Walking The Walk

"Many are the plans in a person's heart, but it is the LORD's purpose that prevails." ~Proverbs 19:21 I know many unhappy people in this world.  You know what nearly all of them have in common?  They put themselves first.  They are focused on their own needs.  Their own desires.  Their own wants.  Their career.  Their reputation.  The respect they feel is due to them. The pay they think they deserve. The car they want.  The list is endless, and because it is endless, so many people in this world are never content. They never get everything they think they are entitled to, because there is no end to what they want. Too many of us just don't understand why we're here. We don't understand we are custom built for a specific purpose. And the discontent we have in our lives isn't because we don't have our dream house--it's because we haven't found the thing we were put here to do.  Our true purpose! God didn't put us here to consume goods and...

Talk about a refresher course in gratitude. We had a terrible storm that went through on Friday afternoon, with extremely high winds. It knocked down several of those big high tension power lines on the road I live on, and when those went down, it pulled down about a mile and a 1/2 of high voltage powerlines. The power company said it could be days before power would be restored. My youngest daughter was graduating on that Sunday, and a big party was planned. All those plans were now in question--it was, of course, a tremendous disappointment for her.   We had no power. No water. No heat and air.  No WIFI.  No TV. Getting in and out was challenging because of the downed lines and power trucks.  But . . . Those power poles could have fallen on our house.  They didn't. The family was safe. The weather was beautiful after that storm passed.  We didn't need heat or air. We had 15 power trucks and about 50 guys working around the clock to fix it.  Our ...

Valerie and I have really enjoyed giving these to people we come across in our travels.  And we leave them places, too.  We'll leave one on the table in the restaurant with the tip for instance.  I think we've been through about 300 of these little Jesus'.  And a few at the church have been doing the same thing. I started going to the YMCA three days a week a few months ago.  I found out that full time ministry takes a little more energy than the mostly sedentary work I had been doing the last 27 years, so I've had to kick it up a notch and get in a little better shape.   I borrow a locker at the Y, and a couple weeks ago, I left a little Jesus on the top shelf of that locker when I left.  A couple days later, I used the same locker and the little Jesus was gone, so I left another one.  I repeated that a couple more times after that. The other day when I was leaving, I went out a different door, and walked by a table in the reception area I h...