On April 26, 2003, Aron Ralston was trapped between a rock and a hard place. Hiking and rock climbing alone in Eastern Utah, his right hand was crushed between a shifting boulder and the rock wall. Over a period of five days he made various attempts to free himself. Nothing worked. When he ran out of his water supply, he was certain of death.
Last week was New Year’s and many of us resolved to watch less tv, read more books. Whether or not that’s the case for you, if you only have one book that you have time to read this year…well, of course, make it the Bible. But if you have time to read two books this year, I’d like to make a recommendation: How to Have That Difficult Conversation You’ve Been Avoiding
Check out the video review by clicking the link below.
The more I’ve worked with addicts and dealt with my own sins, the more I’ve realized that most churches are falling short in a very important area–freedom from sin. Oh, don’t get me wrong. Most churches teach freedom from sin. Most command freedom from sin. But very few are helping people become free from sin. Most of them simply tell people to quit sinning and then slap them on the wrist when they catch them sinning again or belittle and shame them for doing so. What can we do about this?
***WARNING: This is the second in a series of three posts on this topic. And I repeat yesterday’s warning. This post will be specific, factual, and even explicit. However, I will try not to be gratuitous or graphic. But if you normally let your kids read these posts, you may want to read it first. If you’re good with that, click the “Continue Reading” link below.
Goals! Everyone talks about them. We all need them. But I’m convinced a mere goal is never enough. We need to move beyond simply setting a goal to having a vision of what life will be like once we have attained that goal. If all we have is a goal, then it seems like the end result is just achieving a goal for achieving a goal’s sake, we won’t stick with it. At least, I never do. So, whether we are talking about our physical, mental, financial, or even spiritual lives, we need to move beyond goals and envision what life will be like having achieved that goal.
The other night I was driving my kids to a trunk or treat. Ethan was Batman (read that with a gravelly, gargling marbles stage voice in your head). The part of the costume that was supposed to look like a huge muscular chest kept popping out and Ethan said, “I hate this. It keeps popping out and makes me look fat.” Trina quickly jumped in, “You mean like Daddy!” OUCH!!!
If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got. At the same time, if you always do what everyone else does, you’ll always get what everyone else gets. But sometimes, just sometimes, when you step out of the mold, stare down the critics, and do things a little differently, you just might take home the gold.
Continue Reading…
Let’s face it. We all have them. Favorite Sins. No, I know none of us would really classify them that way. We don’t like our sins. We’re trying to overcome them. We’re trying to get rid of them. But there are the sins we seem to subconsciously turn to when the going gets tough. We’ve said over and over again that we wouldn’t do them again, but then things get hectic and crazy and the next thing we know we did it again. Been there? I have.
A friend of mine once said, “I’m an egomaniac with an inferiority complex.” At first, I was confused, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized I could say the same thing. Therefore, it will not surprise you that the father of lies can trip me up by getting me to believe two contradictory lies at the exact same time. I bet he can do the same for you. As we noticed last week, Satan wants you to believe that every other Christian is more spiritual than you causing you to give up. At the same time, he will also try to get you to believe that you are more spiritual than every other Christian. Here’s how.
Satan is the Father of Lies (John 8:44). His master plan is to lie to us and get us to believe his lies. No doubt, some lies deal with issues of false doctrine. But that isn’t what I want us to consider in this series of posts. Rather, Satan sometimes realizes he can’t devour some Christians with doctrinal error. Instead, he tries something more insidious, something capable of knocking us completely off our spiritual feet. If we believe these lies, we will be taken captive and destroyed.
