sixfootnineandcounting

  I have always been a tall pastor. I was 5'2" in the 3rd grade! Now I am a tall, divorced pastor after 32 years of marriage. Put that under the category Never Thought That Would Happen In a Million Years.  I know you have categories like that too like Wow I Wish I Didn't Do That or Man That Sucked.  Suffice it to say I didn't see it coming, but here we go! I have failure and shame that goes along with it, of course. Try not to assume what I mean by that! I have been convicted and even sick as a result. A few years ago I lost 100 pounds! You know it's bad when you end up in the fetal position around the toilet in a bathroom stall. My mental health was shot. I was confused. I couldn't be trusted to go the grocery store or manage the finances. I lost my job. That's my "dark night of the soul", but praise God, it wasn't the end of the story. Wherever you are, it's not the end of the story either. Now I'm on a quest to finish my life stro...

I love the story about W.C. Fields. He was on his deathbed reading a bible, which was highly out of character since Fields was an athiest, or at least an agnostic. A friend asked him what he was doing and he famously said, "I'm looking for loopholes" . The good news for W.C. Fields was there is a loophole in the bible. I sure hope he found it. Maybe you are looking for a loophole too. Life has a way of reminding us that we don't measure up. We spend too many days in the dumps because of a failure or guilt that has built up like sludge in an engine. In those rare moments of honesty in personal reflection, most of us realize we fall short on many levels. The news reminds us daily that we are not the only ones. Humanity is falling short. There's a big problem. Any sense of justice says the time will come to pay up for the moral and spiritual failures of life, and make no mistake, we all make regular contributions. The bible does concur with this. Those debts mus...

Greatness.  We all want to be great at something.  Heck, be honest, we want to be great at everything. You know it's true!  Get married and you determine to be the best spouse ever.  The first child comes along and you set out to be the best parent the world has ever seen.  Books will be written about how efficiently and mess free those diapers were changed!  We all set out to be great pet owners with greatly trained pets. The goal is always to have greatly organized closets, filing cabinets and tools. Just the other day, the teacher asked my son who his hero was.  Do you know what he said?  His Mom!  I am happy for her, but I want to be his hero!  I want to be the greatest Dad ever! Applause! Applause! This yearning for greatness is not a new thing for us humans.  It must be how we're wired.  How many self help books are designed for you to achieve greatness in fitness, finance, love and spirituality to name just a few? ...

I had my first MOB (Men of the Bible) class last Wednesday. We met in the “man-cave” (formerly known as room E).  I used an old pizza box as the sign over the door. We are doing a series of lessons on discipleship by Erwin McManus. The first one was called “Advance: Go Unless You Get a No”. This is a great idea! It's biblical too. Jesus makes it pretty clear in the Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20) where He says, “Go and make disciples of all nations” . There is a lot of “go” in Acts 1:8 too. “You shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in Judea and Samaria, and even to the ends of the earth” . Despite all the “go” in the Bible, we sure do a lot of waiting around don't we? Instead of “go unless you get a no”, we usually live more like “wait until you really know”! But besides waiting for Jesus to return, there is not much waiting written into our calling as disciples of Jesus Christ. Should you talk to your neighbor? Go! Should you go on that mission trip? ...

I have recently joked, “I just thought I had to preach the sermons. I didn't know I had to apply them!” The joke came about after having to put the scriptures I preached on, and the applications I made, to the test. For example, recently, I preached two sermons on Psalm 23. The first one was “The Rest of the Story”. It was an application to Psalm 23:1-2, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he restores my soul.” The bottom line in the sermon was that we were made for Sabbath rest. After all, it is in the ten commandments! If we are not resting, we are sinning. If we are resting in the Lord, we are being restored. Ahhh, that sounds good, doesn't it? I got a chance to put this to the test on my recent getaway with my son, Jackson. Just the two of us took a week to go hiking and camping along the Appalachian Trail. We hiked 20 rugged miles. We didn't shower. We got bug bi...

A number of people of asked me about how to listen to my sermons online. Just click on the title of this post, or on the link below, to check them out. Feel free to tell me what you think! Preaching Podcasts in iTunes