The Plumbline

All athletes are disciplined in their training. They do it to win a prize that will fade away, but we do it for an eternal prize. So I run with purpose in every step . I am not just shadowboxing. I discipline my body like an athlete, training it to do what it should. Otherwise, I fear that after preaching to others I myself might be disqualified. (I Corinthians 9:25-27) This walk with Jesus might intimidate some, but you don't need to be afraid to really 'get into it'. God never asked us to just 'show up' - he always asked for our best and our first. You and I may have been 'trying' to walk as we should for way too long - 'trying' but not really hitting the mark. Just doing our 'best' hasn't proven to be enough to get us to the goal line. We need to stop trying and really just put some effort into training! Trying is where we start, but a 'trial period' doesn't produce consistent results, does it? We must invest in the 't...

Nobody who ever gave his best regretted it. (George Halas) So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you. (Romans 12:1-2) Do we live with regrets? Yes, sadly, many of us do live with regrets - things we wished we would have said, done, or pursued. There is no place for regrets in this walk with Jesus, though. Jesus doesn't 'set us up' for regrets - he sets us up for victory. We may fail t...

A long time ago, a friend gave me an illustration which has stuck with me through the years. He held out a beautiful Montblanc pen, (since I am a writer, pens are kind of a passion of mine), and asked me to "try" to take the pen away from him. Seeing this as an easy thing, I reached out to his outstretched hand to take the pen. Now the pen was in my possession, or so I thought. He then corrected me with the following: He told me to only "try" to take the pen! When I responded with a quizzical look on my face, he used this illustration to speak a life-lesson. Knowing my passion for words, he was showing me the very first definition of the word "try" is really something quite different than we might suppose. In fact, it means to "attempt" to accomplish something. It does not imply actually "doing" it - just attempting it! We talked for a while about "trying" versus "doing". We go through life doing a whole lot of ...