Glorious Mud

I was asked to write a blog for the Acts 29 website to help promote the upcoming boot camp in Chicago.  By the way, it's on September 15 and 16, 2011, and you should consider going!  You can get info here .  Lauren and I will be there helping with leading, facilitating, and assessing and we would love to see you there.  I guarantee you will be challenged with a lot to think about. So, I wrote the blog - and I know the way these things go.  It may or may not actually get published over at Acts 29, but I thought I would share it here.  It was fun to take a little time and remind myself of God's blessings over the last 6 years! So, here it is: ........ God’s plan has a way of making perfect sense in hindsight – even if it is completely unpredictable on the front side of things. In 2005, I attended my first Acts 29 boot camp in Edwardsville, IL.   I had never been to Edwardsville.   I had only recently heard of Acts 29 .   I definitely wasn’t interested in church

Over the last two weeks at Trailhead Church , we have been studying Proverbs to see what it says about how we use our words.  We used Proverbs 18:21 as our starting point. Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruits. (Proverbs 18:21 ESV) I broke the study into two weeks: Deadly Words and Words of Life .  When I studied for these lessons, I wrote out all the verses in Proverbs dealing with our speech and I ended up with four pages of verses.  That was way too much material to cover, even in two messages, so I am going to follow these messages up with a few additional thoughts over the next week or so. The first is this: You want to be wise?  Shut yo mouf, foo.  (Or, in the King's English, Discontinue your incessant discharge of discourse, you dope). The average american speaks a lot of words every day.  Many of them, like the previous sentence, are completely useless, or worse, are dangerous and harmful. The bottom line is that

Lauren and I have been reading through Tim Chester's A Meal with Jesus .  It has been a fascinating look at the role of food in the life of Jesus in the gospel of Luke.  As Chester says, in the Gospel of Luke, Jesus seems to always be coming from a meal, eating a meal, or traveling to the next one.  That sounds like my kind of ministry! The picture above is our dining room table - and this is one of the primary places we build community.  Sharing meals with others is a way to value them with practical service and love.  Lauren wrote a  blog  about the the power of keeping that meal simple and practical.  You should check it out. Eating is a daily reminder that we need something outside of ourselves to sustain us.  This is one of God's many ways to remind us that we are not autonomous - we are not independent, isolated beings.  We were created by a God of community for community - with him and with each other.  Sharing a meal with others is a simple and powerful way to do th

1.  Our marriage is older than we were when we got married. 2.  One of my first "love letters" to Lauren contained this line: "We go together like a buzzard and death." 3.  I realized this year - yes, only this year, after 22 years of marriage - that Lauren has the love language of "gifts." 4.  Love will cost you everything - but it gives you more back. 5.  I am horrible at celebrating things like birthdays and anniversaries. 6.  When we were dating, I wouldn't tell Lauren that I loved her till I knew I wanted to marry her. 7.  On the day I proposed to Lauren, she was planning to break up with me. 8.  I have countless failings, none of which were even hinted at in Lauren's blog post - 22 reasons why I love my husband . 9.  I am humbled and thankful to have a wife who chooses daily to see my strengths instead of focusing on my weaknesses. 10.  Lauren is my best friend and God's greatest gift to me.  I love and enjoy Lauren more today th