Living Unfiltered for God

In these strange times in which we are living, “church” looks a lot different these days. As we’re told we cannot meet in groups larger than 10 – and even that is discouraged – we must find new ways to stay connected to our church and our friends. I am blessed in that our church, Christ Community Church in Cumming, GA, is being very creative and intentional about keeping us all connected. One of the things we’ve started doing is reading the Book of Acts together, as a church, albeit on our own. The connection is knowing that over the course of the next two weeks, we will all be reading the same couple of chapters every day. Along the way, we’ve been encouraged to share any insights and revelations that come about. This piece has been birthed out of that encouragement... In Acts Chapter 3 (part of yesterday’s reading) we come across the following situation… “Now a man who was lame from birth was being carried to the temple gate called Beautiful, where he was put every day to be...

“If you don’t have to fight any battles than you don’t have to learn to trust.” This is just one of the nuggets of wisdom that was injected directly into my soul the other day, when I listened to a message by Erwin McManus, the lead Pastor at Mosaic Church in Los Angeles. I was led there by a couple of posts I happened to see on social media about a "very important message" that McManus was going to preach this past Sunday. In the message, he told his church that he has been diagnosed with cancer. It is one of the most moving messages I have heard in a very long time. The title and theme of the talk was "Battle Ready". The guiding verses were from the beginning of Judges 3 . The idea McManus focused on was that God brings battles into our lives so that we learn to fight, because in fighting, we learn to trust Him more. The greater the battle, the greater the trust. Obviously, he used the commencing of his battle with cancer as his object lesson. “God wil...

Here we are, eight days away from Christmas. The last full weekend before the holiday. There will no doubt be much shopping done in the next couple of days. Lots of other holiday activities, as well. Even in our household, my wife and I will be off in different directions this morning, participating in some of those activities. My prayer this morning though, is that with all of the hustle and bustle, we remember why we're celebrating. I'm probably thinking along these lines because I've found that I've lost sight of it myself, at times, over the last couple of weeks. One quick example... Our family has a cookie decorating party every year. Over the years it has grown to become our big Christmas get-together before the holiday itself. Family and friends gather, we share a meal and then get to the serious (yes, to some it is!) business of decorating Christmas cookies. The party was last Saturday. On Sunday afternoon I went into the Grocery store and I had this strang...

Earlier this month my wife and I watched one of those sentimental Christmas movies; this particular one was about Christmas trees. Part of the premise was that each Christmas tree has a story. As I'm sitting here enjoying our tree this morning, it got me thinking - what story would our tree tell? I guess this thought actually started yesterday afternoon when I watched a man, who had just purchased a tree, carry it to his his truck and place it in the back. As I watched him drive off, for some reason I was wondering what kind of fate lay ahead for that tree? Was he bringing it back for his family? Were young children going to be sitting around it in a few days? Or maybe the man lived alone and it was going to be his sole Christmas decoration? Perhaps he was even purchasing it for someone else, who otherwise wouldn't have a tree? Regardless of the scenario, that tree was going to have a story. So back to the tree I'm looking at now. Or, just as importantly, the tree ...