Category Archives: Reward

Daylight Savings Messed Up My Unbelief Clock

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daylightWith daylight savings coming up on us again in a few weeks, I thought I’d update this story from last spring.

This weekend, I served as a counselor at a youth retreat, out of cell service.

I woke up Sunday morning at 8:30am feeling most refreshed. I’d initially worried that I wouldn’t get enough winky-winky because I’d gone to bed late (12:30am), but nope…8 hours of sleep. It felt good and I was happy. (You know you’re coming up on middle age when these are the things you think about.)

Until a little while later, when I overheard that Daylight Savings Time had started that night. I hadn’t heard about it during the prior week, and didn’t see the usual Facebook memes the previous day because we were out of cell service.

So I’d actually slept only 7 hours.

The moment I realized this, I kid you not, I started feeling tired. Over one hour.

And it got me thinking: Our reality determines our thoughts and feelings to a great degree.

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Comfort when Justice is Withheld

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justiceMost of us are well familiar with Isaiah 40:28-31, the “those who trust in the Lord will renew your strength” passage.

Do you not know? Have you not heard?

Yahweh is the everlasting God, the Creator of the whole earth.

He never grows faint or weary; there is no limit to His understanding.

He gives strength to the weary and strengthens the powerless.

Youths may faint and grow weary, and young men stumble and fall,

But those who trust in the LORD will renew their strength;

they will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary; they will walk and not faint.

But I had never, until this last Saturday, seen the context of the verse before it, verse 27, which adds a new dimension: that powerful God arrayed against injustice.

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Sorry, Mike Pence, It Was Really the “Graham Rule”

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110619316_96f3530a93_oBilly Graham is dominating my Facebook feed today, and well deserved. Millions are in heaven today because of him.

Like many other tributes, one of the first things that springs to my mind when I think of Billy Graham is his reputation with the world. I’m reminded particularly of one thing I learned from reading I Kissed Dating Goodbye in years past:

In the early days of his ministry, Billy Graham experienced deep concern over the public’s distrust of evangelists. How could he preach the gospel to people who assumed he was a fake? As he considered this question, he realized that most people who distrusted evangelists did so because those evangelists lacked integrity, particularly in the area of sexuality. To combat this, he and the close circle of men who ran the crusades avoided opportunities to be alone with women who weren’t their wives.

Think about this for a moment. What an inconvenience! Did these men really fear that they’d commit adultery the moment they found themselves alone with a woman? Weren’t they going a little too far?

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Two Dates

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dateIn what seems to me like a cosmic joke, a person’s life is often boiled down to a sequence of numbers – two dates with a dash between them.

The first is the date of our birth. Its arrival every year is an occasion for joy, gifts, or perhaps just a little extra attention. We write it on official documents. It’s a friend to us, right down to the whole “absence makes the heart grow fonder” thing – the further we get, the worse we feel.

The other, the day of our death, is unknown to us until it arrives. We will, by definition, never write it down. By the time it’s known, we can do nothing about it. It evokes loss, shadow, evaluation, the arranging of one’s affairs and moving on.

At least it does for “the rest of mankind, who have no hope” (1 Thessalonians 4:13).

But this last week, a friend of mine passed (expected), and the words used to describe her passing were, “She met Jesus!”

Immediate jealousy.

My friend escaped. She got out. She finally leaped beyond the reach of this world’s grime and reached Jesus.

And it hit me:

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Making Holiness Thrilling: What the Angels Longed to Look Into

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peekOur youth group is currently in the midst of our annual “purity series”.

Our youth group sees fit to devote several weeks every February to the subject of purity with its many angles, and I can’t disagree with their choice. Given the escalating danger that sexual promiscuity poses to our young people in today’s bankrupt society, an emphatic approach seems right.

Last night’s message featured possibly the best possible angle on purity, the best reason to pursue purity.

It came, rather unexpectedly (for me), out of 1 Peter 1 – a passage that gives holiness the backdrop of a cosmic secret, withheld even from the angels.

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Being a Goody Two Shoes in a Wrong-Footed World

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shoes“Hey, Brandon,” she said, bouncing up to the counter – not a coworker, but the girlfriend of one, whom I didn’t know from Adam – “Do you know the difference between a cheeseburger and a [sexual reference]?”

I groaned.

No. I don’t know the difference between those things, and I’ve as much desire to find out as to go dumpster-diving on Main Street during rush hour.

I looked at them with what I hoped was a world-weary half-grin.

“C’mon. Enough for one night,” I said.

They relented good-naturedly.

I’m trying to be gracious. I don’t want to be THAT Christian, the one who gets all debilitated because unbelievers act like unbelievers. You have to let this stuff slide off your back in environments like this.

Plus, I actually enjoy this particular coworker. He’s got solid character (albeit a one-track mind) and I consider him a friend. Burning bridges over this stuff doesn’t necessarily help when you’re trying to share Christ.

But this stuff does get tiring.

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It’s About the Destination, Not the Journey

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journeyIt’s one of those little fluffy kerfluffles of human philosophy, one that at least has the honesty to face the reality of we’re not home yet and try to make peace with it.

“Maybe it’s about the journey, not the destination”.

I say bogus.

I say the Christian life is about the destination.

(WARNING: Scripture ahead. I know some of you experience an instinct to kinda “check out” and skip Scripture because it’s too dense, too preposition-heavy, too hard to understand, it’s something you just plain don’t like, etc. DON’T. If you’ve honored me by clicking on this post, I urge you to fight that instinct. Read through the Scriptures. There are treasures waiting.)

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The Stocks of Virginity

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stocksSo much for “her body, her choice”, it seems.

Amanda Prestigiacomo of the Daily Wire wrote an article last weekend on actress Yvonne Orji and her decision to share with PEOPLE Magazine her desire to remain sexually chaste until marriage.

You can guess what happened. The Twitter peanut gallery lost no time attacking her with all the usual talk – how her decision wasn’t “healthy”, how she was affirming harmful patriarchal constructs, bad role model, quit flaunting your faith in everyone’s face, etc.

Man alive. Is it just me, or has the left gotten just as preachy as the right in the last decade?

Some might be tempted to say that these keyboard warriors are basically the Westboro of the left and don’t truly represent their attitudes.

But I can testify that Yvonne is not experiencing an isolated incident.

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My Mole Scare and What It Taught Me

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A few months ago, I noticed my skin was starting to sport moles.

No, not THAT kind.

mole1

THAT kind.

I read that moles tend to happen in one’s thirties and thought little of it. Perhaps that “I’m Invincible” feeling was still lingering from my teens.

But as the year wore on, one particular mole kept staring up at me from my front right torso, as if to say “I’m important.”

Further research revealed that melanoma is not something to trifle with. It would seem that skin cancer is one of the most treatable cancers if caught early and one of the least treatable if not. I spoke to a couple fortuitously placed church friends and learned that investigating the mole via a “shave biopsy” carried a benefit-to-cost ratio too high to ignore.

Biopsy.

Man. There’s a word I never wanted to be using in my thirties. Or, y’know, ever.

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Pizza Lessons #6: No More Goodbyes

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boxIt seems that God had one more lesson planned in this series, one I did not originally plan.

For when our Czech Republic mission team said goodbye to our last non-Montana allies as we were preparing to head home, it was at…a pizza restaurant.

I love it when God does stuff like that.

What I don’t love is goodbyes. I get frustrated with them. I value stability, continuity, relationship. I value people. Change doesn’t sit well with me. You can shrug and go “It’s part of life, Brandon” all you like, and you would be right. But there are still those of us who don’t exactly gravitate towards change. It’s a personality thing.

That’s one hard part of a mission trip. As you leave the camp, then leave your host families and church, then leave your last allies as they drop you off by the airport, then finally leave your other teammates as they split off…well, it’s wave after wave of goodbyes. Like a long road of potholes.

That’s another reason I’m happy for the promise of heaven.

Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, at the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man sits on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life.” (Matthew 19:28-29)

Some say it is improper to teach Christians to look forward to any benefit of heaven other than the glory of God. I say let Jesus talk. If he sees fit to speak of rewards like the restoration of all our cherished human relationships, then it’s probably okay to look forward to such things. And boy do I look forward to that.

We might also say that it is to God’s glory that such relationships be restored, since he mentions it  as a feature of heaven where his glory is undimmed and unquenched. We might even add that it’s really the glory of God that will make these things perfect, improved, satisfying in every way, in a manner that our earthly shadows never could pull off. Imagine our most valued relationships with the sin, secrets, and sharp edges all removed forever. Who could argue with that?

There is a condition, though – following Jesus.

Jesus’ glorious promises in Matthew 19 come on the heels of his encounter with the rich young ruler, a man who walked away from God because he preferred the reward he had. It is an unspeakably sad story.

I, for one, want what God has to offer. The reconstruction of human relationships, everything made new, and above all, his glory and closeness. I will follow him to get it. Will you?

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5