On A Clean Conscience

I had a great reminder about right living the other day when we were running late to get Ethan to school. I had about five-minutes to get him there before he would be counted as tardy and I was sweatin’ it.

Since we were running late, I was pushing the envelope as to how far I should maneuver my Toyota through the daily obstacle course of other parents in the same predicament. About half way there, I reached down and patted my pocket, realizing that in my rush to get out of the house, I left my wallet at home. IMMEDIATELY, I slowed down, became more aware of my surroundings, and did my best to get Ethan to school without breaking any driving laws or getting into an accident.

I found it strange that I was willing to drive more maniacally when I thought my license was in my pocket. It was almost as though I thought that little card could justify my driving, when in reality, I knew wrong was wrong. If I had been pulled over for speeding, Ethan would have been late. If we had been involved in an accident, Ethan would have been late at best. I experienced that strange sensation of butterflies in my stomach, knowing I had been in the wrong. This feeling – a strong indicator of my conscience kicking in – helped me know I needed to get back to safe driving! My conscience was telling me to watch what I was doing and be more careful when in reality this is how I should have been behaving all along.

It’s amazing how easily we throw caution to the wind when we think it benefits us. We ease into our own isolated bubble either feeling we’re invincible or oblivious to others. Whether it’s aggressive driving or unwise living, we cannot afford to live as though we are the only ones in this world. This is frankly contrary to how God wants us to live. God wants us to always be aware of others and live in such a way that is consistent with what we say we believe. Our conscience, therefore, helps us avoid compromising situations and lets us know when we’re off the narrow path as we slip.

As Christians, we believe that when we accept Christ, the Holy Spirit comes to dwell within us. The Holy Spirit then informs and transforms our conscience so we can live for God and know when we stray from Him. It is even more important to listen to our conscience then, because it is the power of God within us, helping us to live for Him.

The good news is that with God’s grace, we have the opportunity to turn away from our inconsistent and sinful behavior to return to Him. It’s never too late to turn back to God thanks to Jesus Christ and the confidence we have in God and His amazing grace! God is always willing to welcome us back.

We must be very careful not to take advantage of this, however. There are people in this world who behave however they want with little regard for anyone else and just turn to God when things go badly. Just as in my case, a driver’s license doesn’t provide me license to drive aggressively. God’s forgiving grace doesn’t give us license to behave however we want. The key is to realize God wants us to strive to live right all the time, shining with the glory of His love. It’s because of His love, though, that even when we fall short, we can return to Him and know that there is no condemnation thanks to the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

The Scriptures tell us this, “let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful.” (Hebrews 22.21-23, emphasis mine)

God does love you! God is faithful! God wants you in His family! If you aren’t living that way, listen to your conscience. It will let you know what you’re off course and it will help you get back on the right track.

What Memory Foam Helped Me Remember

Our Walt Disney World vacation this past summer was memorable for many reasons. We had a great time, but strangely enough, one thing stood out to us: the comfort of the bed. Perhaps the beds were so cozy because we were whooped after all the fun and frivolity that is a trip to the "Happiest Place On Earth," but as we investigated the mattresses, we learned they had a memory foam pillow top. After a couple nights of sweet sweet dreams, I knew we needed an upgrade at home.

Upon arriving back home, Tiffany made it her purpose to find us a memory foam mattress topper. She finally found the one she liked best and exemplified patience until the topper went on sale. She brought it home, we unwrapped it, placed it on the bed, and prepared for a good night's sleep.

I'll say this, the memory foam mattress topper is worth the wait and the money (especially after being purchased on sale). I am sleeping so much better. It cradles me just right, isn't too hot, and enables us both to wake up sans the aches and pains with which we had become all too familiar. The memory foam -- and pardon the intended puns and inferences -- is a dream come true!

As my alarm went off this morning, I went through a fairly standard procedure of thinking about all I had to do today and asked God to bless me, my family, my endeavors, and those people with whom I come in contact. In prayer, I was working to remember my role in this world and the sovereignty of God, full of love, grace, and mercy.

I found myself searching the scriptures this afternoon and happening upon a passage that had escaped my consciousness. In Psalm 63, we read these words,

"Because your love is better than life, my lips will glorify you.
I will praise you as long as I live, and in your name I will lift up my hands.
My soul will be satisfied as with the richest of foods;
with singing lips my mouth will praise you.
On my bed I remember you;
I think of you through the watches of the night. "
(vs.3-6, NIV, emphasis mine)

I don't need memory foam to help me remember how much I need the love of God, but the busyness of life, has a tendency to cause me to lose focus. I need to remember that I am simply not capable of being all I need or want to be on my own ... none of us are. With God, though, we are capable of so much more than we could ever dream.

If you do not have a regular practice of giving your day to God, I want to encourage you to do so. You don't need memory foam to make it happen, just something to help trigger within your mind that you need to stop what you're doing and focus on God. It might be every time you touch a door knob, the steering wheel, or hear a phone ring. Regardless, find some way to help you remember to give God His due take your proper place in this world. And don't beat yourself up if you miss it from time-to-time; it happens to me, too. But do make a point to remember the Lord and how His love is better than life. Give Him the glory and offer Him your praise.

Have a great day!

Wear Your Colors Day

This is one of my favorite seasons of the year, second only to Advent and Christmas. It is the time when football kicks off for both college and pro teams. In preparation for the new football season, today, Friday, September 4, has been declared, "National Wear Your Colors Day."

As I sit here, I am wearing one of my favorite University of Georgia tee shirts. I love my UGA gear: I have a jersey, several other tee shirts, sweat shirts and hoodies, pajama pants, key chains, ball caps, sandals, crocs, a UGA license plate, a static cling window decoration, screensaver, desktop wallpaper, ink pens, lapel pens, and the fight song running through my head on a loop. So when I learned earlier this week that today was "Wear Your Colors" day, I wanted to make sure my favorite shirt was clean and ready to go; except, of course for the one I'm going to wear when the Dawgs kick off the 2009 season tomorrow afternoon.

I have been convicted for several years about the passion and energy I put into my love of sports. Tiffany can attest I am infinitely better than I was when we first married, but I do get pumped up over a big win and deflated over a devastating loss. I have come to put sports into a much more appropriate perspective in my life, though I still have to check myself over how high or low I get in terms of things that mean very little in the grand scheme of things, and mean absolutely nothing in an eternal sense. I don't think God minds us loving sports, but He certainly cares if we allow them to take a god-like status in our lives, becoming an idol that governs our emotions, motives, and actions.

God wants us to live lives of passion for Him as well as those He has placed in our lives. He wants us to share our love and allegiance for Him in a stronger way than we do for our favorite teams. He wants us to wear our love and faith for Him on our sleeves, so to speak, as we seek to share Him with the world.

In Colossians 3.12-14, Paul wrote, "Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity." (NIV) In these lines, Paul is giving us an idea of who it looks when we wear our God-colors; clothing ourselves with the light and love of God.

When we wear the colors of faith, the world takes notice! These colors don't tell people where we went to school or which teams we follow, but they do say to whom we belong ... GOD! ... and we wear these colors to share the incredible love and grace of God with others. Unlike the results from a Saturday or Sunday afternoon, these are things that have eternal consequence and will never let us down. If we could only say the same thing about our favorite teams...

It seems we don't have any problem sharing our sports allegiances with the world. We need to have as much pride and conviction in our faith. We need to clothe ourselves in Christian love and share the colors of God with the world. We don't have any secrets to keep, but to share the greatest story ever told!

Jesus said it this way in the Sermon on the Mount, "Here's another way to put it: You're here to be light, bringing out the God-colors in the world. God is not a secret to be kept. We're going public with this, as public as a city on a hill." (Matthew 5.14, MSG)

Have a great "Wear Your Colors Day" and make sure you're dressing yourself in the colors of faith!

Awesome!

Human beings are arrogant. There, I said it! I got it off my chest and feel a little better. Well, sort of. I don’t like the thought of being arrogant, but I cannot escape the reality. I have the tendency to look at the world and think that all I see is all there is. Perhaps this is one reason I enjoy the education process, exploring the world and learning new things. It’s an exciting, and again, humbling experience.

I was scanning the Internet this morning in my daily quest for knowledge and information. I take seriously the advice from well known theologian, Karl Barth, to preach with a Bible in one hand a newspaper in the other. I read an article about how a previously unknown species of crustacean was discovered in an undersea lava tube off the coast of Africa. Friends, this amazed me! I have to admit that it’s almost inconceivable to me that there could be things in this world that have yet to be discovered. With all the advancements humanity has made in terms of science, it amazes me that we’re still making discoveries. And speaking of intellectual arrogance, my guess was if humanity can place lava tunnels under the seafloor, or walk on the moon, it stands to reason that we’ve seen it all. But then the awareness of how little we really do know comes to bear, and I am brought back to the awareness that there are mysteries of life and creation I’ll never be privy to. That’s awesome and it excites me!!!

Let’s face it: we live in a mysterious world. We want to think we know it all, have seen it all and done it all, but the reality is we’ve barely scratched the surface. There is more to this world, and the God who created it than we’ll ever know. I can almost hear the voice of my 7-year-old say when discovering something new and cool, “Awesome!”

We throw that word, ‘awesome,’ around quite easily these days. We describe toys, games, movies, music, sports plays, and all sorts of other things by saying they are awesome, but that word has an entirely different meaning. The word, awesome, literally means, holy. I’m serious. It really does. When we discover something nifty and new, and declare that it’s awesome, we are, in a sense, acknowledging the awe of God. Our task as God’s children, therefore, is to share God’s total awesomeness in the world and with the world. We need to step aside and allow our hearts and minds to be filled with the awesome mysteries of God and share them with others.

Paul wrote in his letter to the Ephesians, “Although I am less than the least of all God's people, this grace was given me: to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to make plain to everyone the administration of this mystery, which for ages past was kept hidden in God, who created all things.” (Ephesians 3.8-9)

God’s world is indeed a mystery and isn’t it a beautiful thing!?!? There are so many things we do not know and so many things we won’t be able to know until we are united with Him in heaven through the grace, mercy, and love of Jesus Christ! Paul also wrote in his letter to the Colossians, “[Jesus] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together." (1.15-17)

Despite all the things we don’t know and likely will never be able to learn, we can place our faith and hope in Jesus, the most awesome person who has ever lived and lives today. He is holding all things together; not the least of which being you and me! It’s awesome to think about and awesome to share! As we have seen God create, and acknowledge his presence and activity in daily life, we, too, can see just how awesome it is.

Be awesome and have an awesome rest of the week!

A Thought On GOD & Love

I ran across a thought-provoking quote this morning regarding GOD and love (the topic for this week's Sunday's message).

"We become truly personal by loving God
and by loving other humans...
In its deepest sense, love is the life,
the energy, of the Creator in us."
~ Kallistos Ware

In essence, we come closer to reaching our potential when we love ... loving God and others. This love becomes our life, giving us God's energy, which we desperately need if we are going to continue living lives of love.

Let's face it, love under our own strength becomes tiring. It requires us to give, and give, and give. If we are only living for self, then we have the propensity to get a little selfish and wonder, "What's in it for me?"

This is contrary to GOD's nature and it needs to be contrary to ours, too! GOD wants us to live lives of love and service, helping others know of GOD's eternal love. GOD is also giving us the opportunity to participate in creation -- and re-creation -- as we acknowledge who we are and our role in the world.

So how are you living? Is GOD's love the energy for your life? Is it the motivation for what you do? Is it the essence of how you relate to God and others? This love is how we come to fulfill our humanity and become who we are created and called to be. This cannot be done under our power, for we are called to live in the flow of GOD!

Dear friends, since God so loved us,
we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God;
but if we love one another, God lives in us
and his love is made complete in us.
(1 John 4.11-12)

Birthdays Are Fun, But They're Meant For More Than One

Birthdays are fun, aren’t they? Well, at least for most. I remember being a kid and counting down to my birthday, which is in December, just a couple weeks before Christmas. The magic and excitement of that time made me want to pop as I thought about all the toys and surprises that awaited me. I loved the attention and couldn’t wait until “my day!”

As I became older, however, my anticipation for my birthday began to change somewhat. It isn’t so much about getting older, that’s never really been an issue for me, but I think now it has more to do about the attention. I enjoy it, don’t get me wrong, but I also realize that my birthdays aren’t just about me.

I remember when this new mindset came to bear; I was a freshman in college and turning 19 years old. The girl I was dating at the time broke up with me (ON MY BIRTHDAY) and I was devastated. As my parents were determined not to let it ruin my day, they ended up calling my closest friends who came over with just a few hours notice to help me celebrate “my day.” What started out to be a wretched evening turned into one of the finest days of my life.

As I processed what my friends and family did for me, it occurred to me that my birthdays aren’t really just for me. They are an opportunity for the people who have loved me, nurtured me, cared for me, and attended to me throughout my life to celebrate the common bond we share.

This coming Thursday, The Lighthouse UMC celebrates its 3rd Birthday! I am excited as I think about how far this church has come in three years time. It has certainly had its ups and downs, but as we prepare to throw the church a party, it isn’t about bricks and mortar (and that’s a good thing since we don’t have any!) as much as it is about the hearts that have been touched and lives that have been changed – I count myself in that number many times over. As we gather on Sunday to celebrate, we will do so joyfully for the common bond we share in Jesus Christ! I am reminded of the words from 1 Peter 2.9-10a, “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God…”

As we gather for a wonderful party this coming Sunday, commemorating what has been accomplished and what lies ahead, we aren’t just celebrating an entity’s birthday…we are also celebrating the lives of those who make Lighthouse the church that it is past, present, and future. I cannot wait to be in worship on Sunday, singing, praying, worshipping, meditating, and I’m sure shedding a tear or two for all that God has done and is doing. But as we gather, I acknowledge this isn’t just about a church with a name, as much as it is about the people that make it so special. And as we gather, may we also commitment to stand together for many more years of ministry, impacting the world beginning in our own back yard. For God’s people gathering and joining together for a celebration of life is the best way I can think to celebrate three years of ministry – serving, sharing, and shining in Coweta and Fayette counties and abroad!

Happy Birthday, Lighthouse!

Back To School With The Golden Rule

The dog days of summer seem to get shorter and shorter, don’t they? Since the local school systems made adjusts to the calendar, students get out earlier but go back earlier, too. This really hit me one day last week while doing a little grocery shopping.

I was passing by the stationary and office supply aisle when my attention was caught by a noticeable buzz. There was a sort of feeding frenzy taking place as parents and children were rustling through bins and baskets to pick out the best folders, pencils, crayons, and paper. It brought back all sorts of memories of picking out the tools that would accompany me into a new campaign in the classrooms of my local school. I wanted to be well equipped.

There was one year in particular as I prepared for a new year by perusing the school supply list when I got excited. The math teacher had asked every student to come prepared with a ruler. To me, that meant we were going to be getting into some cool stuff where I would need to be able to measure and draw a straight line. It was not until later in life that lesson really began to hit home.

School is a vital aspect of young people learning to become adults. School is so much more than just reading, writing, and arithmetic; it is about facing challenges, persevering, making friends, and accomplishing the seemingly impossible. So when we think about measuring up and keeping a straight line, a ruler is a huge help! Beyond the centimeters and inches, we need to make sure we are sending our children and their teachers in to a school year with the best possible chance for success. They need a standard, a “ruler” if you will, to help provide an answer in a world that is slow to give them.

Jesus gives some timeless advice that I am sure you have heard before. “Do to others as you would have them do to you.” (Luke 6.31) Many know this as the “Golden Rule” and work to live their life by this timeless principle. It helps when we think of the potential consequences of our actions and how we might personally be impacted if those same consequences were to come our way. Thinking this way can help prevent quick tempered and shortsighted reactions to very real circumstances.

If we were able to completely follow this golden rule, the world would be a different place, let alone our local schools. Treat others like you would want to be treated whether you are in the classroom, lunchroom, bathroom, locker room, music room, or art room. Wherever you might come face to face with someone else, remember Jesus’ timeless advice. You could do much worse than to arm yourself with this powerful piece of wisdom and advice to make a difference in the world around you.

We are not but just a few days from a new school year. There is no doubt it will present all sorts of challenges. But if we can remember to treat our neighbors as we would want to be treated ourselves, then we are making great strides toward a wonderfully constructive and educational experience. We need all the help we can get to measure up and keep a straight line. So as you pack your backpacks and briefcases for another day, remember to pack one item you can stand to have in abundance: The Golden Rule!

Have a great school year.