Following Jesus

Clarity

"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God." Matthew 5:8 Sometimes I get so overwhelmed with work, or life, or whatever that I don't really think straight. It seems that the noise rules sometimes, and my thoughts, ideas, and creativity get muddied. I long for clarity sometimes. There is a clarity that can come to anyone. Everyone has epiphanies, whether a follower of Jesus or not - everyone experiences moments of clarity. I know that sometimes when life is on overdrive, when stress is high, and when every string is pulled as tight…

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The King of Pop and The King of Glory

"I am the LORD; that is my name! I will not give my glory to another or my praise to idols." Isaiah 42:8 Ok. You've seen the title of this entry and you have just looked at the verse I offered up, and you are thinking "I can see where this train is headed." You are probably right (being as bright as you are), but I hope you sense an evenhandedness in the thoughts I'm presenting. First things first. I was actually pretty bummed upon hearing of Michael Jackson's death. I grew up with Michael. I wanted to dance like him (though I didn't really…

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Enigma

"We proclaim him, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone perfect in Christ. To this end I labor, struggling with all his energy, which so powerfully works in me." Colossians 1:28-29 On occasion, I have been known to use words or phrases that need looking up. For some of them, I have created my own word and definition apparently - as much as I might argue to the contrary ("well, you must not have the newest edition of the dictionary or else what I said would be in there..."). Most of the time,…

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One Loaf

"The disciples had forgotten to bring bread, except for one loaf they had with them in the boat." Mark 8:14 Let me go ahead and get this out of the way so I can get on to making some reasonably spiritual points about the above passage: I just don't ever want to hear the word "loaf" associated with food for any reason. There are a number of reasons for this (as you probably can imagine). I can handle hearing the phrase "a loaf of bread", but when loaf starts making its way into other things I start to get a bit squeemish (Meat Loaf, Cheese…

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Youniverse

"Apart from Me, you can do nothing." - Jesus I was reading recently about the top selling Christian books of the new millenium. Since we are a decade into it, it was interesting to review what the general populace in the Christian community has been consuming. It gives us a good idea of what we are thinking. Of the top 100 titles, over 50 of them were about family/marriage/parenting, with basically the rest being about the self (you know, how to be the best "you" you can be). Of the few remaining titles, there were 6 about the Bible and4 about…

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