Inside My Mind

I have been doing some devotional time studying the tabernacle the Jews used as their model of worship and how Christ was the center of their worship from the beginning. It is truly amazing how the ancient Jews desired to have a relationship with God and did so through His prescribed method. It seems that today, I want to worship when I choose, where I choose, in the way I choose. But God has a different idea.  He  still wants me to come to Him in a prescribed process. He has told me how to come close to Him and it is not in a haphazard fashion. Just like the Jews, wandering in the desert, there is a way to be near to God, but it does not just happen.  I must choose to approach Him through Christ, first dealing with my sins (again, through Christ), being illuminated through His light, and being sustained by His word. Only then, as I offer prayers through a cleansed heart, will I truly experience fellowship time with God. Having a relationship is different from ...

I admit it. I am a self-diagnosed sufferer of the disease BADD (Book Attention Deficit Disorder). I like to read and have a hard time turning down what looks to be a good book. However, this frequently leads to having several books going at the same time. Last year, in an effort to help me with this problem, my family bought me a Nook reader. I love having the ability to take my books with me and having the opportunity to read a chapter or two when waiting for something or someone. But I think it my have escalated my problem. I am now reading five different books. How did I get here? Why do I let myself start one before finishing another? It's because I have BADD. I will begin reading and get to a point where I want to let ideas soak in. Then, before I restart, another book has popped up in front of me. Currently, I am reading Worship from the Tabernacle (every morning), Paul for Everyone- The Prison Letters (for Sunday school weekly), Family Driven Faith (nightly), and Hell...

This morning, I began reading (again) Family Driven Faith by Voddie Baucham, Jr.  As I began to soak in his charge to lead our families toward  multi-generational faithfulness , I was convicted of my imperfect devotion to my family. I have been caught up in having my children make good grades, learn teamwork and sportsmanship through extra-curricular activities, and learn how to interact with friends of both the same and opposite sex. I have taken the worldly view of success and diminished the need for teaching them how to walk with Christ as the ultimate measure of success. I pray that I re-focus my influence as a father and encourage and teach them the importance of a strong faith. I pray that I see the time spent in doing this as an investment in my grandchildren and great-grandchildren. What greater gift could I give to them?

Looking back on the past year, I realize how greatly I have been blessed, and that leads me to reflect on how I have changed and what I need to change. This period of reflection comes on the anniversary of my falling and breaking my leg and the subsequent surgeries and rehabilitation. To many (including several of my patients), what I have been through pales in comparison to their life-changing experiences. I don't want to focus on what has happened, but on how I can use what has happened to become closer to what God wants me to be. I was reading the story of Abraham and Isaac again and was struck with the realization that Abraham, asked to sacrifice his only son, was fully obedient and did not question why he was being asked to do something so drastic. He did not make excuses, did not whine and complain, and he did not try to bargain God into another calling. He simply did what God asked him to do. Not only was he asked to kill his only son, but this was the son of prom...