Somewhere in this great land of ours, there stands a man who has yet to leave his closet.  He is a very spiritual man, but he is not in the closet because he has come to spend time with the Lord in prayer.  No – he went in to get a shirt to wear that day.  However, after a couple of hours he is still in his closet, because he has been waiting on God to clarify whether he should choose the navy and gray striped button down or the green polo shirt.

And somewhere else today, there is a woman sitting paralyzed at her kitchen table as the rest of the world hurries off to work or school.  She stares back and forth between two boxes of cereal, unsure of whether God would have her eat Fruity Pebbles or Count Chocula this morning. 

Does this sound silly to you?

Then what about this:  Read more »

(Today’s Pulse was written by Marcia Mackey in 2005.  As I preach on wisdom from Proverbs, it has been my hope to give voice to some of the more wise and experienced members of our congregation, who can share from what they have learned along their journey with the Lord.)

 Do you want to be a shepherd who feeds only yourself?  A cloud without rain blown along by the wind?  An autumn tree without fruit and uprooted twice dead?  Do you want to be a wild wave of the sea foaming up in your shame?  A wandering star for whom blackest darkness has been reserved forever?  DO YOU??  (Jude 1:12-13)

To say yes to any of these would definitely make you a fool.  Why?  A fool is someone who turns his back on God or just does not want to believe in Him or thinks God is not right nor good enough for him.  “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God’” (Psalm 14:1).  “Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools” (Romans 1:22).  “But fools detest turning from evil” (Proverbs 13:19b).  Even if you do not totally reject God but are just lukewarm then you are still a fool.  God says in Revelation 3:16, “So because you are lukewarm – neither hot nor cold – I am about to spit you out of my mouth.”
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(Today’s Pulse is written by one of our elders, Duane Mackey.  As I preach through Proverbs this summer on the subject of wisdom, I am trying to use this space to give voice to some of the more experienced members of our congregation, so that they might share what they have learned from their journey with the Lord)

Fighting the Battle

One of my favorite movies is Mary Poppins.   This movie showcases a dysfunctional family set in 1910, in the city of London.  George Banks and his wife Winifred are completely self-absorbed, he with his banking job and excessive punctuality and she with her women’s rights movement.  Neither care for the needs of their marriage or their two lovely but lonely children, Jane and Michael.  They have abdicated all family responsibility to house servants and a series of nannies.  In the beginning minutes of the movie, Admiral Boom warns Bert of the storm brewing at 17 Cherry Tree Lane, the Banks’ home.  George proudly struts into his house oblivious of the latest crisis with the children and launches into a song that paints a vivid picture of his world view.  All around him is a battle with warning signs of the impending disaster but he blindly marches toward the cliff.  Toward the end of the movie, following a few rather bizarre influences of Mary Poppins, George’s perfect ordered life had crashed and burned but in the wake of this chaos he gains a new perspective toward life.  George had been in a long battle; his heart had been taken out by an enemy he was unaware of.  An enemy that had kept his heart engaged in the things this world values at the expense of what the Kingdom of God values. 
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Last July, a man named Randy Pausch passed away after battling pancreatic cancer.  A professor at Carnegie Mellon, Dr. Pausch has become well-known for a speech he gave at his university that became known as The Last Lecture.  Many professors had given “Last Lectures,” where they imparted the wisdom they would want others to know if they only had one last lecture to give.  For Dr. Pausch, however, his Last Lecture was a reality, as had was losing a battle to terminal cancer.  In that lecture, Dr. Pausch was engaging, bright, and shared deeply moving words about achieving childhood dreams and really living life to the fullest.  The Last Lecture became an international phenomenon, landing him on Oprah and spawning a book based on the same principles.

As wonderful as the Last Lecture was to listen to, there are a couple of things that are hard to say but important to make clear.  Read more »