(From May 2, 2018)
God is good.
God still heals today.
The enemy is real. He still works his evil schemes throughout the Earth.
Sometimes people get sick. Cancer and other life-ending diseases run rampant across our world.
Sometimes bad things happen to good people. Terror attacks, heinous shootings, and tragic accidents take the lives of people we know and love.
Sometimes we pray for people with terminal illnesses and they still die.
It sucks and it hurts.
On Friday, our family friend, Barbara “Barb” Jennings went to be with her Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. She was 74. She was a die-hard Detroit Tigers fan, and loved her Michigan Wolverines. She was affectionately called Grandma Go Blue by her grandkids Zeke, Ethne, and Eydie Waters. She was an amazing woman.
12 weeks ago, I began a journey that has been a long-time coming. For all of my life, I have been overweight. I have been told time and again by doctors that I needed to lose weight. Yet, I ignored them because I didn’t want to give up the food that I enjoyed eating.
After a number of life circumstances, not the least of which was a diabetes diagnosis a year ago, I decided it was time to get serious about losing weight. It began at work.
Picture these Christmas images:
I was attending a conference at my church today on the Father’s love (among other things) with speaker Leif Hetland. As we worshipped this morning before Leif spoke, we sang the song Furious by Jeremy Riddle. I sensed God saying, “I am singing this to you (and everyone else here).”
So, here are song lyrics with the pronouns changed as God was singing this to me.
For the last couple of months, I’ve been mad at God.
There. I said it and didn’t get struck dead. (Is that thunder I just heard? 😉 )
WARNING!!! I am getting on my soapbox!!! Prepare yourself!!! There’s a rant coming!!! You have been warned. If you are easily offended, you might not want to read further.
I was browsing my Facebook feed today and I came across an article posted by a friend of mine. The article talked about an Oklahoma Tea Party candidate calling for homosexuals to be stoned to death. (I won’t dignify it with a link to the actual article. You can Google it if you’re really interested.)
For the last week, I’ve been going through Kyle Idleman’s book gods at war and doing a chapter-by-chapter synopsis / review. Today, I’m looking at chapter 6 – the god of sex.
I really like how Idleman starts out the chapter:
Sex is good.
Yesterday, I looked at chapter 4 of Kyle Idleman’s book gods at war. Chapter 4 was all about making a choice about which god would rule your heart. It also concluded part 1 of the book – which I see as the introduction and definition of the problem.
Before I get into part 2 and chapter 5, I noticed a line from chapter 4 that stood out to me that I didn’t mention yesterday. Idleman says this, referring the Joshua’s speech to the Israelites in Joshua 24, “So even if you’ve chosen the Lord God in the past, the challenge of Joshua is to choose this day whom you will serve.” Each day is a new day with Jesus. The book of Lamentations says His lovingkindness and compassion are new every morning. This also means that we have a new chance and a fresh start every morning to choose whom we will serve and which god we will let sit on the throne of our heart.
In Kyle Idleman’s book gods at war, chapter 3 was all about God being a jealous God who relentlessly pursues us because He loves us.
In chapter 4, it’s all about choice. Because God loves us, He always presents us with choices. Idleman tells the story of Joshua at the end of his life. Joshua is giving his final address (so to speak) to the Israelites:
