Every Man’s Battle, S. Arterburn

Fighting for Your Marriage, H. Markman, et al.

Five Love Languages, G. Chapman

Love & Respect, E. Eggerichs

Peacemaker, K. Sande

Real Marriage, M. & G. Driscoll

Shattered Vows: Hope & Healing…, D. Laaser

Christian Parenting: Youth & Children

Children’s International Study Bible

Dr Dobson’s Answer Book, J. Dobson

Mighty Acts of God, S. Meade

Parenting with Scripture, K. Durbin

Shepherding a Child’s Heart, T. Tripp

Lent – 40 Days to Prepare for the Most Important 24 Hours of Christianity

“Lent” simply means spring. The word “Easter” found its origins in pagan rituals of springtime. There’s nothing inherently Christian in these words of the holiest of our seasons! What is it that brings meaning to them? What’s it all about?

It is Jesus Christ, who re-defined the seasons, the calendar, all time and all history! So we understand the changes in the natural seasons through our Christian understanding of God’s power to raise Jesus from the dead. It’s about new life that arises from the death of Jesus and God’s miraculous power to raise Him again.

Our participation involves virtues, good habits, disciplines, and practices of the faith we put into action that underscore the spiritual seasons of Lent and Easter.

Starting with Ash Wednesday (2/22/12) we will focus on 24 Hours that Changed the World, that’s the last moments of Jesus’ life on earth. These amazing actions were done by Christ on your behalf.

Let us take up the Cross during Lent in order that our practices of sacrifice, self-control and self-denial may help us understand and experience Christ personally. Let us approach the Cross, during Holy Week, seeking forgiveness for our sins as we forgive others. Let us rejoice at the Empty Tomb, as we see all signs of new life as God’s power at work over the negative forces in the world.

Economic headlines report declines in home-building and home-values. Perhaps we’re looking at the wrong kind of home or at least the wrong kind of “value.” While the dollar-value of my house has declined, the value of my home is steadily increasing in my estimation. I believe we are building our homes, when we are building up relationships in faith, with the right values, with the Christmas spirit – the Spirit of God’s love. These investments of faith and home pay dividends that are out of this world (literally).

To better understand your home values consider the costs involved in our concepts of home.

This December marks seventy years after the attack on Pearl Harbor. What a great cost so many paid for me and you to enjoy our homes and our freedom in this great nation. Each year I bury more WWII Veterans, as they experience the ultimate home-going. I recall the words of one young soldier pinned down in the South Pacific sands, “During the day we prayed for the night; through the night we prayed for daylight.” I imagine how he thought of home. Also this Christmas thousands of our troops are heading home from Iraq, a season of homecomings for many families. The costly service invested by our military personnel and families build up our values of “home” – particularly at Christmas when we are called to return thanks and to give out of the blessings we’ve received.

Even more, God invests in our homes and builds us up. Mark 6:3 describes Jesus as a “carpenter” but the Greek word actually may mean wood-worker, construction-worker, or “home-builder.” This broader definition builds upon the Biblical images of stones, as believers we’re “like living stones, being built into a spiritual house” (1 Peter 2:5). Did you know that Jesus probably grew up in a home that was mostly built of rock, or stones, as well as bit of wood?

Christmas proves that God is our ultimate home-builder. According to John 1:14, Jesus, the Word, became flesh in order to dwell, or “make a home,” among us. Christmas is the celebration of the God-with-us who came to build a home among His people, so that we who believe may one day inherit “a home not made with hands but eternal in the heavens”(2 Corinthians 5:1).

This message seems especially meaningful for the many Americans who have lost their homes. I know some young people who recently visited children who are currently homeless. Last Christmas they had a home, this year a hotel room. These Christian youth brought more than food and money to help. They mainly brought hope – an assurance of love, from the God who continues home-building right here among us.

That first Christmas, God’s Son spent His first night “homeless” for they found no room at the inn. Mary and Joseph were relegated to a cave-stable, a hole-in-the-ground, for the Holy Infant. God sure knows about humble beginnings! From Christmas to the Cross, God paid all the costs.

When Christ, born anew this Christmas, seeks to build a home with you, will He find any room at the inn? Will you accept the value God is investing in your home-life? I believe we’re truly “home for Christmas” when we’ve said “yes” to the God who desires to build a home with us.

One thing about living in the Shenandoah Valley, there are plenty of mountains to climb! If you enjoy that sort of thing, it’s a blessing. If you don’t like to hike the trails and the hills, then maybe you enjoy the view of the mountains at least.

I find it invigorating. Yes, I get tired, but it’s a good tired. More than physical exercise, I think of hiking the mountains for spiritual exercise. The Bible is filled with wonder-full and positive passages about the mountains God creates.

Good things have happened on mountains: Moses met God & received the Ten Commandments; Jesus was transfigured; and Revelation proclaims heavenly heights of Mount Zion!

It’s uplifting to the soul when I reach the summit and take in the view of the valley below. Recently I journeyed with a friend to Bear’s Den and Raven Rocks, along the Appalachian Trail. The fall leaves, the cool mountain air – good for the soul. But just as much as the external, we shared the internal – our struggles & challenges of pastoring & parenting. We aired it all out.

One time, I got a rock in my shoe. It felt like it was huge! But after I stopped & took off my hiking boot – it turned out to be just this really tiny pebble. The trail was easier without that painful thing under my sole. It reminded me of something a pastor said to me once: “It’s not the mountains that you’ll climb, but the sand in your shoes that will wear you down.”

I think it’s true. Often my attitude wears thin, until I unpack the painful things building up in me… until I “empty my shoes” – which I like to do… outdoors… climbing mountains.

What about you?

I called my dad just to thank him for the 59 years that he worked. Born in the 1920s Jim Duley was one of 7 kids in the Arlington home of a painting contractor (a grandfather I never knew since he died almost 2o years before I was born).

Dad went to work, after school, at a neighborhood grocery store when he was only 9. The family needed the help. He says he may have made 12 cents an hour. That’s just inconceivable for me, born in the 60s, with every convenience – and never really having to break a sweat at work!

Dad enlisted in the Navy, 1944, right after high school graduation. Returning from WWII safely, and with a grateful attitude, decided to enter the ministry. Rev. Jim Duley served God for 47 years in the United Methodist Church. 47 – that’s impressive. I’ve been in for 16, his record seems so out of reach!

So, I said, “Thanks Dad for working so hard, and so long, for your family. That’s a lot of faithful service.”

Well, being thankful is the easy part. The labor of a lifetime, now that’s hard work.

Right now, America is suffering from “labor pains” with so many millions unemployed. I pray for them.

At the same time I am thankful that many more millions are working. All of us have a part to labor along, to help one another, to carry our share of the work-load.

So, thank you – in all that you do – for the common good, for faithful service, and for answering your personal call from God:

‘Be strong, all you people of the land,’ declares the LORD, ‘and work. For I am with you,’ declares the LORD Almighty (Haggai 2:4)

But that’s not what this is about.

Can you imagine a greater debt? There is a debt that I owe, that surpasses all numerical calculation. A debt I can never pay off. It’s best enumerated this way:

John 3:16 declares “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, so that whoever believes in Him may not perish but have eternal life.”

There was a debt of sin that I owed. I could never repay it, no matter how much good I did, no matter how long I lived.

Christ died to cancel that debt. Now I owe a debt to Him. If you multiply that by every human being, not only the near 7 billion people alive today, but all the humans who’ve ever lived…

Then that is a debt you cannot even imagine, let alone ever repay.

Stop for a moment & ponder the debt you owe God. Pray for a moment & give thanks that we don’t have to pay it back!

Thank you, God, for Jesus our Savior!

My sister in Michigan & my brother in Atlanta have similar 90 to 100+ temps. In Michigan they built a nice house 20 years ago, but never thought they’d need central AC !! (oops.)  Well, many people don’t plan for the effects of extreme heat.

This is killer Heat. Seriously, more people die from the heat annually than from other major weather-related events: tornadoes, floods, earthquakes, etc. Some reports claim as many as 400 Americans dies of the heat each summer. Without air conditioning, and when nighttime lows are stuck in the 80s the bodies of weak and/or older people are vulnerable to heat exhaustion or heat stroke. The body is unable to cool off, for long enough, and becomes highly stressed.

The experience can be matched SPIRITUALLY. The Bible experience is largely a HOT one, a desert setting for most of the Biblical stories & peoples.

The Scriptures then caution us against the dangers of heat, exhaustion and “dehydration.” The desert-wandering people of the Old Testament learned it was a matter of life and death.

The broom tree is a rare but life-saving sight in the desert wilderness. Elijah found God’s solace there, according to 1 Kings 19:4: “Then he went on alone into the wilderness, traveling all day. He sat down under a solitary broom tree and prayed…”

The psalms teach: The Lord watches over you—the Lord is your shade at your right hand;
the sun will not harm you by day…” (Ps 121:5-6).

Spiritual heat stroke symptoms include: over-heated attitudes, hot-under-the-collar, lack of compassion, concern mainly for self, dehydration of a desire for God, and more.

Ultimately, the greatest cure for spiritual heat-risk of hell, dehydration & death is Jesus Christ. Jesus is our spiritual “living water” – the source of all spiritual-thirst-quenching.

In Christ, we learn to seek that which is truly lasting & life-giving: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled” (Jesus, Matt. 5:6).

The month of July is often a time to revisit the stories of our nation’s birth, in a spirit of revolution. It’s often said: “Freedom isn’t free.” Right. So it is good to remember and to give thanks for the many soldiers, in many wars, in many places who gave such a great cost to win our freedom.

I’d like to go further with those thoughts.

There is One warrior who gave the Ultimate Sacrifice, on the Cross. Jesus’ death and resurrection didn’t start a new nation, but something greater. His was a revolution of the spirit. Jesus’ death proves that our freedom isn’t “free,” for He paid the price. It is free for us to receive once we surrender to Him.

That’s the seemingly contradictory reality of true freedom.

Our souls, once revolting against God, now experience revolution in the act of surrendering our own will to His. That done, we can experience true freedom – to do what God wills.

Freedom doesn’t simply mean “I can do whatever I want.” It more definitely means, “I can now, in Christ, do what God wants – that for which I was truly made.”

That kind of freedom brings a lasting significance, an abiding joy, because it’s living alive, living on purpose.

“Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” – The Bible

Here I am at Annual Conference in Roanoke, as 3350 United Methodists have descended upon the valley in order to lift up Jesus.

Missions is one – amazing – way that God’s love is being experienced here. Children from Brazil have come to share in worship & to show gratitude for the missional love we Methodist Christians have brought to their home country over the years.

Pictures at vaumc.org (for copyright reasons I won’t insert them here.)

Up on the stage the children presented our conference with a gift of appreciation.

A quilt.

A very large one. A quilted table-cloth to be precise. It’s many panels each embroidered with a red cross.

It’s beautiful. But it’s really not about the quilt.

What’s on my heart is the gratitude. Deep gratitude is a state of grace. It’s much more than saying words like “thanks” – which are appropriate, and meaningful when shared from the heart.

What is more, is this expression of gratitude took much time, involved many of these children & families – investing precious resources.

When the “needy” invest themselves in giving to the abundantly blessed (pssst, that’s you & me)… I am touched … moved … hopefully even moved into action.

Moved to gratitude & gracious generosity.

What about you?