Presby-Musings

As we approach the season of Thanksgiving, I have been thinking more and more about generosity, and it's inextricable connection to following Jesus.    Recently, I read a thirty-two year old quote from Apple co-founder Steve Jobs.  In 1985, he was being interviewed and delivered the following intensely personal revelation: "My favorite things in life don't cost any money. It's really clear that the most precious resource we all have is time.  As it is, I pay a price by not having much of a personal life."  Jobs was notoriously driven to succeed.  He was known for working hopelessly long hours, and relentlessly pursuing perfection.  Jobs turned Apple into one of the most powerful companies in the world.   But after all was said and done, I wonder if those words he spoke over thirty years ago came back to him when he was diagnosed with the terminal cancer that would eventually take his life.   So many of us constantly pou...

This is the third week of daily reflections based on the sermon series, "Red: Understanding the Hard Sayings of Jesus."  This week we'll be focusing on lessons of discipleship learned from Luke 14:26, where Jesus states "Unless you hate father, mother, sister, brother, wife and children--even yourself--you cannot be my disciple."  Surrendering your whole life to God sometimes requires a fundamental shift in the way you view not only your family, children, spouse or yourself, but also in the way you view your accomplishments, possessions and finances. For some of us, surrendering over to God the lure of success, the affirmation and comfort that comes from acquiring money, or even the things that we've managed to accumulate can be way too much to bear.    "God," we might bargain, "you control all of those things over there in my life--you know my spouse and kids, my faith and the church-going side of me... but let's just let me h...

Every Sunday I stand in front of roughly 450 people plus a bunch of people watching church online and I ask for money. I don't come right out and say, "Give us your money," but I imagine if you were looking for that sort of thing, you would probably find it.  You would have to look hard because I spend less than two minutes of a 60-70 minute service talking about money. I shouldn't be hesitant about this, honestly.  It's a shame that I feel like I can only briefly mention the fact that without the generosity of our church members and friends our church wouldn't be able to share the Gospel with our community in amazing ways each and every week. Jesus spent more time talking about money than he did talking about heaven or hell.  So there's that. Even so... I am not going to beg, bribe or berate people into giving money to my church.  But I do feel like this needs to be said:  Why would anyone be upset about being asked to give in order to sup...

I've been preaching on Happiness for the past two weeks.  So naturally, we had to get around to money. Which supposedly can't buy you happiness.  But by looking at the way most of us live our lives in pursuit of happiness through money, it seems that none of us really got that memo. Let's start with some Scripture why don't we? Hebrews 13:5-6 5 Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, “Never will I leave you;     never will I forsake you.” 6 So we say with confidence, “The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid.     What can mere mortals do to me?” The epistle of Hebrews was written to a group of Christians in the first century who were trying to figure out how to live the Christian life in a diverse context. So we have nothing in common with them... This discourse at the end of the letter discloses some important things, what I will call the "Signs of a Genuine Christian L...

This week I'll be preaching the third part of a four part sermon series on money.  The focus this week is on debt.  I rather like the sermon title.  It makes me want to rock and or roll. Just to refresh...  There are Three Laws of Balance:  Reference Point, Constant Correction and Clear Objective In the first part of the series we learned that we need to "be knowing where our money is going."  I asked our church members to track their spending so that they could pay more attention to where their treasure was going.  Jesus said that where our treasure is, that's where our heart is and the only way to figure out how to get your heart in the right place is to know exactly what you've been spending your money on every week.  This is our "Reference Point" as we seek to stay balanced.  In the second part of the series we learned that everything we have belongs to God, comes from God is given by God.  To that end, we need to honor God wit...

Here it is..  The money you could be tithing...  This week I am finishing up the sermon series that I have been preaching on money.  I know that some of the people in my church are probably glad that it's going to come to an end.   Funny thing, though.  I've been going at it pretty hard.  It's not been easy, to be honest.  But there's nothing faithful about pulling punches when it comes to stuff like this, I've come to learn.  By the way, I just thought the picture above was funny.  Plus it reminds me that I waste a lot of money on stuff that I don't need and that wasted money could be put to good use.   And I like the song that plays on the commercials ("I always feel like, somebody's watching me...").  That dude Rockwell who performed that one-hit wonder  back in they 80's is laughing all the way to the bank about now.  It finally paid off.    Kudos. When I thought about this sermon series one of th...