Truth

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Every square inch

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Every square inch

This afternoon found me in a series of massive barns praying over chickens. Let no one say a pastor’s job is boring.

And yes, I am serious. My friend Mat raises chickens. A lot of them. In fact, he has eight barns with forty thousand chickens in each barn. They run free and look quite content.

The problem was this. A mysterious bacteria had invaded the barns. In spite of every possible precaution being taken and the vet pronouncing the barns to be in outstanding shape, chickens were dying. And antibiotics are not an option for this business.

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Potholes on the road to affirmation

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Potholes on the road to affirmation

They clear the roads to a pretty high standard in southwestern Michigan, which is just as well as it means you can see the devastating potholes the recent polar vortex left behind.

There are a lot of potholes on the road to affirmation. We spend a great deal of time worrying about what others think of us. Most of us want to be well-liked. Nobody likes to be on the outside of the “in” circle. This pushes us to do all sorts of things we don’t want to do in the desperate search for approval. People become depressed and even resort to self-harm when they feel nobody likes them. We tailor our conduct and even our appearance to make ourselves more acceptable to those around us. Our lives become hostage to our perception of what someone else’s opinion may or may not be.

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The inconvenient truth about truth

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The inconvenient truth about truth

I want to declare an inconvenient truth. Very inconvenient, in fact.

No, I am not wading into the climate change debate.

But Al Gore posed an interesting question when he titled his movie this way. Why I find it interesting is that (in my educated guess) neither Al Gore nor many of the people who watched his movie actually believe that truth even exists, at least in an absolute sense.

What people really believe is summed up in Oprah Winfrey’s recent speech: “Speaking your truth is the most powerful weapon you have.” She borrowed a phrase heavily used in today’s culture.

In the school of ministry I am currently leading in the USA, and in my “big book of doctrine” titled Landmarks, which has just come off the press, I start not with the doctrine of God, but with the issue of truth. And in particular, the truth of the Bible.

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Why we get the Bible messed up

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Why we get the Bible messed up

Light in your darkness. It’s something we look for as the days grow short and the nights grow long.

It’s also the title of a book proposal of mine being currently considered by a literary agency in Texas.

The book is about suffering. Why is it that bad things happen to God’s people? How do we process that? For the book, I went to people who could speak with authority, friends who have experienced significant tragedy in life and have walked through it with their faith in God intact, probably even deepened.

As Christians, we have to face these issues head on.

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"The gates are open!"

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"The gates are open!"

Retracing some steps this week unlocked a remarkable memory.

Elaine and I were visiting our friends James and Libby, who pastor a church in northern Indiana I have preached in from time to time.

James’ dad was a fine Christian gentleman who used to take me out for breakfast when I visited. His first name was Moses, but his brothers had teased him over it so he went by his middle name, which I always thought was Jay. In reality it was simply J. He had been born Amish and that’s how his birth certificate (if he had one) came out.