A Second ICE Shooting in Minnesota
There is essentially no common ground from which to start unless we start from neither of the two prevailing narratives. As we have before, we will defer to the ongoing legal process to sort these narratives out, and we will intentionally put on a different lens altogether and seek to breathe life into a story so consumed by death and destruction.
One thing is clear: The current approach is clearly not working.
Let’s you and I model the better way outlined above. It will be peculiar, and it is desperately needed.
The Curious Case of the 10th Commandment
Envy seems to be the underlying acceptable sin in the church today. But it is having dire consequences across the world. It is not just a congregant problem, but a pastoral problem just as much. Through these things you can learn to trust God, who made you and has created the best plan for your life.
The Peculiar Way
Nearly every story or happening in your world is immediately accompanied by two competing narratives, and each of them are rooted in some truth and an absolute prohibition on giving any quarter whatsoever to any portion of the other narrative. This is the vicious cycle that is clearly not working, and my friend, it is not working because it is not intended to work. The unstated goal of the entrenched and opposing narratives is to perpetually fuel the outrage industry.
Your approach is different, because it is not only intended to work, it also has the power to work! Your approach is not to disengage and it is not to perpetuate the chaos. It is to break through the chaos with the approach Jesus modeled by engaging cultural in a way that aims for eternal impact rather than temporary conquest.
Hoosiers
As a Jesus follower, you might have been for the Hoosiers or you might have been pulling for the Hurricanes (or perhaps, like me, you were for the Illini—another basketball-first school). No matter your rooting preference, this story lends a prescient reminder about our not-so-glittery past. To put it gently, each of us has a history that is less than stellar. Every one of us has sinned and fallen short of God’s magnificent glory (Rom. 3:23).
But that past doesn’t mark or determine your destiny! No matter how bleak your past, you are only one decision of surrender to Jesus away from the promise of being a child of God!
Icy in Greenland
The eyes of the world are on the icy terrain of Greenland this week, as a bevy of newscentered on U.S. President Donald Trump’s push to obtain U.S. control of the giant island nation. As part of the effort, President Trump announced planned tariffs on European countries that do not back his acquisition proposal. President Trump also wrote to Norway Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre that the decision to award someone else the Nobel Peace Prize is causing him to no longer have “an obligation to think only of Peace.” The prize was awarded to Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, but Machado gave the award to President Trump last week.
The Plan
We refer to the primary mission of Jesus as a “finished work” because there is nothing you or I can do to enhance or diminish the magnitude of it. We have life and the promise of eternity with God not because of anything we have done, but because of the perfection of what Jesus has already done.
Even so, in His abounding and everlasting love and grace, the One true and triune God chose to incorporate you into the earthly stewardship of that finished work. He established the Church—His followers—as the mechanism by which He would be made known.
In other words, He could have chosen any plan or no plan at all, but He chose you as the plan because He wanted you as the plan!
Protestors Disrupt Church Service
Protesters interrupted a worship service at the Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, this week. The disruption was livestreamed by Black Lives Matter Minnesota and caused the service to be canceled. The protestors were objecting to the ongoing operations being conducted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and are believed to have targeted Cities Church because one of its pastors works in a local ICE office. The incident is the latest in an ongoing string of clashes over ICE’s enforcement operations.
On Mission
No matter your resolution—it could be anything from exercising to eating healthier to getting enough sleep—I invite you to pursue it with the following question always in mind:
“Are you on mission?”
What I Learned This Week: What Are You Compounding?
What if you lived with the same intentionality about compounding joy, generosity, and humility as you do about compounding money — and shaped your daily habits around the return you actually want?
Running on Empty
Being a leader means recognizing that you are better when you work and lead from the overflow of life. Working from the overflow of life doesn’t only apply to a leadership scenario. When you work out of an overflow you are a better spouse, a better parent, and generally a better person all around. Practice these steps so that you will up your leadership game wherever you are in life.
Choosing Overstory
You were made for God! This amazing reality does the opposite of dismiss the importance of your understory. To the contrary, it sweeps all of your understory up into the magnificence of His all-encompassing overstory!
Infanticide and Humans’ Pursuit of Perfection
Humankind’s pursuit of perfection on the road to paradise has always turned dark. Often this progressive pursuit has relied on questionable science that leads inevitably toward eugenics and planned breeding that culminates “in the lethal tenets of the Nazi regime.” This quest for perfection continues to reverberate throughout the West today.
What I Learned This Week: When the Words We Use Start Leading Us
What if the soundtrack you’ve been repeating lately isn’t telling the full truth — and the first step toward healthier leadership is paying attention to the words you keep saying?
Spies and Jammed Signals
An enemy force doesn’t have to block an important message in order to render it useless. The enemy merely needs to create enough noise in the environment to distract the recipient for a while. In buying time with distraction, the enemy is able to carry out an attack and be gone before the message is acted upon.
Does this hit close to home for you? It does for me.
Resolved
How about you stop playing the games and go ahead with no New Year’s resolutions this time? It will save some time, energy, and feelings of guilt when you abandon them a few weeks later. However, if you are resolved to make intentional changes to life in the coming year, here are several real-life resolutions that will bring about lasting impact to both you, your family, and the world around you.
What I Learned This Week: When I Deferred Instead of Dealt With It
What if the thing weighing on you most right now isn’t complicated at all — it’s just waiting for you to embrace the awkward and deal with it?
Precious Metals Soaring
As a Jesus follower, your posture toward money, wealth, and material possessions is one of the most important factors in your aim for a vibrant walk with Jesus. That statement might seem a little jarring, but God’s Word repeatedly returns to money matters to determine the health of your heart.
Good, Better, Best
Friend, you have been waiting. You have been longing for the fulfillment of what is promised. Your anticipation has been building. The wait can seem long and the pressure of the building anticipation intense.
But the celebration on the other side of the anticipation will be oh so worth it!
The long-anticipated Savior of the world has come! We celebrate the end of the waiting on Christmas! Death is defeated and the silence is no more! Allow the built-up pressure of your anticipation to burst forth into rejoicing!
Keeping Christ in Christmas
It would be silly to say that every year Christmas sneaks up on the world, but in a weird way it does. Every year. Every single year. Oh, not the celebration of Christmas, but the reality of Christmas seems to sneak up every year. Even in the church it can feel like the underlying reality of God coming as man gets lost in the production of a wonderful Christmas seasonal celebration. Undoubtedly the world is struggling with a broad secularistic move. And it can easily be argued that the church is as well. However, you can lead your family towards keeping Christ in Christmas this year and every year.
What I Learned This Week: When “We’ll Get to It” Becomes the Problem
What if what you need right now isn’t a better system or more clarity — but the courage to commit to the one action you already know needs to happen?