being sold to us as Christianity and what Jesus demonstrated as Christianity.
These disconnects are temptations, and we need to see them as such. (more…)
“HOW CAN I KNOW IF I’M BORN AGAIN?”
ROCKINGHAM, Nova Scotia, September 17, 2019 – Have you ever heard someone ask: “How can I know if I’m born-again?” To me, that’s a strange question that I would turn on its head and reframe as: “How can you NOT know if you’re born-again!” When a soul undergoes spiritual rebirth (is healed, is made whole), it’s such a revolution that there is zero doubt what has taken place. It affects every part of your being, and the impression it makes on you is so primal and so deeply entrenched that you’re more certain of your rebirth than you are of your name and date of birth. (more…)
LOOK BACK WITH LOVE
ROCKINGHAM, Nova Scotia, August 22, 2019 – Being born again is a definitive marker in a person’s history. It is that “moment outside of time” when the spirits of the world are cast out and God’s spirit enters in. The entrance of God’s spirit into a soul means that the soul has come to life, as there is no life outside of God.
You literally become a new person not by your own hand but by God’s.
But this new person still lives in the world, with all its decay, filth, and problems. Even worse, the possibility to go back to one’s “old ways” is constantly a temptation not because the old ways are better than God’s ways but because they’re familiar and habitual. Familiarity and habit are strong temptations, if they’re against God. When you become born again, you need to establish new God-centered familiarities and habits, but that takes time. (more…)
PUT GOD FIRST
ROCKINGHAM, Nova Scotia, August 22, 2019 – Do you put God first?
When someone asked Jesus what the greatest commandment is, he said:
Hear, O Israel!
The Lord our God is one Lord, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind and all your strength.
Do you do that? Do you love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, more than you love anyone or anything else?
Do you put God first in everything?
What does it even mean to put God first? (more…)
SPEAKING WITH NEW TONGUES DOES NOT MEAN UTTERING GIBBERISH
ROCKINGHAM, Nova Scotia, August 19, 2019 – I’ve been born-again for 20 years.
Being born-again is the best thing — by far and without question — that ever happened to me. I lived as an atheist into adulthood, and then one day suddenly I was born again.
I woke up one morning an atheist and went to bed that night a believer.
It can happen that fast.
What also happened fast was the sea-change in the words that came out of my mouth and out of my pen. My voice stayed the same, but a whole different vocabulary emerged. (more…)
A BORN-AGAIN BELIEVER 