My Ongoing Thoughts

APPLIED LEARNING

8/16/2018

Well, here it is the middle of August, and students everywhere across America are either back in school or else preparing to return to school very soon. For me personally, counting from kindergarten until graduate school, I managed to head off to school a total of 24 times! I like to think each of these trips was worthwhile and that I at least learned something along the way.

For this reason, perhaps, I am also a great believer in education. My own schooling benefited me enormously; and I now encourage every young person I encounter to get all the education he or she can.

Nonetheless, I also recognize that there is a big difference in simply going to school and actually learning something. For that matter, just earning a degree is not the same thing as having gotten an education.

A wonderful story, circulated in the financial industry for years, serves to illustrate this point…

Few know that Bill Gates was once a student at Harvard. He dropped out to give all of his attention to his new love: computers. His mother was a Regent at the University of Washington and was upset that her son had dropped out of school. She asked a family friend, respected by Bill in his own right, to talk to her son and persuade him to go back to Harvard. The man agreed to have lunch with Bill.

During lunch, Bill laid out the case for personal computers and the urgency of the situation. Bill was so effective that not only did the friend fail to persuade him to go back to school, but he wrote out a check for $25,000 to help start the new Microsoft Company. Many years after that lunch meeting the business man said, “The only mistake I made that day was not giving him every penny in my check book.”

Education is important. One should certainly get all that can be gotten. But knowing what to do with that education is even more important. For in the end, what we do of necessity exceeds what we merely know.

Of course, what is true in the educational world is also true in the spiritual world. The Apostle James, in his eponymous New Testament Book (chapter 1, verse 22), tells us that we must: “Be doers of the word, and not hearers only. Otherwise, you are deceiving yourselves.”

Christians are admonished repeatedly throughout the Scriptures to study the Word of God. But James is making the point here that it is not enough merely to know the Word of God. We must also find ways to live this Word out in our lives.

I am quite sure Bill Gates learned some important lessons while at Harvard University. But I am equally certain that he would not be the person he is today, nor would he have had the far reaching and lasting impact he has had on this world, if he had not decided it was more important to act in the business world than just to study and know business principles.

And as believers, we do well to study the Word of God. But we do far better to take what we have learned and act upon it. For it is the latter more than the former that allows for the fullest impact of the Word of God, not only upon us, but also upon all those we encounter.

STORY SOURCE: Attributed to Jeff Moormeier, while working at Merrill Lynch, as told to and related by Kenneth Squires, while serving as Pastor at Marysville First Assembly, Marysville, Washington.

Cf.: https://www.sermoncentral.com/sermon-illustrations/14791/church-prac
tices-by-kenneth-squires?ref=TextIllustrationSerps.

SCRIPTURE SOURCE: https://biblehub.com/james/1-22.htm.

SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT

8/13/2018

In his work, Cultivating A Life For God, church planter Neil Cole reflects on once having visited the famed Rodin Museum in Paris, France and writes:

A few years ago I was going to France to conduct some leadership seminars for missionaries in Europe… A friend of ours heard that we would be in Paris and began to urge us to go to the Rodin museum.

Rodin was a French impressionist sculptor. Though many do not realize his name, most are familiar with his work. He created the Thinker. What you may not realize is that the Thinker was really a study he had done to sit on the top of his greatest masterpiece - The Gates of Hell.

For years we have been wondering what it is that the Thinker is thinking about. No, he's not wondering about where he left his clothes the night before. What the Thinker is contemplating is an eternity of judgment separated from God.

I myself have always had an appreciation for art in general and for sculpture in particular - so much so that I have kept a copy of Rodin’s sculpture titled “The Thinker” on a shelf in my study ever since I became aware such a sculpture existed.

For this reason, I suppose, once I first read Cole’s story nearly two decades ago, it never left me. Then, a few years later, when my wife and I were privileged actually to go to Paris, we visited all the traditional tourist spots: the Eiffel tower, the River Seine, the Bastille, the Arc de Triumph and, of course, Notre Dame Cathedral.

But while there, I made it a point to also visit the Rodin Museum. And with my own eyes, I saw that Rodin’s most famous sculpture, that of “The Thinker”, was indeed part of his larger work titled “The Gates of Hell”. Cole was right. “The Thinker” was actually pondering the very gates of Hell itself, and likely all that entails – fire, brimstone, worms, darkness, torment, agony, and above all, eternity apart from God and His love.

In truth, it behooves us all to reflect upon such a place. Hopefully, as we do, we will grasp the fact that God never intended men and women to go to such a terrible place. In fact, in the New Testament Gospel of Matthew, chapter 25, verse 41, the Bible tells us that Hell was originally created for the devil and his angels who had rebelled against God.

Thus, men and women will only wind up in Hell because they have chosen to follow the Devil rather than God. Later on in verse 46 of that same chapter, Jesus Himself tells us that it is the wicked who will suffer eternal punishment; but that the righteous will experience eternal life.

And the way to know that one has eternal life in Heaven as opposed to eternal punishment in Hell is to embrace the grace and mercy made available through God’s son, Jesus Christ. As the Apostle John tells us (in his first New Testament Letter, chapter 5, verse 10-12):

10Whoever believes in the Son of God accepts this testimony. Whoever does not believe God has made him out to be a liar, because they have not believed the testimony God has given about his Son. 11And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. 12Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.

For my part, I have found this gift of eternal life being offered through Jesus Christ. I trust you have as well. If not, I trust you will ponder where you could spend eternity. Trust me… it really is something to think about!

SOURCE:
Neil Cole, Cultivating A Life For God (ChurchSmart Resources, 1999), p. 120.

SEE ALSO:
https://www.cmaresources.org/cultivating-a-life-for-god.

SCRIPTURE SOURCES:
https://biblehub.com/niv/matthew/25.htm and
https://biblehub.com/niv/1_john/5.htm.

PICTURE SOURCES:
By AndrewHorne (talk) - Own work (Original text: I (AndrewHorne (talk)) created this work entirely by myself.), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15582363.

By Jean-Pierre Dalbéra from Paris, France - Le penseur de la Porte de l'Enfer (musée Rodin), CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=24671002.

GOOD MEDICINE

8/9/2018

The writer of the Old Testament Book of Proverbs tells us that a cheerful heart is good medicine (chapter 17, verse 22). How right he is! We all need a good laugh on occasion - if for no other reason than merely to relax and alleviate stress.

Such is the purpose of today’s post; for I myself have had a full week and felt the need, as it draws to a conclusion tonight, for a little lighthearted humor.

As I have alluded to elsewhere on my webpage, Paul Powell is one of my favorite authors. He has compiled several books of humorous stories; and from time to time I peruse them just to laugh a little.

In one such book, he has gathered the following list of things that will help you to know whether or not you might qualify as a redneck. I offer them here for your merriment.

“You Know You Are A Redneck If . . .”

- You have at least one old refrigerator on your front porch.
- You can entertain yourself for more than 15 minutes with a fly swatter.
- Your boat has not left the driveway in 15 years.
- You burn your yard rather than mow it.
- The Salvation Army declines your furniture.
- You offer to give someone the shirt off your back and they don’t want it.
- You have the local taxidermist on speed dial.
- You come back from the dump with more than you took.
- You keep a can of Raid on the kitchen table.
- You keep flea and tick soap in the shower.
- You’ve been involved in a custody fight over a hunting dog.
- You have a rag for a gas cap.
- Your house doesn’t have curtains, but your truck does.
- You wonder how service stations keep their restrooms so clean.
- Your lifetime goal is to own a fireworks stand.
- You have a complete set of salad bowls and they all say “Cool Whip” on the side.
- Your working TV sits on top of your non-working TV.
- You’ve used your ironing board as a buffet table.
- You’ve used a toilet brush to scratch your back.
- You think fast food is hitting a deer at 65 mph.
- Your richest relative buys a new house and you have to help take the wheels off.
- You think potted meat on a saltine is an hors d’oeuvre.
- There is a stuffed opossum mounted in your home.
- You consider a bug-zapper quality entertainment.
- Directions to your house include “turn off the paved road.”
- Your family tree does not fork.
- Your wife’s hairdo has been ruined by a ceiling fan at least once.
- Your mother has ever been involved in a fistfight at a high school game.
- You’ve ever bar-be-cued Spam on the grill.
- You’ve ever worn a tube-top to a wedding.
- You think beef jerky and moon pies are two of the major food groups.
- You have more than two brothers named Bubba or Junior.
- Your father encourages you to quit school because Larry has an opening at the lube rack.
- You think the Styrofoam cooler is the greatest invention of all time.
- You had a toothpick in your mouth when your wedding pictures were taken.

Now, admit it. You feel better already, don’t you?!

But if not, just to punctuate Powell’s list, let me add one more for good measure.

The attached photo is of an authentic redneck houseboat that I took with my very own smartphone camera while on vacation in Alabama last year! Honestly, you cannot make this stuff up!

HUMOR SOURCE:
https://www.baylor.edu/content/services/document.php/66830.pdf.

SCRIPTURE SOURCE:
https://biblehub.com/proverbs/17-22.htm.

ALL FOR US!

8/6/2018

On occasion, I use an illustration in one of my messages that seems to resonate with our church family far more than usual. This happened this past Sunday when I was talking about what the apostle Paul had to say in the first chapter of his New Testament Letter to the Ephesians (chapter 1, verses 5-8):

5God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure. 6So we praise God for the glorious grace he has poured out on us who belong to his dear Son. 7He is so rich in kindness and grace that he purchased our freedom with the blood of his Son and forgave our sins. 8He has showered his kindness on us, along with all wisdom and understanding.

The particular illustration I used was an attempt to illustrate how being adopted into God’s family entitles us to untold riches in His grace. It came from a book titled Practice Resurrection that was written by Eugene Peterson.

Though now retired, Dr. Peterson was for many years the James M. Houston Professor of Spiritual Theology at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia. In addition, he also served as founding pastor of Christ Our King Presbyterian Church in Bel Air, Maryland. Although best known for his widely acclaimed paraphrase of the Bible titled The Message, he has written over thirty other books as well.

Given that so many people commented on the story and/or requested its origin, I thought it best to re-post it here today along with its original source. The story as related by Dr. Peterson reads thus:

Fred and Cheryl went to Haiti 25 years ago to pick up a child they had adopted. Addie was five-years-old. Her parents had been killed in a traffic accident that left her without a family. As she walked across the tarmac to board the plane, the tiny orphan reached up and slipped her hands into the hands of her new parents whom she had just met. Later they told us of this "birth" moment, how the innocent, fearless trust expressed in that physical act of grasping their hands seemed almost as miraculous as the times their two sons slipped out of the birth canal 15 and 13 years earlier.

That evening, back home in Arizona, they sat down to their first supper together with their new daughter. There was a platter of pork chops and a bowl of mashed potatoes on the table. After the first serving, the two teenage boys kept refilling their plates. Soon the pork chops had disappeared and the potatoes were gone. Addie had never seen so much food on one table in her whole life. Her eyes were big as she watched her new brothers, Thatcher and Graham, satisfy their ravenous teenage appetites.

Fred and Cheryl noticed that Addie had become very quiet and realized that something was wrong—agitation … bewilderment … insecurity? Cheryl guessed that it was the disappearing food. She suspected that because Addie had grown up hungry, when food was gone from the table she might be thinking that it would be a day or more before there was more to eat. Cheryl had guessed right. She took Addie's hand and led her to the bread drawer and pulled it out, showing her a back-up of three loaves. She took her to the refrigerator, opened the door, and showed her the bottles of milk and orange juice, the fresh vegetables, jars of jelly and jam and peanut butter, a carton of eggs, and a package of bacon.

She took her to the pantry with its bins of potatoes, onions, and squash, and the shelves of canned goods—tomatoes and peaches and pickles. She opened the freezer and showed Addie three or four chickens, a few packages of fish, and two cartons of ice cream. All the time she was reassuring Addie that there was lots of food in the house, that no matter how much Thatcher and Graham ate and how fast they ate it, there was a lot more where that came from. She would never go hungry again.

Cheryl didn't just tell her that she would never go hungry again. She showed her what was in those drawers and behind those doors, named the meats and vegetables, placed them in her hands. It was enough. Food was there, whether she could see it or not. Her brothers were no longer rivals at the table. She was home. She would never go hungry again.

What a picture of what God has done for us in Jesus Christ! He has adopted us into His family and He now meets our every need - beyond our wildest dreams! All His riches and all His fullness provided for us as His children! What mercy! What grace! What love! All for us!

SCRIPTURE SOURCE: https://biblehub.com/nlt/ephesians/1.htm.
STORY SOURCE: Eugene Peterson, Practice Resurrection: A Conversation on Growing Up in Christ (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2010), pp. 159-160.
SEE ALSO: https://www.regent-college.edu/faculty/retired/eugene-peterson.
AND: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_H._Peterson.

NOW YOU SEE IT

8/2/2018

Paul Laurence Dunbar was an extremely gifted writer who lived from 1872-1906. Sadly, he died far too young at a mere thirty-three years old from tuberculosis, for which there was no known cure at the time.

Nevertheless, in his relatively short life span, he still managed to produce thirteen volumes of poetry (containing over 420 poems), three short story collections, and four full-length novels.

He is best remembered today for the colorful language, conversational tone, and brilliant rhetorical structure contained in his wide body of work.

By way of a sample, his poem titled “Dreams” contains the following profound lines:

What dreams we have and how they fly
Like rosy clouds across the sky;
Of wealth, of fame, of sure success,
Of love that comes to cheer and bless;
And how they wither, how they fade,
The waning wealth, the jilting jade -
The fame that for a moment gleams,
Then flies forever, - dreams, ah - dreams!

Impressed? So am I! But you and I are by no means the first to be struck by the talents of this gifted author. His home in Dayton, Ohio has been turned into a museum and is open to the public.

Years ago, having visited Dunbar’s home, Henry Simon, of Belleville, Illinois, shared the following story about what happened after the famed poet died.

According to Simon…

Dunbar’s mother left his room exactly as it was on the day of his death. At the desk of this brilliant man was his final poem, handwritten on a pad. After his mother died, her friends discovered that Paul Laurence Dunbar's last poem had been lost forever. Because his mother had made his room into a shrine and not moved anything, the sun had bleached the ink in which the poem was written until it was invisible. The poem was gone. If we stay in mourning, we lose so much of life.

As of late, I have reflected much upon the admonition Simon applies to this story. And I have decided that he is right: “If we stay in mourning, we lose so much of life.” To this end, my sisters and I have now met and begun the process of sorting through my mother’s estate.

To be sure, her house is full of sentimental bric-a-brac. And after thirty years of memories there, the temptation is to preserve it as a sort of shrine to one who meant so much to us.

But this is not what life is about. Life is meant to be lived, not only in the past, but also in the present, and above all, in the future. This is what mother would have wanted. And we honor her memory best, not by enshrining the material things she left behind, but by taking the values she instilled within us and transplanting them into own children and grandchildren.

I do not know what the world was deprived of in the gradual fading and eventual loss of Dunbar’s last poem. But my suspicion is that it may have contained some of his most thought-provoking and challenging words.

And this thought has motivated me to find the best my mother had to offer - be it her words of wisdom or her Godly example or her spiritual provision - and then to make it available to all who would embrace it. And my mom had much to offer.

You see, God blessed my mother with a creative spirit. She could draw, paint, write, and sew - to name but a few of her talents. I see now, more clearly than ever, what a blessing it was to have all that talent being expended in the home where I grew up.

And for this reason, I have been so excited to discover and assemble all the myriad things she created, from sketches to oil paintings to poems to volumes of stories about her life and experiences penned by hand expressly for my sisters and me.

I hope that the Lord will allow me the time and opportunity to complete the task of assembling, editing, and making available for a much wider audience this tremendous treasure trove of material.

Doing so is the best way I know of to honor my mother’s memory and insure that her life continues to matter. More importantly, doing so will allow me to glorify the God who created her and endowed her with the talent she so abundantly displayed.

SOURCES:

HENRY SIMON ILLUSTRATION: Available widely online. See, for instance: http://higherpraise.com/illustrations/grief.htm.

PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR MUSEUM SITE:
https://www.ohiohistory.org/visit/museum-and-site-locator/paul-laurence-dunbar-house.

SEE ALSO:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Laurence_Dunbar.

QUITTING TIME!

7/30/2018

As many of my regular readers will know, I have been away from my blog for the past few days. This is because I spent this past week on vacation sorting through my mother’s belongings with my sisters. Obviously, such an endeavor brought back a flood of memories related to this precious lady, who passed away the last week of May.

While we are not yet ready to dispense with everything, the time had certainly come to begin the process of thinning out certain things - especially everyday items such as clothes, shoes, and the like…

I must confess that I left much of this to the decision of my sisters. I myself am more interested in written records. And it was on those that I focused. My mom was an avid reader. She also had the knack of writing; and had written down much of her life story. Had she come along under different circumstances, or at least in a different time, she might well have been a novelist. Either way, she wrote down her life story in numerous vignettes. And for this, I will be eternally grateful.

Among her other documents, in addition to financial records and other such legal papers, we found many personal keepsakes. It is one such document, a novelty version of a QUIT CLAIM DEED, that particularly caught my attention…

As you can see, I have taken the liberty of removing what was written in. But it was clear from what had been written that she had given to the Lord not just her material possessions, but also every heavy burden she had carried with her from her past, including painful failures, broken dreams, and personal regrets. To her credit, she also gave to the Lord all of her hopes, dreams, and aspirations for the future.

And she obviously meant this; for while he listed herself as the earthly aforesaid items, under the witnesses she had listed Almighty God, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit.

As I sat reading this, I felt the tears well up inside me. Being her child, I knew many of the past items of which she now desired to let go. I also knew all too well the many hopes and dreams and aspirations she harbored. And now, I knew above all else that she had entrusted these things to God!

But I knew one other thing as well. I knew the reality was that I had not yet done what she had done – at least not completely. There were things in my own life that I had not yet given wholly over to God. I needed to do so. And I resolved to do so as well. Suffice to say that a son has now followed the lead of his Godly mother.

What about you? Of what do you need to let go? What part of your past, present, or future do you need to give completely over to God? Why not follow the admonition of Holy Scripture (in the First New Testament Letter to Peter, chapter 5, verse 7) and cast all your cares upon the One God Who truly cares for you?!

To my knowledge, the document that I cleaned up with white out and then inserted above is not copyrighted. I pasted it in as a simple j-peg file. Therefore, why not simply print it off right now and fill it in?! Why not sign a QUIT CLAIM DEED of all your past regrets, present worries, and future fears over to God this very moment?! Trust me... You’ll be very glad that you did!

SCRIPTURE REFERENCE: http://biblehub.com/1_peter/5-7.htm

PORTRAIT OF A FATHER’S LOVE

7/22/2018

Dr. J. Allan Peterson once shared the following story:

I read about a small boy who was consistently late coming home from school. His parents warned him one day that he must be home on time that afternoon, but nevertheless he arrived later than ever. His mother met him at the door and said nothing.

At dinner that night, the boy looked at his plate. There was a slice of bread and a glass of water. He looked at his father's full plate and then at his father, but his father remained silent. The boy was crushed.

The father waited for the full impact to sink in, then quietly took the boy's plate and placed it in front of himself. He took his own plate of meat and potatoes, put it in front of the boy, and smiled at his son.

When that boy grew to be a man, he said, "All my life I've known what God is like by what my father did that night."

May we always remember what our Heavenly Father did for us in giving his Son, Jesus Christ to redeem us! He took what was on our plate, sin and all its consequences, and exchanged it for what was on His plate, grace and all its consequences!

NOTE: Dr. J. Allan Petersen first began traveling in the mid 1940s as an evangelist, speaking in churches throughout the U.S. and Canada. Out of his concern for people and his vision for the church came a focus on strengthening marriage, family life, and relationships.

In 1975, he conceived and directed the Continental Congress on the Family, bringing together some 2,500 leaders to address marriage and family issues and also to help form national strategies to support and encourage marriages and families, as well as to help prepare future leaders in this area of ministry.

This in turn led to his publishing of a family information and enrichment bulletin which he called Happiness is Home Made. Later, its name was changed to Better Families.

At the time of his retirement, Dr. Peterson had traveled extensively, having spoken to over 9,000 audiences in over 50 countries. Along the way, he managed to speak to religious leaders at the White House and help found the Family Research Council.

In 1995, the International Family Congress awarded him its Lifetime Achievement Award for his dedication to preserving the Christian family. Dr. Petersen went home to be with the Lord in October of 2000.

SOURCES: https://bible.org/illustration/father-god
and http://betterrelationships.com/about/history.html.

DR. PETERSON’S BOOKS INCLUDE:

The Myth of Greener Grass: Affair Proof Your Marriage
For Men Only: The Dynamics of Being a Man and Succeeding at It
For Women Only: The Fine Art of Being a Woman (with Evelyn R. Petersen)
The Art of Being a Man
Your Reactions Are Showing
Before You Marry
First Aid for Faltering Families
The Marriage Affair: The Family Counselor
Conquering Family Stress
For Families Only: Answering the Tough Questions Parents Ask
Hi Fidelity Marriage

Cf.: https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/27605.J_Allan_Petersen.

THE GRAND SCHEME

7/20/2018

My wife and I have now been blessed with two precious little grandsons. They are both under the age of two; and each one is busily living every new day to the full as he discovers all about life and the world around him.

What is more, a third grandson is now on the way. Soon, we will have three rambunctious little fellows, lovingly inserting themselves and their agendas into our lives. And we welcome this! For in the short span of less than two years, we have come to see just what a blessing it is to become grandparents.

In fact, we agree that we have only now begun to appreciate the significance of the old bumper sticker that says, “If I had known grandchildren were so much fun, I would have had them first!”

Our grandchildren are indeed a blessing to us. But my wife and I also agree that, in return, we hope to be a blessing to our grandchildren as well. For they benefit from us every bit as much as we do from them!

I recently came across some interesting research regarding the mutual impact and value that grandchildren and grandparents have upon and give to one another. It is based on interviews with grandchildren and grandparents; and it clearly indicates that children need their grandparents and vice-versa.

I quote:

“The study shows that the bond between grandparents and grandchildren is second in emotional power and influence only to the relationship between parents and children. Grandparents affect the lives of their grandchildren, for good or ill, simply because they exist.

Unfortunately, a lot of grandparents ignore the fact, to the emotional deprivation of the young. Of the children studied, only five percent reported close, regular contact with at least one grandparent.

The vast majority see their grandparents only infrequently, not because they live too far away, but because the grandparents have chosen to remain emotionally distant.

These children appear to be hurt, angry, and very perceptive about their grandparents. One of them said, “I’m just a charm on grandma’s bracelet.”

Positive roles that grandparents play are caretaker, storyteller, family historian, mentor, wizard, confidant, negotiator between child and parent, and model for the child’s own old age.

When a child has a strong emotional tie to a grandparent, he enjoys a kind of immunity—he doesn’t have to perform for grandparents the way he must for his parents, peers and teacher.

The love of grandparents comes with no behavioral strings attached. The emotional conflicts that often occur naturally between children and parents do not exist between grandparents and grandchildren.”

In light of all this, there is one more thing upon which that my wife and I agree. Such findings remind us that we must be intentional in building strong relationships with our grandchildren. We plan, therefore, to do just that! And we trust the fruit of this effort will manifest itself in our relationship with each of our grandchildren, irrespective of how many of them with which we will eventually be blessed.

In his Second New Testament Letter to Timothy (chapter 1, verse 5), the Apostle Paul reminds his young protégé in the ministry that the faith that now lives in him first lived in his mother, and before that in his grandmother. He then challenges Timothy (in verse 6) to fan into flame that which is within him as well!

The greatest blessing my wife and I will ever have is to live to see the same faith in God that now lives in us, and in our own children, spring up in our grandchildren as well! Accordingly, we accept the God-given responsibility to help foster that.

And we pray that, having embraced such faith in God themselves, our children and grandchildren (and should the Lord tarry His coming, even our great-grandchildren and beyond) will also embrace that same responsibility to pass their faith along.

SOURCES:
STATISTICS: https://bible.org/illustration/children-need-grandparents. Here, the original source cited is the September, 1981 edition of Youthletter Magazine. This particular publication is apparently now out of print; but it appears to have been a monthly 8-page newsletter originally published by Evangelical Ministries. Numerous articles dating from various back issues from this magazine are referenced online.
SCRIPTURE: http://biblehub.com/niv/2_timothy/1.htm.

GOOD READS

7/16/2018

I will forever be indebted to a favorite college professor of mine, who, years ago, taught me always to prepare and complete a summer reading list. With varying degrees of faithfulness, and success, I have followed his admonition ever since.

To be sure, most every reader has a selection of “beach reads” ready for vacation.  I have been little different down through the years.

In part, because the whole purpose of a vacation is to get away, relax, and clear the mind, I have always included adventure and thriller fiction novels on my list. These allow my mind the opportunity to escape and focus on things other than the everyday matters with which I must deal on a regular basis.

I am often asked who my favorite authors are. In this particular genre, at least, they include the likes of authors such as Steve Berry, Michael Crichton, Clive Cussler, Ian Fleming, Raymond Khoury, and James Patterson, to name but a few.

Through the adventures of their various protagonists, I have travelled the world vicariously.  Along the way, I have fought off man-eating beasts, salvaged long lost treasures, defeated sinister villains, won the hearts of fair damsels, and generally saved the world!

As of late, however, I have become somewhat convicted about my summer reading lists. The simple truth is that there are so many classics of yesteryear that I have not yet read that I can hardly justify reading many more modern tales, no matter how inviting, until I have checked off some of their more worthy predecessors.

Accordingly, I have now spent the better part of June and July of this year plowing through such adventure classics as Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (first published in 1719), James Fennimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans (first published in 1826), and Alexander Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo (first published in 1844).

And what I have discovered in the process is just how rewarding this venture has been. For I have found the same, if not a deeper, level of reader satisfaction in these older works as in any of the newer ones.

And I have found something more as well. Early western novelists, such as Defoe, Cooper, and Dumas, did not have modern technology and machinery with which to wow their readers. There were no airplanes, no trains, no automobiles, no machine guns, no computers, etc...

They had, therefore, to develop intricate plots, exotic settings, and, above all, rich characters who were deep in quality, complexity, and value.

What is more, they used these articulate creations to communicate and underscore fundamental truths about the world and the nature of we who inhabit it. In short, their purpose was not merely to entertain; but also to educate, and above all, to inculcate.

For their finely crafted tales serve to underscore the fundamental values that have made men and women worthy of admiration and emulation ever since our species first began to relate tales of heroism to one another.

In this regard, Defoe's book is actually the story of a man who comes to know and rely upon the God of the Bible as his protector and provider.  Cooper's work is a gentle reminder of the temptation to confuse man's will with the will of this very same God. And Dumas' work is a cautionary tale about the seductive, though ultimately destructive, power of revenge when undertaken by a mere man, given that revenge is the purview of this God alone.

Albert Camus once said that a novel is never anything but a philosophy put into images. If this is true, then the classics of western civilization’s fiction are images worthy of our inquiry and investigation. And for this reason, therefore, as you prepare to go off on vacation, I ask not, “What’s in your wallet?”, but rather “What’s in your book bag?”

NOTE: And excellent blog post on the value of reading fiction for believers can be found here: https://www.gotquestions.org/Bible-fiction.html.

TELL ME A STORY…

7/12/2018

Famed preacher Charles Spurgeon once said that an illustration is like a window for the soul. In my own experience, I have certainly found this to be the case. In truth, people soon forget my sermon outlines, as well as the individual points within them, but they seem to long remember the stories I tell.

In the days before the internet, other than my own experience, about all I had to draw upon as a speaker and writer for illustration purposes was either newspapers, magazines, and/or a few books devoted to the topic. For this reason, as a young preacher, I was particularly thankful for the works of men like Walter B. Knight.

After pastoring for decades in the Chicago area, he felt led back in the 1950's to assemble a collection of sermon illustrations, then indexed them, and finally published them in book form. He later updated this volume several times, before finally producing his last version, which attained a length of over 750 pages, containing thousands and thousands of subject-indexed illustrations.

Such a collection was a veritable gold mine for young pastors such as I was when just beginning my ministry. And I still occasionally draw upon Knight’s material even today. For instance, I was recently addressing the subject of ascertaining God’s will for one’s life, and then being willing to embrace it once we do, when I found myself somewhat stumped as to how to effectively illustrate my point.

I soon came upon this wonderful story in Knight’s material that helped me to illustrate how we so often refuse to embrace what we know to be God’s will, preferring instead to pursue the way we desire to go.

An old Scottish woman went from home to home across the countryside selling thread, buttons, and shoestrings. When she came to an unmarked crossroad, she would toss a stick into the air and go in the direction the stick pointed when it landed.

One day, however, she was seen tossing the stick up several times. "Why do you toss the stick more than once?" someone asked. "Because," replied the woman, "it keeps pointing to the left, and I want to take the road on the right." She then dutifully kept throwing the stick into the air until it pointed the way she wanted to go!

If you are a communicator in need of assistance in finding stories that help you better convey your message, then I highly recommend any or all of these basic works by Walter B. Knight, easily obtainable on used bookstore websites all across the country.

Knight’s Treasury of Illustrations.
Knight’s Treasury of 2000 Illustrations.
Three Thousand Illustrations for Christian Service.
Knight’s Up to the Minute Illustrations.
Knight’s Master Book of 4000 Illustrations.
Knight’s Master book of New Illustrations.

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