Return to Me and I Will Return to You - The Lord Almighty*

 I sat as a twenty-six year old in the front yard of my childhood home in Knoxville, TN having returned there from more than half a decade of rebellion. My life was in shambles. My engagement to Anita was broken, I was broken. I was full of regrets for the narcissistic ways I had been living for the last several years and running from my call to ministry. A couple of years before God had gotten my attention and I had returned home, went back to my home church, enrolled in a masters program, but there was still much rebellion in my heart… The drizzle began to fall, tears were falling and I was crying out to God in prayer for my life.

I had been weed eating around the large flower beds of my parent’s home and I had accidentally cut through the power cord with the weed trimmer. I had found some wire pliers and electrical tape and sat down on the grass to strip the wire and make the repair. Then it began to drizzle rain. I was like, "what else Lord?"

I was listening to Michael W. Smith’s recently released song Agnus Dei on a fake Walkman cassette player with earphones. I was caught up in worship and weeping over God’s Holiness and the fact that, in spite of all my transgression and sin, He was letting me, the broken man that I was, come before His throne to praise His name, singing along, off key. I was praying for something to change and the pain to stop.

Just in that moment, my pliers completed the connection between the positive and negative wires that I had forgotten to unplug from the electrical outlet. Oh my!!! I experienced a long shock. The wet pliers and 110 volts held me fast in a painful spasm. Fortunately, somehow I was able to release my grip on the pliers and drop them to bring relief.

There was an abiding of me to the electrical wire that I had trouble disconnecting from. Perhaps this was symbolic of the sin that had held me fast in my rebellion and its painful consequences. In my fear, I had trusted in worldly wisdom. In those moments it was as if God was disconnecting me from this world and its evil ruler and was reminding me of my connection to Him. He was drawing me back to the call on my life into His Kingdom ministry. In those moments of worship and prayer, He was powerfully reconnecting me to Himself, changing my life, and bringing much needed love and joy. (I wish I could say that I never struggled again, but God kept, and still keeps faithfully maturing me and reminding me of the security of His love for me.)

Even in my rebellion, I had read my Bible almost everyday. I attended church on a regular basis, but I still wasn’t living like I belonged to Jesus, like I found my identity in Him. My life was selfish and I didn't value other people. My religion was a checklist of things to do to be seen as a "good person" rather than having a personal relationship of abiding with Him and loving the people He loves (i.e. "God so loved the World...").

In those shocking moments. God was answering my cries for help and answering the prayers of my parents and family friends who had been praying years for my rescue.

Within weeks, I began to see God working in my life in some big ways. Anita and I got married, I completed my masters degree and started seminary in Texas. We found an active healthy church that where we could serve. God connected us to a group of young couples with whom we could grow in our faith together. He led me to some internships with amazing pastors who taught me much about ministry and life.

There was amazing power in the way God had answered those prayers of desperation. He is still answering those prayers all these years later.

“Therefore tell the people: This is what the LORD Almighty says: ‘Return to me,’ declares the LORD Almighty, ‘and I will return to you,’ says the LORD Almighty.” Zechariah 1:3 NIV

Parents, Are You Acting Like Sheeple?* Words Post-COVID mid Delta

 Parents, are you acting like sheeple? My mother was always involved in our church... teaching, serving, hosting, whatever was needed.  She always enjoyed helping. One year she took the Middle School Vacation Bible School class. It happened to be when my sister and I and a neighbor girl were in Middle School. Mom was creative and wanted to do something fun, hands-on and different than a flannelgraph. There were some kids in the group who had not heard the stories of Jesus and she wanted them to know who He is and how much He loves them. Though we had an old 8 MM movie camera that we used to capture family events, she decided to do the “oh so cool” at the time, 1970’s slide show thing because we had a new fancy camera she wanted to use. She loaded us up and took us all to our mini-farm, dressed us all up as disciples and Jesus followers and told the Jesus story through slides. She had Jesus, played by a neighbor girl with dark hair and a fake beard, walking on water. She had us put rocks just under the surface of the water and had the girl playing Jesus stand on them, giving the illusion of “walking on water.” She had Jesus teaching the sermon on the mount with all the kids around Him listening. And she had Jesus teaching about pursuing the one lost sheep and the great joy when the lost sheep is found. In the field next to our mini-farm was a flock of sheep from the University of Tennessee College of Agriculture. The only problem was the sheep had numbers on them for testing purposes. It looked like a mattress commercial. When the slide show was displayed, we all cracked up seeing the sheep with numbers on them.  We were all looking for sheep #100, because Jesus had “left the 99.” Did I mention that the girl Mom chose to be Jesus was one of the kids from our neighborhood who didn’t know Jesus? Did I mention that my Mother knew this young lady had begun to do some things in middle school that would lead her down some dark paths if she continued? This young lady, like all of us, wanted to belong and be accepted, so she became like sheeple who were doing all those things that kids in their own wisdom thought would make them feel included, accepted, validated, and loved somehow. In the end all those behaviors would turn up empty, void of good, and lead to aloneness.  Did I also mention that Mom picked this girl up each day to ride with our family to VBS? There was a bit of irony here that possibly sheep #100 was the girl that Mom had selected to play the One who leaves the 99 to find sheep #100. Mom had a heart for the lost sheep, because someone had pursued her at the same age and told her about Jesus. 

Jesus is all about belonging.  He loves us and is always glad to be with us. We are His and He is ours. He will hunt us down to be with us… Luke 15:3-7 says,  “So he told them this parable: “What man among you, who has a hundred sheep and loses one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the open field and go after the lost one until he finds it? When he has found it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders, and coming home, he calls his friends and neighbors together, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, because I have found my lost sheep!’ I tell you, in the same way, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people who don’t need repentance.” Sheeple are people who act like sheep and are led astray by the prevailing “wisdom.”  The Old Testament Prophet Isaiah reminds us that we are all sheeple whom Jesus came to seek and save.  Isaiah says, “We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.”(Isaiah 53:6 NIV) Jesus followers are always looking to find and include sheeple who have been drawn away from Him by their own rebellious nature and desperate desire to belong, be loved, and be accepted.  Sometimes I am all too eager to condemn people rather than include them, because I have forgotten that Jesus pursued and included me. Is there someone in your life who needs to be included with God’s people? Maybe there is a creative way for you to make a place for them to be found by Jesus.

Hang in there People! God is glad to be with us! I’m praying for us all! 

Parents, Are Your Feet Beautiful? *Post COVID

 Parents, are your feet beautiful? In elementary school my family had a mini-farm… seven acres on the Little Tennessee River near Alcoa - a town named after the Aluminum Company of America and not far from Maryville, or “Murvul” if you are local. I always wanted a pair of boots to walk around the farm in. My dad always had some good boots for hunting, checking on the cow, or “Joe the pony”* (cow is singular, it wasn’t a big farm) or working in the garden. I finally got some boots, some real clodhoppers. I was thrilled. I liked the way they supported my spindly little ankles that frequently turned over. I liked the way they clunked as I walked down the hall at Fort Sanders Elementary School. I liked how warm they kept my feet in the winter. I liked how they helped me climb the hills of my steep driveway on Fox Chase Lane. One day at school, a friend and I were headed down the hall and, for some reason that escapes me, we were unaccompanied by the teacher… My friend's mother was a wonderful teacher to special needs students there and I suppose our teacher, who knew her, trusted us to go down the hall, “responsibly” to the office. However, as sometimes happens at that age when you don’t have the benefit of a teacher reminding you to walk not run, our pace increased from a quick walk to a competitive run by the time we were at the end of the hall. As I turned the corner right there was a lady from my neighborhood who worked in the school office. My oversized clodhoppers were out of control and the toe of my boot caught her right in the shin. She fell to the floor grabbing her shin rolling in pain. All I could do was stare for a minute, embarrassed that I had unintentionally incapacitated her with my size three work boots, wondered why she had gotten in my way, and then I continued down the hall to catch up with my friend, who was wearing tennis shoes that could run much faster. I don’t know what I was thinking, she had clearly seen me run right into her. I had watched her eyes open wide just before the shin-toe contact (not the Japanese ancestor worship, but the cry out, “Oh God,” as we collided). Then I saw the grimace and tears as she fell to the ground. I couldn’t get out an “I’m so sorry!” or a “Are you okay?” or “can I get you some help?”... nothing, all I had was a silent stare. And then I ran off. Needless to say, she never forgot our less than fortunate collision in the halls of FSE. Many years later, long after I had repressed the embarrassing memory, she reminded me that her shin had never been the same, that when it was cold especially, it would still hurt. I and the boots I had loved so much were not fondly remembered by my neighbor and school assistant.

Unfortunately, that childhood experience kinda looked like my Evangelism strategy sometimes… find an unsuspecting unbeliever and kick them in the shins with something that I thought was so wonderful and then run away. I would call them a sinner and judge them without having known anything about them (we all, by the way, are sinners, but calling someone that is not a great way to start the kind of caring relationship God wants us to have with them, before we tell them about Jesus). I would knock on someone's door or approach them in public, collide with their world, then run off and leave them wherever they were, to wrestle with what I had just told them, alone. It was kinda irresponsible, like a kid running down the hall out of control with clodhoppers on. These were real human beings, created in God’s image, worthy of respect and value, each one with a story, and I had just made them the object of my evangelistic effort, sometimes just to be seen as a "good Christian." Ugh! The prophet Isaiah says, “How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation, who say to Zion, “Your God reigns!””(Isaiah 52:7 NIV) As we bring the Salvation of Jesus to people, it comes with good news and peace and good tidings, not anger, condemnation, manipulation, and lingering pain. The Holy Spirit does the convicting, we are called to love them and care about them and care for them, disciple them. Jesus calls us to make disciples not converts. Discipleship takes connection and care. When we belong to Jesus, we begin to act like Him... gentle toward weakness, compassionate for those who are hurting and an agent of redemption and reconciliation. People should be glad to see us coming.

Hang in there people. God is glad to be with us. I’m praying for us all.

*for more on Joe the Pony...https://williampmcg.blogspot.com/2020/08/parents-are-you-being-mean-joe-words.html

Parents, Does Practice Really Make Perfect? *

Parents, does practice really make perfect? In Middle School, my mother thought it was a good idea for me to learn the trumpet… perhaps because this small skinny kid didn’t make the basketball team, and wasn’t big enough for football, or maybe because learning music helps your brain develop and she wanted well rounded kids. For whatever reason, I agreed and dreamed of maybe being the next Chuck Mangione or Louis Armstrong. The first day, I played it 'til my lips hurt. I learned that it takes a lot of practice to develop your embouchure, a fancy word for the way you hold your mouth so your lips vibrate right on the mouthpiece. A good embouchure with strong mouth muscles helps you sound like a trumpet player rather than an angry goose. When the band started, I seemed to do okay and the band director put me in the first chair. As the weeks progressed though, practice took second place to pick-up football, stickball, basketball, bike rides, and tennis with my friends. The thought of 30 minutes alone, sitting still with my trumpet was less than thrilling for my ADHD squirminess. However, my mother required it, saying “practice makes perfect.” I did it, but my heart wasn’t in it. In my mind I was outside scoring touchdowns with my suburban neighborhood sports posse. So, by the time the Christmas concert came around, I had moved steadily down the trumpet row, from 1st chair, to 2nd, to 3rd chair. I practiced, but I practiced missing notes, I didn’t practice the way the music was actually supposed to sound. It revealed that practice doesn’t necessarily make perfect, but “perfect practice makes perfect.”

In our Jesus following lives, sometimes we do stuff, like go to church, just so we can say we are practicing our faith, but it's more to check the box on the imaginary chart that convinces us we are a “good Christian person.” We feel slightly better about our lives, but we aren’t actually changed. In real life, rather than in our “Sunday-best” church life, we don’t always act like the One we belong to, we sometimes act like we used to before we belonged to Jesus. Peter the apostle, who used to struggle with acting like a Jesus follower sometimes, reminds us all that perfect practice makes perfect. He says, “As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance. But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: “Be holy, because I am holy.””(1 Peter 1:14–16 NIV) Peter certainly knows that we are still going to mess up and not always act like God’s people, who are set apart to represent Him on this planet, but the expectation is that the more we act like Jesus the more we become like Jesus and the less we act like we belong to the world. The more we perfectly practice acting like the One we belong to, the more we mature and become like Him. The people around us may notice and we have the opportunity to tell them about His wonderful love for us.

Hang in there people. God is glad to be with us. I’m praying for us all.

Parents, Spring Has Sprung! Words From COVID 19 quarantine*

 Parents, Spring has Sprung. I remember as a boy being so excited when Spring came after the cold weather. I enjoyed the warmth of the Sun after having to bundle up to stay warm when going outside. But I recall that Spring was always fickle. Usually by Easter, we had enjoyed some warm days; days warmed enough to wear shorts or go out in short sleeves a few times... and I don’t mean upper 30/lower 40’s warm, where kids in Ohio think its a heat wave and wear shorts and run down the street with no shirt, SMH, BRRR. I mean like mid 70’s warm. But there was always another deep freeze or two coming before Summer. Looking back to childhood, Mom made a big deal out of Easter clothes for my sister and me. Yes, one year, I had the light blue pastel and white striped Seersucker suit with shorts, I guess I should be glad the outfit didn’t include the straw hat with ribbons hanging off and matching two toned saddle oxfords, with white socks. Apparently, we get the word “Seersucker” from Hindi and it originates from two words meaning “milk” and “sugar.” As a kid I thought it meant, “dressed up” and “uncomfortable”… just give me some well worn Sears Toughskins jeans and t-shirt with the tag cut off. But we dressed up for church, especially Easter. My biggest anticipation for that day was to hunt the couple of dozen Easter Eggs that Mom had boiled hard and helped us dye with PAAS and vinegar the day before. I wanted to get up and hunt eggs before church, but that didn’t happen because everyone was getting ready. I expected to go to church in my Easter Sunday Best, come home, put on my Toughskins, made into Jorts by my Mom after I had worn through the padded knees by sliding on them all the time, and hunt eggs. But NOOO! I got up and it was cold and windy. Spring had given up once again to Old Man Winter. Yet, because I had a Seersucker outfit, I had to wear it to church. I nearly froze to death, but apparently cold doesn’t count when Mom wants “cute” and I would outgrow it before Easter the next year. When we got home, I ran to my room to change out of my pastel pretty-boy suit, only to have to change back for Easter pictures. Then I grabbed the Easter basket, ready to go hunt some eggs, but we had to eat first. The meal usually included ham, yams, some sort of green beans, salad or something and some deviled eggs (these were usually the casualties of the egg dying the day before… and BTW why would we have eggs from the Devil if Easter was such a Holy Day? IDK) and carrot cake (who knew carrots could taste so good?). Finally, my sister and I convinced my Mom to hide some eggs for us outside. Oh my! It was still really cold, but we found them, shivering, teeth chattering and blue lipped. Then it was time for the second round, which we moved inside and my sister and I hid them for each other all around the house. There was always that one egg we couldn’t find, assumed it cracked and was made into the devil’s egg, but several days later, caused a horrible smell, and instigated another more intense egg hunt.

As we read about the very first Easter/Resurrection Day, written by the once “bad egg,” Roman IRS agent named Matthew, who was found and called out by Jesus to become His disciple and a gospel writer, we understand that some Jesus-follower ladies, both named Mary, were eagerly seeking the One they loved, Who had been crucified and placed in a tomb sealed with a great stone. The former tax collector tells us, “After the Sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to view the tomb. There was a violent earthquake, because an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and approached the tomb. He rolled back the stone and was sitting on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothing was as white as snow. The guards were so shaken by fear of him that they became like dead men. The angel told the women, ‘Don't be afraid, because I know you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He is not here. For he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples, 'He has risen from the dead and indeed he is going ahead of you to Galilee; you will see him there.' Listen, I have told you.’ So, departing quickly from the tomb with fear and great joy, they ran to tell his disciples the news. Just then Jesus met them and said, ‘Greetings!’ They came up, took hold of his feet, and worshiped him. Then Jesus told them, ‘Do not be afraid. Go and tell my brothers to leave for Galilee, and they will see me there.’" Matthew 28:1-10 (CSBBible) Even when Spring weather and other things on this planet can be fickle, we can rely on Jesus to always be True to His Word. He said He would be resurrected again, and He was! God promises that if we seek Him with our whole heart, He will be found by us (Jeremiah 29:13-14). If you are hunting eggs this Easter in your Seersucker outfit, be reminded that Jesus came to seek and to save the lost, that’s us!.( Luke 19:10). He won’t stop until He finds us, no matter how rotten we may be. Be found by Jesus right now by seeking Him with your whole heart, in spite of the unreliable fickleness of this world.

Hang in there people! God is glad to be with us! I’m praying for us all!

Parents, The Rough Places Will Be Made Smooth!** Words From COVID19 quarantine

By Photo: Myrabella / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12686604

Parents, the rough places will be made smooth. As a young boy, I was both fearful and excited about going ice skating. In my town, there was an ice skating rink called the “Ice Chalet.” My mother, who was determined to give us as many experiences as possible, had signed my sister and me up for skating lessons. She had also signed us up for sailing, diving, swim, skiing, television camera, tennis, and several other kinds of lessons, which we enjoyed but probably didn’t fully appreciate at the time. We arrived at the Ice Chalet and walked inside to a lobby decorated like an Alpine Lodge. The smell was very distinct, unlike any I had ever smelled before, kind of like a frozen water/sweaty skates/mildewed wet carpet and hot chocolate/grilled cheese/french fries from the concession stand kind of smell. We rented our skates, handed them our own shoes, which seemed a little weird to me, though I could see them over the tall counter, in the cubby where my skates had come from, on the vast wall of skates and shoes from tini-tiny to giant skates. The first pair didn’t fit because I had two pairs of socks on. So, with some help from my mother, I laced and tied my skates and attempted to walk toward the door to the ice rink. My ankles flopped and buckled. My little spindly legs looked like spaghetti noodles wiggling from a fork, as they tried to support my weight on the two knife blades secured to these boots with screws. I was excited to get the brown (boy) skates, rather than the white (girl) skates, unlike the other boy in the class that arrived too late for brown in his size. My sister and I made our way, wobbly legged to the ice to try our skills at perambulating on the frozen water. We had enjoyed swimming in the indoor pool, but this was a totally different experience on top of the H2O. I took my first step up to the ice and immediately had to grab the rail. Both feet went straight out and I held to the wall to keep from doing the splits. After going around the rink once clinging to the rail, I was finally able to keep my feet under me. Then, came the time for lessons. We were summoned to the middle of the rink by the instructor. I thought, there is no way, I’m letting go of this rail, but the point of lessons is to learn to skate, not hang on the wall, right? So, wibbly, wobbly, splatting a couple of times, I made my way to the middle of the rink. We learned to push and glide. My legs were not strong enough to do that, so I kind of just took little baby steps using the toe stop. By the end of the lessons, I had begun to notice other skaters, who had been there, but in my fear and fight to stay upright I never really noticed except to hope they didn’t skate over me with those knives on their feet. There were some kids who had really cool skates with sharper blades and no toe stops, who could skate frontwards and backwards really fast and spray ice when they stopped. There were some others who could spin and twirl and dance while they skated. At one point, after the lesson, the music that was piped in over loud speakers stopped and a voice said, “please, reverse directions!” In one way this was terrible, because my body had just started to figure out how to go this way, and yet in another way it was a great relief, because my muscles on the other side could give my fatigued legs, ankles and hips a break. Then, later the voice came back and said, “please, clear the ice.” I was petrified because I was far from the ice exit, but with lots of little steps and some pulling on the rail with my arms I finally made it off the ice. I was glad to have a cup of warm hot chocolate and my mother was glad to wipe my runny nose on a kleenex rather than me wiping it on my sleeves and little mittens. Looking at the rink through the glass doors, I noticed a large vehicle that was driving on the ice. This magical machine drove over the ice and the ice became shiny and flat and all the kicked up ice shavings from “hockey stops,” “ice spins,” “toe stops,” and divots from crashes and carvings from the foot mounted axe blades instantly disappeared and the ice was restored to its glasslike, glisteny, smoothness. Watching this “Zamboni” became one of the highlights of my trips to the Ice Chalet, partly because my skating skills never really improved enough to play hockey or do cool dances like those who had skated since exiting the womb (affectionately known as rink rats) or had some natural skill and ability, and partly because it was so cool to see such a satisfying instant transformation of messed up, scarred, divot filled ice to clean, smooth, beautiful ice with a pass or two of the Zamboni.

When Jesus was about to begin His ministry, John the Baptist was preaching and preparing the hearts of everyone who would listen for the arrival of the Messiah. The famous gospel-writing physician, Luke, reminds everyone of the words of the prophet Isaiah from 700 years before about the coming of John who would be announcing the Christ. He talked about the rough places becoming smooth and mountains and valleys being made level. John was kinda like a human Zamboni that allowed people to have a clear, straight, unscarred, undivoted, path to a relationship with Jesus. He would call them to repentance, to do a “hockey stop” and reverse directions, to turn back toward God. Luke says, “Then John went from place to place on both sides of the Jordan River, preaching that people should be baptized to show that they had repented of their sins and turned to God to be forgiven. Isaiah had spoken of John when he said,“He is a voice shouting in the wilderness,‘Prepare the way for the LORD’s coming! Clear the road for him! The valleys will be filled, and the mountains and hills made level. The curves will be straightened, and the rough places made smooth. And then all people will see the salvation sent from God.’” Luke 3:3-6 NLV. At just the right time Jesus came. He was greater than John the (Zamboni) Baptist, because He smooths over our broken relationship with God. He takes away our wounds and emotional hurts, removes mountains of sin, and redeems our twisted ways. He not only changes our human lives, He makes us brand new spiritually and gives us new life! The chasm between us and God was filled with Jesus who made a Way for us to have a renewed, healthy, real relationship with God. The scars from living in this harsh world can be healed. When we are experiencing a rough spot and headed the wrong way, we gotta, “reverse directions,” that’s repentance, we turn around and go toward God instead of away from Him. If we don’t exit the ice for a little while and let God renew us, we will only make more scars and divots and have more crashes. We need to let Jesus clear the way for us, heal our scars, replace our divots, and renew our rough places. Our salvation comes from Christ, He makes all things actually really new, rather than just smoothing them over with a veneer.

Hang in there people! God is glad to be with us! I’m praying for us all!

Parents, What Are You Going To Be When You Grow Up?* Words From COVID19 quarantine

 Parents, What are you going to be when you grow up? My great-grand-mother was quite a character. She was witty and sharp and could even be caustic when she spoke the “truth in love,” She knew the scriptures, was a card shark, loved to tell a slightly off color joke, and was a strong opinionated woman who had survived the Great Depression, World Wars and much hardship. Maude, or “Mau Mau” as I knew her, had lived her life with her husband Will, who was a professional tailor in his shop in Arkansas, until she moved to live with my grandmother, known as “Mother Mac” in my hometown. She would sometimes babysit my sister, my cousins and me. She didn’t put up with a lot, but loved us as her generation knew how to show love. She spoke the truth of scriptures she had memorized at just the right time. She could tease us harshly and just laugh out loud, but no one else dared mess with anyone in her family… she would defend them, even if she knew they were wrong. One day in the apartment building with the swimming pool on top, she was keeping the 4 Knoxville great-grands and we were discussing what we were going to be when we grew up… all the standard responses: policeman, nurse (popular in my family), doctor (there were a couple of those in the family too). I responded with, “I want to be a ‘rootin’ tootin’ cowboy.’” I had seen one on the Sesame Street skit a couple of times, dressed like a dude with six shooters, chaps, boots, and spurs. (My family now tells me I at least got the tootin’ part right… I tell them, “that’s not funny, but pull my finger.”) I then changed my mind, as kids do, and said I wanted to be a fireman. Mau Mau looked straight at me and said, “No, you are going to be a pastor!” I thought, how boring! I became angry and told her, “No, I am going to be a fireman.” Little did I know that God had given her some insights that would come to fruition many years later. She didn’t live long enough to know that I had become a pastor, but she was so sure of it, she saw it and “prophesied” it, called me out and up to it when I was just a child. I did my best to run from it, deny it, and rebel both then and as a young man, but God hunted me down, changed my heart, sent me to seminary, called me to churches to serve. He has blessed me with many brothers and sisters in Christ whom I love very much. I may be boring, but my life as a pastor has not been boring. I have had the great privilege of seeing God at work in the lives of many people, rescuing many from the fires of hell... my aunt reminds me that maybe I am a fireman of sorts…

We are all firemen/women! When God rescues us and we connect our lives with God, we take on the family business. The business of being on the rescue team for others. We may be asked to run into the darkness of a burning building of someone’s life to bring them out, breathe life into them, help gently heal their wounds, and welcome them to God’s family. We may also be asked to speak the Truth into the lives of God’s people and call them up and call them out into God’s ministry whether vocationally or as a lay person. Peter, the one who had warmed himself by the fire and denied Christ while He was on trial, but whom Jesus had later restored and told him “care for My sheep,” reminds us: “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his possession, so that you may proclaim the praises of the one who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people; you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. 1 Peter 2:9-10 (CSB) I’m thankful for Mau Mau, that she was a part of the rescue team for this little boy. As she shared scripture and shared encouragement, showed love with her words in the best way she could. She foretold of a ministry that I don’t deserve, but am privileged to share. Whatever your calling, you are a minister, a priest(ess) called to love and rescue others.

Hang in there people. God is glad to be with us. I’m praying for us all.