faithrunner

Advent is the season set apart to prepare our hearts for the coming of the Christ Child. We look back at his first coming ( Luke 2 ), and we look forward to his second coming . ( Revelation 19:11-18 ) It is to be a sacred season in which we daily spend time with the Spirit and Word and the community of faith to see the hand of God in history to bring about the birth of incarnate God and the return as the risen, triumphant King . But who has time for all that? Our culture has swallowed up the intent of this season and has seduced us to buy stuff and go into debt to give things people don't want to people we don't like--and those we do. And, we have gladly said yes to the "little g" god, consumerism. Check out my friend, Jim Denison's blog , " What did Jesus think of Black Friday ." The numbers and stories will stagger you. (You will want to subscribe to his daily email, too. It's good stuff.) He has pointed out the absurdity of our action...

If you have followed this blog for long, you know that Legacy Church hosts an annual Thanksgiving dinner for the students and their families connected to Legacy's English Language Program . Every year God reveals to us again a peek at heaven recorded in Revelation 7:9-10 : "After this I looked, and there in front of me was a huge crowd of people. They stood in front of the throne and in front of the Lamb. There were so many that no one could count them. They came from every nation, tribe, people and language. They were wearing white robes. In their hands they were holding palm branches. They cried out in a loud voice,    'Salvation belongs to our God,    who sits on the throne.    Salvation also belongs to the Lamb.'" (NIRV; italics mine) (I had concluded The Story that Sunday morning by teaching on The End! You can hear that message here . It was wonderful to get a glimpse of what we had seen in Scripture that morning the same eveni...

After last week's revelations about the goings on at Pen State and Coach Joe Paterno , I have realized again how hard it is to finish well . The older I get, I am more and more grateful for men like Billy Graham , whose recent birthday at 93 and his book, Nearing Home , let me know it IS possible to finish well . But, what about the rest of us? I spoke on this topic this past Sunday at Legacy Church . (If you want to hear that message, you can hear it here .) I highlighted Paul's words to his protege, Timothy, that are recorded in 2 Timothy 4:6-8 . I hope to state with confidence the words he confessed in his last season of life as I finish my race. I have a mentor, Ray Rust , who is 86 now, and with whom I have shared my story and life for over a decade. He moved to the area after retiring as the leader of the South Carolina Baptist Convention. We met at 7th grade B-team basketball game when his grandaughter and my daughter were playing each other. We have been friends si...

Work as Worship This past Sunday at Legacy Church , I told the story of a running partner who told me how she had sent an email to her office inviting the women in it to a small group she led at her church. Her plan backfired when one of her peers scolded her for using company resources for religious use. She admitted that was a mistake, but invited her to the group anyway. She went on to tell me how the girl had come to the group, grown in her curiosity about God, and that she attended regularly now. As we continued to run she told me more stories about how she leveraged her consulting and traveling as a platform for sharing her faith . (She no longer used company email for invitations to her faith activities.) I complemented her for seeing all of her life as a mission field and her network of relationships as her responsibility in serving others in the name of Jesus. She smiled and said, "I guess I'm a missionary with a corporate sponsor." I agreed, and that...

Team Bowen One of the biblical metaphors for how God brings us into right relationship with him is adoption. The picture is the intentional efforts of a loving parent who chooses to pay the price and meet the legal obligations to make a child part of the family . When Paul wrote to the Romans, he used this adoption language to remind them that in Christ they were children of God, which made them not only heirs but co-heirs with Christ! ( Romans 8:14-17 ) God intentionally chose those who trust him to be his adopted children. God paid the price (Jesus' death) and met the legal obligations (The Law) in order for this to happen. Today, those who trust His Son are God's adopted children through Jesus Christ. Adoption of orphans today magnifies this beautiful picture of God's love for us. Brent and Anne-Marie Bowen are in the adoption process currently, and this past weekend I ran with "Team Bowen" at the Chosen Marathon and Half Marathon in New Braunsfel,...

I am finishing up a manuscript that I am writing with my friend, Dr. Norman Blackaby. We have facilitated a PhD seminar for three different cohorts at Dallas Baptist University called Biblical Servant Leadership . As part of the work in the seminar we ask the candidates to write case studies on biblical servant leaders in order to discover that leader's strengths and weaknesses as he or she led. We also look for principles and practices we can apply to current leadership theory and practice. As we guided the seminar we observed the importance of character as a person called by God led and how character squarely centered on his or her relationship with God . Outward appearance, skills, and personality were not enough to lead effectively under God's guidance. Character matters. We also observed that not much had been written about character in leadership studies . So, we decided we would address the need and write something of our own. As we began to talk to the publisher a...

Colonel Qaddafi's Final Hiding Place It strikes me as odd that the two most feared and possibly most powerful dictators of the past twenty years ended their lives being pulled out of a hole in the ground. Makes you wonder if all the power and wealth that they pursued was worth it? Jesus asked the pointed question , "What good will it be for you to gain the whole world, yet forfeit your soul? Or what can you give in exchange for your soul?" ( Matthew 16:26 ) Being drug out of a hole by those who wanted them dead signals to me these two had lost their souls to gain the world.  What did these two dictators really gain by all their efforts if the end of their life's work emerged from a hole in the ground while hiding from those they used to gain what they had?         We will all go into a hole in the ground when we die. My prayer is that it will be after a celebration and eulogy of our lives, not to hide from those who pursue us because we have sol...