we’re in the entourage!

Though I haven’t followed boxing since Tyson took a bite off Holyfield’s ear, I have long been a fan of the way Floyd Mayweather (welterweight champion) enters the ring.

By far the pre-fight entrance to the ring is one of my favorite things in sports.

There’s music playing as video cameras show the fighter making his way down the hall way.

As he enters the room, people loudly cheer.

It’s a grand entrance.

He’s surrounded by friends and acquaintances who are wildly boasting about him to the audience (“Greatest of all time!  He can’t be beat!  Undisputed!  etc.).

But Mayweather’s a little different than that.

His entourage is almost always comprised of famous musicians (as inexplicable as Wayne Newton or when instead of a song merely playing as he made his entrance, The O’Jays themselves were standing in the ring singing their famous song “Money Money Money” which happens to be Mayweather’s nickname).

(Recently he said that if Manny Pacquiao agrees to fight him, he’s gonna get Obama to hold his belt and go with him on his way to the ring).

When three celebrities walked with him at his last fight it prompted me to write a status on facebook asking “Which 3 famous people would you have in your entourage?”

“What is the ultimate entourage?  Ali, Foreman and Tyson?  Jordan, Dr. J and Kobe?  Walking into the ring with an entourage made up entirely of U.S. Presidents (now that would be cool)?”

Turns out there’s an entourage that exceeds any other one we could come up with.

The best answer of all came from my friend Devin who said “Who cares about whose in our entourage (or Floyd’s).  How cool is it that Jesus lets us be in His entourage!?”

Hmm.

Well said.

I have long wondered what it was like living with Jesus for 3 years as His disciple.

What it was like to be struggling through a hard day at work and for Jesus Himself to approach you and say “Follow Me.”

What it was like to hear God preach.  To see Him work so many miracles with your own eyes the world didn’t have enough room for all the volumes of books that would record them.

Seeing how He dealt with people of all kinds.

What it must have been like to walk with Him from city to city where multitudes were anxious and excited to see Him.

To see Him enter Jerusalem as mobs of people screamed “Lord, save!  Lord, save!“

What was going through Peter’s mind as he walked to Him on the water.

What it was like for Adam and Eve for God to walk in the Garden.

What it was like for Enoch to walk with God in the way that he did.

How quickly that entourage disappeared when Jesus was arrested in the Garden and then murdered.

How quickly He forgave them when that entourage got back together after the Resurrection.

And how much those men grew the more they walked with Him – to where those who hated Christ were amazed at the transformation they saw in them (Acts 4:13).

I’ve wondered about this all my life as a Christian only to remember I walk with Him too in newness of life, just as anyone who belongs to Him does.

How great is it that in spite of us, He lets us be in His entourage?

It’s not an arrogant, puffed-up, elitist strut (like the scribes and Pharisees – Mark 12:38).  It’s a humble, self-sacrificing walk in the footprints of the nail-scarred feet (Luke 9:23).

It’s not a walk that broadcasts to the world how great we are.  It’s a walk in the Spirit that shows how great He is.

It’s not a walk with a leader who has a chance of being defeated.  It’s a walk with the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords.

Each step is by faith rather than sight (2 Corinthians 5:7).

Though it’s often a strenuous, exhausting, painful, uncomfortable, unpopular, politically-incorrect walk we enter through a narrow gate, each step joyfully leads closer to heaven.

Contrasting the Two Different Walks
“And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.

“But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ ( by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.  For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God;  not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.

“For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.”

-Ephesians 2:1-10

Whose entourage are you in?

needed: men of God

I was blessed to spend the morning at Men’s Day (at the Maricamp Church in Central Florida).

Steve Puckett taught us from the Word & there were three quotes I found to be especially challenging & I wanted to share them with you so you may be challenged as well-

1.  “The only way to be manly is to first be godly.  God never intended for there to be any other type of man.”

2.  “If men become godly men, the family, the church, the work place and the world will change.”

3.  “When we as men recover our voice, release the power that we have in Christ and recapture our joy in following God’s call to become authentic men, the very nature and quality of our life and the life of this church family will change.”

There is no shortage of women of God.

I have seen churches going through splits and situations so severe that everything was rubble but as the smoke rose and the dust cleared, the majority of the strongest disciples still standing in the wake of the devastation were the loving, gentle, faithful, wonderful women of God.

It’s been this way for a long time.

Jesus is dying on a Cross.  Who is faithfully standing at the foot of the Cross mourning at His pierced feet?

While the Apostles were busy betraying Him, denying Him and abandoning Him in the Garden, we find the women ministering to Him and so beautifully showing their love for Him until the very end.

Jesus rises from the grave on the third day.  Who are the first ones to the tomb?

While the Apostles were off the grid and locked away, once again, it’s the women who have come to the tomb to honor the Lord with the spices they brought and as a result, the first to ever proclaim the angels Good News that Jesus had risen!

One of the greatest blessings in the body of Christ are the beautiful hearts and the examples of women whose hearts belong to God.

I don’t even want to think about what the Church would be like without women of God.

Sadly, in most places we’re seeing what the Church is like without many men of God.

As men it’s far too easy to get so caught up in “business” and meetings and facilitating and trying to have everything perfectly under control that we completely miss out on being what God really wants us to be.

God never destined us to be “experts,” managers, critics or clock-watchers.

He wants us to be men of God.

The Church herself needs men of God.

We need qualified men who desire to serve as pastors (Acts 20:17-31).

We need men who love Jesus more than anyone and anything on earth.

We need men who spend more time in prayer than they do watching ball games.

We need men who want to be men of God more than anything else.

We need men who seek to grow as husbands and fathers and disciples daily.

We need the type of men who don’t make their wife take the lead but who willingly are the spiritual head of their house under Christ.

We need men who are willing to let go of the worlds definition of what a man is (never cries, doesn’t do girly things like have an accountability partner, pulls himself up by his own bootstraps) and allow God to teach us what being a man really is (1 Corinthians 16:13-14, 1 Timothy 6:6-12, etc.)

We need men who aren’t afraid of James 5:16 anymore.

We need men who desire to empty themselves of their pride and humbly allow the Holy Spirit to transform our hearts and our thinking.

We need men who have the desire to teach their children Deuteronomy 6:4-9 above how to hit a baseball or how to shoot a deer.

Along with such women, we also need men who are willing to die preaching the Truth, defending the Truth, preserving the Truth and living the Truth.

We need men who don’t care what anyone says or thinks, as we follow Christ wherever He goes.

is too much american business philosophy in the Church?

Though there are always exceptions, the office has historically been a place where you find men clean-shaven, wearing suits and ties, with women also professionally dressed as an enforced matter of policy.

The office is a place where its human resources sip coffee in frequent business meetings as a Boss sits at the head of the table approving or shooting down anything proposed he/she personally does not like.

The office is a place where there is a staff under CEO’s, Presidents, Vice Presidents and Office Managers who are in charge.

The office is a place driven by time and money.  By money and time.

The office is a place where company politics reign supreme.

Political incorrectness is the cardinal sin and when one courageously refuses to say something just so everyone can hear what they want to hear, there are repercussions.

The business world is often found to be a cold one, where people will back-stab, slander, lie and deceive in order to get what they want (whether it’s winning a promotion or it’s a quest of getting rid of someone).

The business world can be hyper-critical and often defines people by their weaknesses and short-comings more than all they do well.

The business world is a place where man lusts for power and control over others and will do anything imaginable to get it.

The business world is a place where you punch a time card and when your shift is over, you clock out and you’re free from your duties. 

Until the next.  Appointed.  Time.

This is the world in which we live.

But the Church is to be different than that.

The beautiful thing about the Church is that it is made up of the redeemed of God who have been forgiven…called out from living as the world does…being raised to walk in newness of life…shining as lights in an earth of darkness & doing the will of God rather than conforming to the world.

There’s no need for CEO’s or Presidents or Vice Presidents in the Church – KING Jesus is the one and only Church Executive Officer (Colossians 1:16-18).

There’s no need to confine our fellowship and our praises to Him to 60 minutes of Business Time.   Every second of our existence is His!

There’s no point in wanting more and more money.  Every cent we have has come from Him and belongs to Him.

There’s no need to climb the corporate ladder and to be fueled by the American Dream.  In Christ, each disciple is wealthy beyond imagination (2 Corinthians 8:9).

If we take a close, honest look at the American Church, how many of these American business philosophies would we find at play?

Is the Church driven by The Things Above or by The Things Below? 

On one spectrum, “church” has come to be defined as just another consumer product where people take inventory of which mega-church meets their checklist of needs as they shop for which assembly to attend.

Consequently, sometimes such places directly or indirectly operate as competing businesses as they war over out-doing the other-

“Church X has a rock concert-style praise band, but Church Y has that plus flashing lights and smoke machines.”

“Well, Church Z doesn’t have that cool of an atmosphere but their preacher is famous plus they have a coffee shop and hand out free latte shots on your way in,” etc.

But on the other spectrum, the American business model is manifested in a Professional-Formal dress code and where one of the most egregious offenses can be when one does not abide, not by the apostles doctrine but by American business convention.

When someone is reprimanded and admonished as an evangelist because he didn’t wear a suit and tie to every assembly that year (where the New Testament  places no emphasis on dress, aside from the importance of modesty, not worrying about clothing and not showing favoritism regarding how people are dressed)?

When a man is asked to pray and then told he couldn’t minutes later on account that he was wearing a blue dress shirt and not a white dress shirt?

When a church has a mandatory background check for a preacher?

When a preacher needs to have an MBA degree to have a realistic shot at meeting the qualifications for an evangelist opportunity?

Is there too much American business philosophy in the Church?

Where in far too many places the Church is content with mens committees and a Board of Trustees posing as elders in place of actual shepherds and pastors?

Where shaking hands has replaced heartfelt, intimate Christian embracing?

Where formal Business Meetings are religiously held in place of briefly listing the needs and concerns and spending the majority of the time in specific and passionate prayer together and then going out and doing it (after calling on God’s wisdom and power rather than just pretty much doing whatever the most aggressive personality in the room wants done)?

Where there tends to be a greater emphasis placed on external beauty (clean shaven/flashy suits and dresses) than internal beauty?

In any case, it’s wise to constantly ask ourselves, “Which is having the greater impact – the Church on the world or the world on the Church?”

I hope the Church is influencing the world and not the other way around.  I pray that as the Church, I am influencing the world rather than the world influencing me (Romans 12:2, 2 Corinthians 6:16-17, 1 Peter 4:1-4).

Paul certainly became “all things to all men so he could by all means save some (1 Corinthians 9:22),” yet that didn’t stop him from identifying the earthly philosophies that invaded the thinking of the Church so she may repent and grow (1 Corinthians 1:1:10-13, 5:1-6, 6:1-8, Galatians 1:10, Philippians 2:3-7, 1 Thessalonians 4:1-7, etc.).

But since the Church has always been made up of people who inevitably fall short, as we are not perfect in every way as our Father is, we must constantly test ourselves  and constantly take inventory of the principles we are clinging to.

And seeing if the principles we are abiding by and living by are the commands of Christ or the commandments and traditions of men.

2 words can say a thousand

“Trust God.” -Felicia Perez

guest article- “honor the king” by rance schumacher

Rance Schumacher is not merely a friend of mine but someone I consider to be closer than a brother.  He labors as evangelist at the Worland Church in Wyoming.  What I love most about him is that he has a heart for the truth & a courageous heart for preaching the truth – even when speaking that truth with love is going to get him into trouble.

Honor the King

Written November 11, 2011

You probably heard about it, or read it in the headlines this week, but in case you haven’t here’s what it read: “First Lady Booed at NASCAR Event“.

I tend to stay as far away as I can from any political agenda that is out there.  Now I realize that our Bill of Rights protects our freedom of speech, and I will be the first one to tell you that I’m in support of that because it is what allows me to preach God’s word day in and day out without being jailed for it.

I’m sure the first century Christians would have loved to be under the kind of protection we have.  And because of that right, people in America have the right to boo the First Lady, President Obama, or whomever else they desire.

But do we as Christians have that right?

 1 Peter is written to some suffering Christians.

Nero is emperor of Rome at this time and he was one of the most wicked, corrupt, and ungodly kings who ever reigned.

Paul was martyred under his rule, as well as countless other Christians who refused to retract their confession of faith in Jesus Christ.  He was known for burning Christians in his garden at night as a source of light.

To these Christians, Peter commands them by inspiration of the Holy Spirit:

“Submit yourselves for the Lord’s sake to every human institution, whether to a king as the one in authority, or to governors as sent by him for the punishment of evildoers and the praise of those who do right. For such is the will of God that by doing right you may silence the ignorance of foolish men. Act as free men, and do not use your freedom as a covering for evil, but use it as bondslaves of God. Honor all people, love the brotherhood, fear God, honor the king.” (1 Peter 2:13-17).

Peter tells these Christians to “submit” to and “honor” a king that was torturing and torching Christians.

Why? 

“For such is the will of God.”

We don’t have to like him or like his policies, but the obvious application to us from this passage of Scripture is that we are to “honor” and “submit” to President Obama and every other governing official, just like the Christians under Nero were to “submit” and “honor”.

The word “honor” is the same word used by Jesus in John 5:23 when He says, “He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent Him.”

We “submit” to and “honor” these leaders because of the position they have been given by God.  It is God who “removes kings and establishes kings” (Daniel 2:21), as it is also spoken of in Romans 13:1: “Every person is to be in subjection to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those which exist are established by God.”

He had Nero in office for a reason and he has President Obama in office for a reason.  God does everything for a purpose, and those purposes are that all should come to repentance (2 Peter 3:9) and that those who come to repentance shall be transformed into the image of His Son (Romans 8:29).

Did God appoint President Obama?

Maybe “appointed” is too strong of a word for me to use, as some of you relate appointment to the act of God appointing Saul and David as kings of Israel.  I can understand that.

However, for us to say that God did not have a hand in President Obama winning the 2008 election would be blatantly inaccurate.  Providentially, God still has His hand in who does and who does not rise to authority in our beloved country, even through our right to vote.

Psalm 2:8-12 and Ephesians 1:22 both prove that God is overruling every nation in our world, and as that ruler, He has the ability to decide whether or not an individual takes office.

Is President Obama a king?

America is not a monarchy, it is a democracy.  Therefore, by definition, the United States of America does not have a king.  She has a President.

By saying “king,”  I am trying to bridge the time gap between 1 Peter 2:13-17 and modern day America and show that it is the authority figure that is being spoken of by Peter.  I have no trouble whatsoever in saying that President Obama, by definition, is not a king.

However, he is, by definition, a governing authority.  1 Peter 2:13,17 and Romans 13:1 use different terms for the authority figure in mind (one “king” and the other “governing authority”), but both give the same commands: honor and submit.

Even if President Obama is not a king, as our “governing authority” we are to submit ourselves to and honor him, just like the recipients of Peter’s letter were to submit to and honor their king.

The point of this article is for us to take a serious look into what the Scriptures say our attitude and actions should be towards our President.  Our Constitution gives us the right to disagree and vote against those we do not agree with.

But, on the foundation of Romans 13:1-7 and 1 Peter 2:13-17, our God does not give us the right to slander, dishonor, or disrespect President Barack Obama. That statement I cannot retract, as I stand on the Scriptures and always will.

What we have to do is trust that God is fulfilling His promises and His purposes, and honor the person that He puts in those places of authority to help accomplish His purposes.

Though it is not wrong to discuss the policies and actions of our President and our government, reflect on whether or not your actions and your words are honoring the king that God appointed to America.

When our speech and actions honor the king, they honor God as well.

These are Biblical statements and you cannot erase Scripture, not matter how much you dislike it.  Maranatha!

imperfect

I thoroughly enjoyed this interview on DLHQ of former baseball player Jim Abbott, who played 12 seasons in the Major Leagues despite having only one hand (including a game in which he threw a no-hitter).

As imperfect and flawed people, living in the midst of painful obstacles is something we all can relate to in one way or another.

I firmly believe we experience these various difficulties for a reason.

One of the reasons Paul’s thorn in the side remained, in spite of multiple pleas for it to taken away, is because it was there to prevent him from exalting himself (2 Corinthians 12:7).

The importance of exalting God rather than ourselves cannot be stressed enough.

As an evangelist, though there’s many things I do that are behind the scenes, there’s other parts of my service that’s before crowds of people who are facing me.   Combine that with the knowledge you accumulate and wonderful things happening and pride can be such a snare (whether you think too highly of yourself or equally as bad, if you think too lowly of yourself, both shifting the focus on self).

But as one of 3 million Americans who stammers, every time I open my mouth, I am reminded how weak I am on my own power – and how powerful and able He is to use those whose hearts are diligent to preach His message without fear.

It’s not comfortable.  It torments.  It makes you feel an inch tall.  People gawk at you as if you were on display at a circus freak show.  You struggle with everything from being discriminated against to wallowing in self-pity.  There’s no limit or end to the imagination what people are capable of saying to you or behind your back – even in the Church.

But nevertheless, it is something I praise God for and that has helped me to glorify Him rather than David.

My favorite part of the interview was when Abbott talked about how he tells kids, “You don’t have to be influenced by someone else’s opinion of what they think is possible or not possible.  You don’t have to accommodate to what they think you should do or what you should be.”

There have been some who have tried to talk me out of every single thing I’ve ever done for the Lord.

“David, you can’t be an evangelist.   It’s not possible.  You don’t have what it takes.  Don’t even try.”

“David, you can’t teach 3 University-level courses at a foreign college.  Don’t even try.”

“You can’t save people in a Communist nation.”

They were exactly right - I can’t do any of those things.

But the God I serve is able to do far more, exceedingly, abundantly, immeasurably beyond anything we can ask or imagine – according to His power that is at work within us (Ephesians 3:20)!  And the God I served is to praised for the fact that I am an evangelist, that I was a popular teacher on that campus and that disciples were made in that Communist nation.

I am living, walking proof that if you believe in what God can do through you and in spite of you, there is nothing too impossible for Him to do with you – and that when lives are being changed for the good, He is the reason.

No matter what all the “experts” and “realists” think or say.

how’s your prayer life?

A friend of mine recently visited a congregation in search of an evangelist.

I was as surprised as he was when he shared the first question he was asked right off the bat.

“What version do you use?  Nope.”

“What is your stance about this?  Nope.”

“What is your stance about that?  No.”

The very first question he was asked?

“How’s your prayer life?”

As important as those other questions are (God’s stance is what matters and not our own), “How’s your prayer life?” is a question I will answer on a daily basis.

I know someone else who went to a friend of his, a foreign missionary who was struggling and in need of encouragement.

The first question he asked him – “How’s your prayer life?“

The response was “It’s dead…”

“No wonder!   All this time, I’ve been trying to do this on my strength and power and wisdom and direction rather than His.  That changes right now.”

It was a much different story after that and they went on to be very successful.  And although trials and difficulties still came their way, as they always will, the tons of weight of anxiety they were carrying on their shoulders was no longer there, when they “cast all their anxiety on Christ, knowing He cares for them, 1 Peter 5:7.”

There are points in our lives where each one of us can relate to them.  I know I can.

It’s that important.

So let’s be honest with ourselves.  I encourage you to print these questions off.   Make some of your own.

Look at them throughout the day until we really are “praying without ceasing (1 Thessalonians 5:17)” and prayer is a part of our existence.

To ask ourselves…

How’s my prayer life when things are difficult…uncomfortable…painful…and when I’m scared?

How’s my prayer life when I couldn’t be any happier and it seems everything is going my way?

How’s my prayer life today as I follow Jesus?

How’s my prayer life as a minister of the Gospel of Christ?

How’s my prayer life in my home?  In my marriage? 

When is the last time I prayed with my spouse?

With my children?  For my children?

When is the last time I put my hand on the back of a fellow Christian and prayed for their struggles as they also prayed for mine (James 5:16)?  Instead of criticizing each other to death.

When is the last time I poured my heart out to God and confessed my sins to Him by name (1 John 1:9)?

When is the last time I prayed just to worship the name of the Lord and to thank Him for all He’s done?

Just to tell Him “I love You!”

When is the last time I wept as I prayed?

When is the last time I got down on my knees…no matter what was going on…and prayed without using robotic cliches and prayed as specifically as I possibly could and thanked Him in advance for His will (1 John 5:14)?

When is the last time I prayed for my enemies rather than blasting them behind their back (Matthew 5:43-46)?

How’s my prayer life? 

I’m not saying we should just pray and kick back and not change things in our life’s that need to be changed.

I am saying very few pray as often and as passionately and as intimately as we should.

None of us knows how to pray as we should (Romans 8:26) but we serve a God whose Spirit intercedes for His saints with groanings too deep for our human words.

Who says, “I know what you’re going to pray before you even say it but I still want to hear My child speak to Me.”

Who says to those who pray with the wrong motives, “You do not have because you do not ask (James 4:2).”

Who says “Call to Me and I will answer you, and I will tell you great and mighty things which you do not know (Jeremiah 33:3).”

The first Christians were continually devoted to prayer (Acts 1:14, 2:42).

Jesus would “often slip away to the wilderness and pray (Luke 5:16).”

Prayer is a priceless, irreplaceable blessing that far too often is abused and neglected.

The old hymn expresses it perfectly – “Oh what peace we often forfeit.  Oh what needless pain we bear – all because we do not carry everything to God in prayer.”

But I’d much rather think of the opposite – “Oh what peace I have!  Oh what anxiety and worry I allow Him to bear.  All because this day I take everything to God in prayer.”

the church of “me”

Why does the Church exist?

Is the primary purpose of the Church to meet our needs, to entertain us, to please us and for us to have yet another place to expect our Americanized “Give it to me fast, give it to me easy, give it to me my way now” convenience to be catered to?

True life, true Church, true worship, true discipleship and true fellowship takes us far outside our comfort zones and shatters them in every direction (Luke 9:57-62, Matthew 10:34-39, John 3:30, Romans 12:1-2, Galatians 5:24).

If the Son of God prayed “Not My will but Yours be done,” and if our Example said He did not come to be served, but to serve (Matthew 20:28), what are we to do?  What are we to pray?

i put my feet in their shoes

There was a time when I was really hard on the Apostles.

“Peter, after all Jesus taught you and after all you saw Him do, how could you deny you even knew Him, not just once, not just twice but three times!? 

How could you make such lofty promises to Him and then turn around and break those promises just a matter of hours later?

Why would you be so impulsive to rush to Jesus’ defense but in a completely inappropriate way (to where you would take a sword to someones head)?

And how could you take your eyes off Jesus when you were walking on the water?  Why did you stop trusting Him?  What’s the matter with you?

And how could you be so focused on pleasing people that you would isolate yourself from your brothers in Christ who happened to be a despised race?

Why would you guys argue and debate over which one of you would be the greatest?  James and John – why were you so quick to call down fire to consume people?

But then I got off my high horse and put my feet in their shoes.

And I walked a little.

And I lived a little.

And I fell short a lot.

And it has humbled me completely – and caused me to view them in the way I should have all along – with understanding, with patience and with gratitude to the Lord for the examples of people we read of in Scripture – flawed, imperfect people just like us who He pardoned, who He loves and who He used for extraordinary things in this world.

We deny Christ every time we willfully sin, our conduct suggesting we have no acquaintance with Him (where instead of denying ourselves we deny the life He has given us and the power that is at work within us).

We deny our Savior every time we do something in order to conform to the world and to hide the fact that we are His disciple.

Of the Cretans, Paul writes, “They profess to know God but by their deeds they deny Him, being detestable and disobedient and worthless for any good deed (Titus 1:16).”  Can it not get to that point for us if we allow it?

We all have broken promises and covenant with God.  We all have prayed “Lord I will never do this…” only to do it a short time later.

How many times have people felt they were rushing to Jesus’ defense, but even with the best of intentions, used the Sword of the Spirit as a weapon and assaulted someone with their words or with a heart that was as far from Christ as it could be?

  I’ve taken my eyes off Jesus so much my wife left a loving note in the pulpit reminding me not to focus on anything but the Lord, His love and His power when I’m preaching His Word, rather than getting caught up in the winds and waves.

It’s difficult aggressively dismissing Peter’s hypocrisy and racism in the name of pleasing men ( Galatians 2:11-14) when we live in a nation that is so focused on pleasing others and that wrote the book on racial segregation, even in the Church to this day in some cases.

I’ve seen preachers argue and debate as to which one was  the prince of preachers.

If we are not allowing the peace of God to guard our hearts and minds it can be possible to be more a son of thunder than a son of God in the way we view people.

As much as I deserve to be, I don’t want to be known only for my failures, sins and short-comings.

Thankfully, the Lord is patient and merciful and has given me all this time to mature and to grow up in Jesus.

Even though I have broken so many promises to Him, He hasn’t broken one single promise He’s made to me.

Even though I will continue to make a mistake here or there out of my humanity, the hands that rescued Peter when he was drowning in doubt and fear are the nail-scarred hands that are reaching down to rescue me.

And you.

For far too long, we know Thomas not as Thomas, not as a child of God, not as one of the Apostles, but as Doubting Thomas.

He’s actually referred to by a nickname of one of his short comings.

There’s no disputing that he doubted Jesus had risen from the dead:

“But Thomas, one of the twelve, called Didymus, was not with them when Jesus came.  So the other disciples were saying to him, “We have seen the Lord!” But he said to them, “Unless I see in His hands the imprint of the nails, and put my finger into the place of the nails, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe (John 20:24-25).”

Thomas doubted (but in fairness, to an extent, he was also asking for what we cling to today – a faith that is backed up by evidence).

But so did the other Apostles:

“And they remembered His words, and returned from the tomb and reported all these things to the eleven and to all the rest.  Now they were Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Mary the mother of James; also the other women with them were telling these things to the apostles.  But these words appeared to them as nonsense, and they would not believe them (Luke 24:8-11).”

(But who gets up and runs to the tomb as fast as he can anyway?  The same guy who got out of a boat and trusted Jesus so much for a period of time he actually walked on water.  The same guy who said “If it’s true unless You wash me I have no part with you then wash me from head to toe!”  The same guy who would preach the Gospel on the Day of Pentecost and then to the Gentiles.  Peter  – Luke 24:12).

Thomas was not the only one asking Jesus how on earth they were going to feed more than 4,000 people – after Jesus had already fed more than 5,000 not too long before.

Neither are you and I the only ones who have ever doubted the Lord and His power in our lives by depending on our own wisdom.

If Thomas deserves to be forever known as Doubting Thomas then I deserve to eternally be known as Worrying David and Peter deserves to be known as Denying Peter and Paul deserves to be known as Persecuting Saul and some of the saints in Corinth deserve to forever be known as homosexuals and drunkards and adulterers and you deserve to be known as (Insert name and short comings).

This causes my love for the Lord to grow – how He treats us in spite of us and patiently provides time  for repentance and growth.

“The LORD is compassionate and gracious,
Slow to anger and abounding in lovingkindness.
He will not always strive with us,
Nor will He keep His anger forever.
He has not dealt with us according to our sins,
Nor rewarded us according to our iniquities.
For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
So great is His lovingkindness toward those who fear Him.
As far as the east is from the west,
So far has He removed our transgressions from us.
Just as a father has compassion on his children,
So the LORD has compassion on those who fear Him.
For He Himself knows our frame;
He is mindful that we are but dust (Psalm 103:8-14).”

We have the example of countless great men and women of faith in the Word of God.

But even greater than that is the example we have of our Lord and our Pattern and our Example Himself, Jesus Christ – One who relates to our human feelings and emotions, One who knows the pains and temptations of this life and One who has walked more than a mile in our shoes.

John considered himself unworthy to remove His sandals.

He calls us to deny ourselves, take up our cross daily and follow His footsteps wherever they go.

“Therefore as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him (Colossians 2:6).”