Presby-Musings

A little over fourteen years ago from today, I was face down on the floor of a small Pentecostal church in Nashville, Tenessee having a crisis of faith.   I was leading a youth mission trip that summer.  I had nearly completed my seminary degree and was about to begin the process of becoming an ordained minister, but I had come to believe I'd made a mistake.   I just knew  I wasn't cut out to be a pastor.  I wasn't good enough.  I had doubts about significant chunks of the Bible.  I struggled to love people.  I really didn't like church all that much.  And I had baggage--lots and lots of baggage.   As I lay there on the floor, inhaling the musty smell of old carpet and dust, a story from the Bible came into my thoughts--a story from the book of Genesis where the patriarch Jacob wrestled with an angel in the middle of the night.   Jacob had a lot of baggage, too.  He'd betrayed his family, broken c...

Today we are going to be exploring the third of a five part sermon series for the month of January--a series we've entitled Foundations.  The basic idea behind this series is pretty simple:  We want to explore what we need in order to have the best foundation to step off in the right direction for 2017.   As we learned the first week in this series, it's important to take a good first step in the right direction because--as Pastor Andy Stanley wrote in his fine book The Principle of The Path --"It's your direction, not your intention that determines your destination."  In other words, it doesn't matter how good your intentions are, if you step off in the wrong direction, you won't get where you want to go.  The last two weeks we've learned some valuable lessons.  We learned that we need some solid foundations stones--faith and trust to be precise.  Today we're going to be focusing on the foundation stone of Hope.  I want you to remember o...

One of my favorite stories in the Bible is the story of Jacob wrestling with the angel of the Lord from Genesis chapter 32:22-31.  Jacob finds himself on the edge in more ways than one.  It's the edge of night in the hours just before dawn.  It's also the edge of a precipice Jacob had been avoiding for years.   The brother he betrayed years before is pursuing him--perhaps to kill him and take revenge.  His family has gone on before him, and Jacob decides to stay behind and in the dark finds himself wrestling with a divine being.  The wrestling match goes on all night until the morning when the angel demands that Jacob let him go.  "I am not letting go until you bless me," Jacob cries out.  "I'm not letting go until you bless me."  All of his life Jacob had felt like a fraud.  He'd done underhanded things, betrayed family members, acted in his own self-interests, and somehow managed to amass a fortune in the process.   But a...

This is the second week of daily devotions reflecting on the sermon series that I'm currently preaching, "Red: Understanding the Hard Sayings of Jesus."  This week we are reflecting on what it means to recognize the Holy Spirit working, moving, creating and inspiring in the world around us.   This is one of my favorite stories in the Bible from Genesis 28:10-17:  10 Jacob left Beersheba and set out for Harran. 11 When he reached a certain place, he stopped for the night because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones there, he put it under his head and lay down to sleep. 12 He had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. 13 There above it stood the Lord, and he said: “I am the Lord, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac. I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying. 14 Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth...

U All good things must come to an end. Have you ever heard that before?  Maybe you've even repeated it on occasion. Probably when something good was coming to an end. Recently, my wife and I had the opportunity to get a way for a couple of days--just the two of us.  We relaxed, sat by the beach, wandered around Key West, watched the sunset, ate unbelievable meals, slept in, read some books, laid in a hammock... What? I should tell you everything? At any rate, as we came to the end of our time away we both found ourselves saying over and over again---"just one more day... if we had just one more day..." I remember the last football game of my oldest son's high school career.  He re-injured his surgically repaired shoulder throwing a forty yard touchdown pass, and then a few plays later got concussed on a running play.  We all knew that it was over.  His season had ended, and a promising football career with it.  I remember my wife and I sitting...

This week we are beginning the first of a three part series, featuring " I Am Second ," a unique program that is designed to help connect people to Jesus in a very earthy, messy, awesome way. So what does it mean to say "I Am Second?"  For me it means that I am constantly being reminded of my place in line when it comes to the things that truly matter.  It's a new way of knowing and being known---which is the fundamental desire of all human beings, really.  It's a new way of living life to the fullest, free from the burdens of doubt, fear and the expectations of others.  It's a new way of being defined by the relationship we have with Jesus... not by religion. Jesus didn't come to live, die and be raised from the dead to form a religion.  I know that sounds kind of heretical to say---but there you go.  I have a t-shirt that has the word "Heretic"emblazoned on the front of it.  I was wearing it when I met Andy Stanley , the pastor of on...