Faith

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Terrifyingly awesome

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Terrifyingly awesome

A great business opportunity had just opened up for the friend I was having lunch with this week. “Wow!” I thought. “What a terrific series of possibilities that would open up for the glory of God!”

Easy for me to say, of course. For my friend, the opportunity brought an equal mixture of great excitement and sheer terror. One minute all he could see was the risk, the next minute all he could envision was the reward.

And that is where so often God has us. One of my favourite phrases about following Jesus is the one my friend Don Smith often uses: terrifyingly awesome.

The kingdom of God brings with it endless opportunities to experience the supernatural and the mind-blowing, but at the same time makes incredible demands on us that stretch us far beyond our natural capabilities. We may complain about this, but we shouldn’t be surprised.

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Lynette Carpenter: The Promise

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Lynette Carpenter: The Promise

Stepping into a promise is sometimes easier said than done.

In 2016, my husband, Tim, and I were one year away from turning forty, reaching our twentieth anniversary milestone and celebrating our oldest son’s graduation.

It was a great season of life.

We were raising our four children on our family farm while serving as youth leaders at our church. Life was comfortable. Good. Happy. No need to rock our proverbial boat.

No one knew it, but we had began discussing the idea of starting a new business. The idea was nerve wracking, scary and borderline dumb - at least in my opinion. But through a series of events, we kept coming back to the idea of building four poultry barns.

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Following the cloud

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Following the cloud

People allow their lives to be directed by all sorts of things. Some people follow careers, some follow sports, some follow money, some follow pleasure, some follow happiness.

But as for us, we are (or should be) following the cloud.

I am alluding, of course, to Numbers 19. When the cloud rested over the tabernacle, the people remained. Whether it was a day or a month or what the Bible describes without further definition as “a longer time,” they stayed put. But as soon as the cloud lifted, they set out, and kept on following the cloud until it came to rest again.

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The crucial step of faith

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The crucial step of faith

Every miracle begins with a step of faith. The feeding of the five thousand began when a little boy surrendered his lunch to Jesus. For him, that was a massive step of faith. It left him with nothing to eat all day. But there would have been no miracle without it. Jesus had no problem multiplying the loaves and fishes, but he needed something to work with.

And it’s the same today. We often ask Jesus to come in and solve our problems, but we forget that he needs something to work with. For every miracle, there is a contribution we have to make.

Sometimes that contribution is simply making the decision not to give up, not to get angry, not to despair, but to put the matter in his hands, believing he can do something about it. Many times it involves stepping out of our comfort zone to do something God is calling us to do that we could not do in our own strength.

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Hope for those who mess up

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Hope for those who mess up

I love the Psalms. And I thought I knew them well. There is a great deal of comfort and encouragement in those 150 chapters. But I never realized how equally full of pain and despair they are until I started writing a year-long daily devotional (hopefully to be published).

David was nothing if not open and transparent. You never had much doubt where he was coming from, or what he was going through. He had experienced it all. Warfare, deceit, dishonesty, and worst of all, betrayal from close friends. The Psalms are known for their repetition of the phrase, “How long, O Lord, how long?”

I’m glad David was so open. He’s a great model. Many years ago, I used to go to conferences with big name speakers who advertised all their successes, and came away discouraged. Then I started to go to conferences with speakers who were more interested in using the example of their own weaknesses to advertise God’s glory, and I came away blessed.