Lovin' Tellin' The Story

This past Sunday evening, May 29th, I was able to witness something that I've always wanted to see in person...a NASCAR race. That's right, my wife, her two brothers and I went to the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway. I've always been sort of a mild fan of NASCAR. I grew up being a Richard Petty fan because, well, he's "the King" and who can't appreciate a guy that sports a feathered cowboy hat. Then there's the whole premise behind NASCAR. Take a "stock" car and fill its engine compartment with a massive V-8 engine, install only as much exhaust hardware as is absolutely necessary and drive it around a track as fast as you can. Aside from the obvious environmental impact, I can't find anything wrong with this sport. As soon as the green flag was waved and forty-some cars roared to life and passed our seats in one huge pack I knew it was going to be an unforgettable experience. One cannot truly appreciate how loud these cars are

Charm is deceitful and beauty is vain, But a woman who fears the Lord, she shall be praised . Proverbs 31:30 Tonight my wife has been asked to speak to a group of Christian girls on the issues of dating, purity, relationships, etc. As part of that, the youth pastor of this church asked if I would write a letter to the group of young women from a guy's point of view. Now, I can't say as I remember ever having written a letter to a group of teenage girls but I do have some pretty strong feelings about the way our culture has portrayed love, marriage and particularly women. So, what I would like to do in this post is reproduce for you some of this letter. I may add some here and subtract some there but I want this to be my letter to all the Christian, young ladies out there. What I want to do, through this letter, is share some things from a “guys” point of view because it’s no secret that we see things a little differently than you ladies do. You may think that all we

Photo courtesy of idono One of my hobbies that I have recently come to enjoy more and more is amateur radio. I've been licensed since 1997 when I was a junior in high school but haven't really made use of it until just now. A few weeks ago I passed the test to upgrade my license so that I can operate on the frequencies that allow me to talk to people all over the world from right here in my home. Now, you may be thinking, "Christian, what does that have to do with spiritual matters?" Well, honestly, radio has very little to do with spiritual matters. That is, until it teaches us a lesson that is far more convicting than my comfort-minded heart likes. You see, hearing and talking to people around the world via "ham" radio is not as simple as picking up the phone, dialing their number and talking away. You have to tune into the correct frequency, hope that you can hear them, hope that they can hear you and hope with all your heart that the signal doesn'

Photo courtesy of rforkel This past Sunday Andrea and I planned to go to the 10:00am service at our church rather than the 8:30am service that we normally attend. This allowed us the opportunity to watch Andy Stanley preach during the "In Touch Ministries" broadcast on TV. On this particular day he was preaching out of the book of Acts, specifically 4:29 where the disciples pray; And now, Lord, take note of their threats, and grant that your bond-servants may speak Your word with all boldness. If you want to watch the entire sermon, and I highly recommend it, you can find it here . What really stood out to me hit me between the eyes was Stanley's point that these early followers of Christ prayed for "boldness," and they got it. This has nothing to do with how God answers prayer. It has everything to do with what the disciples prayed for . Things only got worse for me when he began to explain how we typically pray in our culture. He says it often sounds

According to the stats for "Lovin' Tellin' The Story" we have broken 1,000 views! It may not be much in the grand scheme of blogging but it is a milestone for me. Thank you all so much for reading this blog. I truly hope that our love of telling about Christ will help people along the journey of life towards His Kingdom. Please continue to read, comment and share the blog with others because my goal is to reach people with the Gospel, build up the body of Christ and bring glory and honor to the Father. Godspeed, Christian

If you say go we will go If you say wait we will wait If you say step out on the water and they say it can’t be done We’ll fix our eyes on you and we will come Chorus: Your ways (Your ways, Your ways) are higher than our ways And the plans that You have laid are good and true If You call us to the fire You will not withdraw Your hand We’ll gaze into the flames and look for You This is one of my favorite songs and I just love the imagery that this particular video gives it with the scenes from The End of the Spear . There are so many sermons and blog posts that could come from the lyrics of this song and it may be that I draw on it again some other time. However, today I just want to focus on the second line because it may be the most difficult;  If you say wait, we will wait.   I have found, in my life, that I am more than willing to have God say "go." Every year when we prepare to go on our annual mission trip to Jamaica I am filled with anticipation about what G

But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, will He not much more clothe you? You of little faith! Matthew 6:30 Jesus has a way of really hitting us where it hurts. Of course, being omniscient helps when it comes to delivering verbal sucker punches but it still amazes me that His words from 2000 years ago are still applicable to my life today. It is truly as if He were saying them to me. In this particular passage from Matthew Jesus is addressing the issue of anxiety and He begins very bluntly, For this reason I say to you, do not be worried about your life. "Do not be worried about my life? Have you seen what I'm going through? Do you know what kind of pressure I'm under? Have you see our bank account balance? Do not be worried? Yeah, right!" The simple answer to all of these questions is "yes." Jesus, ergo God, knows all of those things. He knows exactly what your situation is and yet He sti

It could be that this is the last blog post I'm ever able to make, and I'll tell you why. According to some, tomorrow, May 21st, will be Judgement Day. Now I don't want to get into all the details about how Harold Camping and the good folks over at WeCanKnow.com are deceiving thousands, or perhaps millions of people. If you would like to read a very good piece about it follow this link to the blog of Paul Jenkins and see his comments. What I want to focus on today is the idea of false prophets, something that Paul brings to light in his post as well. While Camping and his crowd certainly represent the most bold and visible version of a false prophet, he is but one among many in this world and we need to be discerning enough to identify them. First of all let me back up and discuss what a prophet is, and then we can move into discerning what a prophet isn't. I mean, if we know what the genuine article looks like it will be far easier to pick out the phony. A prophet,

God does not keep a man immune from trouble; He says - "I will be with him in trouble. " Oswald Chambers, My Utmost For His Highest (May 19). "God does not keep a man immune from trouble." Those are some bold words and hard words to swallow by Mr. Chambers. Not only that, but when placed on the backdrop of the "Prosperity Gospel" it sounds downright blasphemous. If the foundation of your belief is that when you accept Christ God will bless you financially, physically, in real estate, and with the car of your dreams, hearing that He does not keep us from our trials is more than a small fly in the ointment. Sadly, far too many people in America, and perhaps around the world, believe that coming to Christ means salvation, not just from eternity in torment, but from the trials and struggles of this life. The witness of the Gospels and the epistles of the New Testament could not paint a more different picture than that. In fact, I would say that the entire

Well, I've changed the layout of the blog yet again. Something about the last update just wasn't working for me so I've reworked the design. I can't promise that this will be the last time. In fact, I would be willing to bet it WILL NOT be the last time I change around the ol' blog. Hopefully this latest evolution is more appealing. I think it gives it a slightly "cleaner" look. Comments and feedback are welcome but I can't promise I'll heed any of it :-). Thanks for looking and I hope you enjoy the posts! Godspeed, Christian

The Great Auditorium in Ocean Grove from Wikipedia Sometimes I just have to wonder if there will come a time when the American people have had enough of the American Civil Liberties Union, better known as the ACLU. Of course, that would mean that the American people would have to have had enough of suing each other for anything under the sun. You know, that may have become the new "American Dream"; live long enough to sue someone for something completely absurd and live off the settlement for the rest of your life. "Why your honor, of course seeing my neighbor run over fluffy caused $3 million worth of mental trauma to my family and I." I want to say at the outset that if this post sounds like a rant that is because it is, but who knows, I may calm down by the end of it. What sparked this post was an article on Fox News about the ACLU threatening legal action against a New Jersey high school  that holds its graduation ceremony in a large, Christian owned, audit

Photo from foxnews.com So I pulled up foxnews.com this morning and this article was there staring me down. It seems that Stephen Hawking, who is arguably the smartest man in the world, has determined that there is no Heaven. Fox News: Hawking Says there is no Heaven. After relating the human brain to a supercomputer he says this,   There is no heaven or afterlife for broken-down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark. I will admit that the article was short and did not go into any detail as to how Mr. Hawking came to the conclusion that there is no Heaven so it is impossible for me to address his actual argument. Now that I think about it though, even if the article did give his reasoning I'm not sure I would be able to respond to it because of the simple fact that...I'm not a theoretical physicist! At any rate it did bring a thought to mind that I think applies here.That thought is about wisdom and how a persons degree of wisdom is not directl

Depth of mercy! Can there be mercy still reserved for me? Can my God his wrath forbear, me, the chief of sinners, spare?  Charles Wesley I want to begin this post with a simple question, "How deep is God's grace and mercy?" Perhaps another way of stating it is, "Are there some sins beyond the redeeming reach of Christ?" The verse that immediately comes to everyone's mind is Mark 3:29 which says, but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin. Now there is much speculation and debate about what this verse means and questions about how exactly one blasphemes the Holy Spirit. I don't want to get into all those details here 1) because that is not the point of this post and 2) I don't have clear answers to give myself. What I will say is this, I believe that if you are worried about having blasphemed the Holy Spirit...you probably haven't. Why do I say that? Simply because the Holy Spirit

Photo courtesy of cdw0107 It should be no surprise to anyone in the United States that there has been an extraordinary amount of severe weather over the past month or so. Here in North Carolina we had a tornado outbreak last month that set a new record. The last that I heard there were 26 confirmed tornadoes on ONE day. A number of these storms rated an F3 on the Fujita scale, which qualifies as a "severe tornado" with wind speed between 158-206 mph. Hundreds of homes were destroyed and thousands of people are still dealing with the damage these storms have caused. There was a similar, and perhaps more severe, outbreak in Alabama and now people are dealing with massive flooding along the Mississippi River. In addition to these natural disasters we can add to the list the earthquake in Japan and even look back to hurricane Katrina in 2005. No matter when or where these disasters take place there are always haunting and painful questions about God's role in them. Usuall