Worthy Words

Do you recall the routine when you go for your doctor’s appointment?   Entering the waiting room you are instructed to sign-in. After that then the person behind the counter says; “Please have a seat. We will be with you shortly.” Protocols are a part of life. We face them every day in one form or another. From security checkpoints to reception areas, standards and procedures are in operation to screen callers, clients or visitors. This is not only for protection. It is also to help ensure that people with legitimate business get where they need to go and that others are either redirected or turned away. Worship is also protocol. It is the protocol that protects the King, it is also the protocol that qualifies the visitor. Remember that worship is based on relationship. In Jesus' parable of the wedding (Matthew 22:1-14), the king spots a guest who has no wedding garment. The wedding garment was a sign of relationship. It was proof that the guest had been invited and had t...

I heard someone point out that there are two kinds of people in the world.  There are those who travel light and those who don’t.  In my family, we have both kinds of people. For example, I myself travel light. When I travel, I can take enough clothes for a week or so in one normal size suitcase. My wife doesn’t travel light. When she takes short trips she packs everything including the kitchen sink! Well, maybe that’s stretching it a bit, but she does carry three times as much as I do. When I load her bags into the car I groan saying, “What did you put in this suitcase?” As you might imagine, carrying a heavy suitcase quickly becomes tiresome, and it’s not easy to lighten the load once the journey has started. In the spiritual sense, I find that people frequently carry heavy loads. It’s not that anyone actually intends to “travel heavy” spiritually. No one asks to carry burdens that crush the spirit, or weigh down the soul, but it often turns out that way. Folks end up...

Have you ever come home at 11:30 for a midnight curfew?  Of course not.  If you were anything like me, you waited outside on your front steps until 11:59 before returning home.  When given the opportunity, it seems to be in our nature to push the limits to the very farthest degree.   Perhaps you’ve asked this question before: how far is too far?  How much noise can I make until I push Mom over the edge?  How fast over the speed limit can I drive before the police will pull me over?  How much can I cheat before getting caught? We like living on the edge. The problem is that when we live near the edge, we may have gone too far before we realize it.  On many of the roads today, as you near the shoulder, you’ll hit a series of warning grooves that cause you to start bumping along. They make a loud enough noise to remind you to wake-up and get back on the right track, but slowly you start veering again and bouncing in the grooves....

There is no doubt that you will experience trials in your Christian life. Some new Christians mistakenly believe that being a Christian means living a life free of hassles and struggles. God never promised us freedom from trials. He promised us that He would walk with us through the trials and help us to endure our hardships. No one looks forward to trials, but trials can produce a stronger faith.  You can withstand anything that comes if you remember that every trial is actually a test. Before gold is pure it must be tested in the fire. The trials which come your way will test your faith, and out of your struggles your faith can emerge stronger than it ever was before.  The rigors which the athlete has to undergo are not meant to make him collapse but to help him develop strength and staying power. For the Christian, our trials are not meant to take the strength out of us, but to put the strength into us. Endurance through trials produces strength.    R...

Did you hear the story of woman who wrote a postcard while vacationing in New Jersey and mailed it to her mother in Pennsylvania? Some 37 years later, the card arrived. The mother called her daughter to say thanks. “What card?” the daughter asked. The card had been postmarked in Asbury Park, N.J. and the daughter remembered that she had sent her mother a postcard from there in 1967. It seems that shortly after its arrival at the post office, the postcard fell behind a sorting machine and was discovered recently when the machine was moved. The good folks at the post office added a new stamp and sent it on its way. Talk about snail mail! This story prompted me to reflect about how our contemporary culture views time – and just how much change I’ve experienced in my own lifetime when it comes to those views. Today, we live in a culture that is focused on the here and now – and particularly this very moment. A lot of this has to do with technology, of course. The popularity of new c...