Thankful my God loves to show mercy!

The Bible stopped me in my tracks today. You know how it works. You’re reading a familiar passage and then…wham! The Lord allows you to see something that never caught your attention before. And it changes your life.

I’ve always struggled with Israel’s invasion of Canaan. Not that I doubted God’s character, but sometimes it’s hard to wrap our minds around God ordained genocide. Oh, we can get all theological and explain why it was necessary, etc, etc.

But the actual doing of it.

Would you be able to obey God if the sword was in your hand?

Enter Joshua 11:18-20. After cataloging Joshua’s complete victory over the Canaanite nations, it mentions that Israel didn’t wipe out everyone they came across. They made peace with the Gibeonites. God very clearly instructed Israel in Deuteronomy 20:16 not to offer peace to any of the Canaanites nations. So, why did He allow them to do so with the Gibeonites? Joshua 11:20 holds the key.

Concerning all those other nations, God said, “For it was of the LORD to harden their hearts, that they should come against Israel in battle, that he might destroy them utterly, that they might have no favour, but that he might destroy them, as the LORD commanded Moses.“

That word harden means “to strengthen or make firm”. There are two Hebrew words for harden. When we harden our hearts it means “to make oneself unresponsive or dull”. According to Genesis 15:16, God reached out to the Canaanite people for 400 years. But the majority of them pushed away that conviction and refused to respond. When the last hour struck, only one group finally responded. The Gibeonites. While all the other kings formed an alliance against Israel after Jericho fell, Gibeon threw themselves on God’s mercy.

And God showed them mercy. See, God never intended all the Canaanites to be destroyed. God was reaching out one last time through judgement. And to those who threw themselves on God’s mercy, He forgave. If you think I’m off the wall, Just ask Rahab the harlot, another Canaanite who’s in heaven today.

Ezekiel 22:30 says, “And I sought for a man among them, that should make up the hedge, and stand in the gap before me for the land, that I should not destroy it ... ” God is looking for an excuse to show mercy because judgement is His “strange work” (Isaiah 28:21), not His heart. If we make ourselves unresponsive to Him, then He’ll come alongside and confirm that decision. But if we throw ourselves on His mercy, He is ready to forgive.

I’m so thankful my God loves to show mercy! That when I cry with Isaiah, “Woe is me! I am undone”, His heart is to cleanse and restore me to Himself.

Have you thanked the Lord lately for His merciful nature? Don’t harden your heart toward Him! You’ll only be hurting yourself.

Thankful to be a Genesis Semi-Finalist!

I just want to thank Jesus for His grace and kindness toward me. I’ve been part of ACFW now for a year and a half. This is my second year entering their Genesis contest for unpublished authors. I was pretty much a newbie last year and squeaked in as a semi-finalist.

This year, I entered two books into the contest and both of them made it to the next round! Out of 70 entries, both of mine placed in the top twenty percent to move on to round two. At the end of May, another round of judges will decide the top three from the remaining 14 entries. I’ve got a double chance of moving on this year

Thank you to everyone who has stood beside me and encouraged me to keep working at this. My heart is to please my most important reader – My Jesus. He’s so faithful and deserves nothing less than the same from me!

Thankful my God is mighty!

For many years, my bride and I have planned to adopt a little girl from India. But when she kept getting pregnant, we had to put it off until our children were a certain age (India requires a family to maintain birth order for adopted children). A month ago, the Lord very clearly showed us that it was go-time. So we started the process.

Two obstacles stood in our way. Well, three … but I don’t count money. We’ve never had much of that and it hasn’t stopped the Lord yet! But the two obstacles facing us were time and our home. And both were intertwined.

Adopting from India is a long process. Anywhere from 2-3 years from application to bringing your child home. Because most of the paperwork that qualifies a family for adoption has to be renewed every 18 months or so, that can really up your cost if you don’t time things right. Well, after inquiring with both the adoption agency and our home study agency, it turns out that time is NOT a factor for us. The most we’ll have to pay to renew our paperwork is three hundred dollars. Now you might think that’s a lot of money, but it’s not three thousand dollars, which is what I thought it was going to be. Time? We have all the time in the world because of the way things are set up now!

But what about our home? It’s relatively small. And we were under the impression we would either have to buy a new home or add another bedroom to our current home to qualify for adoption. Sell our home in this market? Sure, God could do that easily. But it still seemed like a crazy idea. How would we make any kind of return on our investment in this market? But adding on requires money up front. So, that was going to be tricky as well.

After talking to our home study agency tonight, it turns out none of these concerns were founded in reality. Our home is perfectly fine to qualify for adoption. If you could have seen our faces when our agent explained that to us, you’d have seen two very relieved people who couldn’t believe their ears. Literally every excuse I’ve had for not moving forward with adoption is gone.

And did I mention that the total cost for our home study is going to be a thousand dollars less than we were first told? Go-time indeed.

Isaiah 40:4 says, “Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain.” Then verse 9 says, “O Zion, that brings good tidings, get yourself up into the high mountain; O Jerusalem, that brings good tidings, lift up your voice with strength; lift it up, be not afraid; say unto the cities of Judah, Behold your God!”

Behold your God gang! He’s mighty! And there are no obstacles in His path. Ever.

I’m so thankful my God is the most powerful being in existence. I’m so thankful that any obstacle I encounter can be demolished by Him!

Have you thanked God lately for being mighty? Do you have some obstacles in your life right now? Take some time today to thank Him for who He is and then start looking at those obstacles in light of it.

Thankful for Jericho moments

Prayer is powerful.

Some of you know I participated again in Clash of the Titles last week. You can read my interview here. I didn’t win, but I only felt a little disappointment. See, I was up against Nancy Kimball, one of my critique partners. So, win or lose, it was a win for me. At the same time the clash was going on, I was in Lake Yale attending the Florida Christian Writer’s Conference. On Friday, I learned I lost the clash. Then, I met with an agent who pretty much said there would never be a market for my book.

Now, God doesn’t need a market of course. And while I want to be published, my goal is to please God by writing the best books I can for His glory. Needless to say, late Friday night my emotions were pummeling me about the uphill climb I faced as a writer. I was holding up good, but there was definitely a battle going on inside my heart.

Enter the book of Joshua. When I woke Saturday morning, I opened my Bible to spend time with the Lord. Two things caught my eye. First, the Lord told Joshua, “This day will I begin to magnify you in the sight of all Israel, that they may know that, as I was with Moses, I will be with you.” Then, the Lord parted the Jordan river (just like the Red Sea) for Israel to enter the promised land.

After reading that, I prayed a simple prayer. “Lord, I know I’m facing Jericho right now. But I know you’re bigger than Jericho. I don’t deserve anything, but would you magnify me in the sight of the people somehow? Would you knock down some walls for me? Either way, I’ll write my best for you until you take me home.”

I had an appointment with an editor that morning from a small press. She asked for my manuscript. No promises there of course. But it was farther than I’d ever gotten before in a meeting. Answer to prayer right?

Wrong.

Beyond my wildest imagination, when awards were given out on Saturday night, the MC called my name for Novel of the Year. Talk about knocking down Jericho! That wasn’t even on my radar of hopes and dreams for that weekend.

So, now I’m an award winning writer. Thank you Jesus

I’m so thankful for Jericho moments, where God does something I don’t deserve to show just how powerful and unstoppable He is. I’m so thankful that God answers prayer, even when it seems like he won’t (or can’t). I’m so thankful that God has blessed me far more than I could ever begin to deserve.

Have you thanked the Lord for an answered prayer today? Are you spending time seeking His face? You have not because you ask not!

Thankful for Encouraging Words

I don’t have a lot to say in this post, but today I am thankful for the encouraging words and prayers of a friend. It is strange that we curl up with our phones, TV’s, computers, and e-readers so easily, and in the process keep ourselves from the living, breathing body of Christ.

Our interaction with other believers is the way Jesus touches us with hands that can be felt and words that can be heard with our ears and not just our hearts.

In 1 John 1:1,3, the apostle writes, “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life….That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you.”

Since the days of John, Jesus has been passing on His touch through His people. When we decide to encourage, pray for, or cry with another believer, we are like a living letter of love from the Savior.

I’d like to share a song with you that has always blessed me. I trust it will bless you as well.

 

 

Character Development.

It’s been a while since I gave an update on my writing. That’s not because I haven’t been writing. In fact, during November, I started my second novel. It’s called Mander’s Scar. The story is about a vigilante (Mander) with the ability to teleport over large distances. The problem? When the most powerful man in the world asks him to assassinate a rival, Mander refuses and becomes a target himself. Cool, eh? I’m about 15,000 words in and the feedback has been outstanding so far.

I haven’t forgotten about Soul Yearning either. I’ve been restructuring the storyline and Albione’s character arc a bit. When I started Soul Yearning 10 years ago, I was just writing a story. I never thought I’d have to sell the idea to someone. When I finally made my first pitch to an agent, I wasn’t expecting much. After being rejected, I realized that while the story made sense to me, there were character development issues as well as story structure issues. Because of those issues, I had a hard time developing a cool sounding pitch. So, for the last 4 months, I’ve been working on Albione. What does he want most in life? Why does he want that? What made him want that most?

What I realized is that Albione was a much deeper character than I thought he was. And it caused me to treat him and his arc throughout the story differently. Enter re-writes lol. I’m finally satisfied with where I’m taking him and the external events that bring him there. So, you should see that “edit” bar moving again soon. I’m putting on the finishing touches for my Genesis entry this year and am excited to see the results in a few months.

As for Mander, hindsight is 20/20.  I started off asking all those questions before I started writing. Which may be why the feedback has been so good

So, I guess I’ll pose a question to anyone who’s reading this. Who’s your favorite character (book or movie) and why?

Thankful for Little Encouragements

Everyday I am forced to climb four flights of stairs to drop a deposit bag in a safe. I suppose I should make a blog post entitled “Thankful for Daily Exercise”, but I’m still working on the thankful part. Can you tell?

As I descended these four flights of stairs, a student walked past me and said, “Ever since you’ve come here the food tastes so much better.”

Being a Macho Man (the male equivalent of Lunch Lady), there’s nothing I’d rather hear from the students I serve each day. And while I wasn’t having a bad day, her little one word sentence made my day. It was like an uplifting drive-by with only one bullet that pierced right to my heart.

Now, I serve over fifteen hundred students a day. There are over two thousand that attend my school. I don’t even know her name. But she had an impact on me that made my life different today because of what she said.

Which brings me to something I’ve been thinking over today. This morning I prayed, “God I want to please your heart, not break your heart.” I followed that with the thought, “Can I really break God’s heart?” God is God right? I certainly can”t change Him. As I debated this thought, God sent one of His little encouragements to me from His Word.

“Jesus wept.”

We all know Jesus didn’t weep because Lazarus died. He wept over the pain and heartache we experience because sin brought death into the world. He wept over our unbelief and stubborn heart. And He still does.

God’s Word is full of little encouragements. I’m so thankful for the people he has sent my way over the years to encourage me. I’m so thankful for the encouragement His Word brings me when I’m hurting, frustrated, confused, or afraid. I’m so thankful for that student who took the time to tell me I was doing a good job.

Have you thanked God for the encouragement found in His Word today? Have you thanked Him for all the people He’s put in your life that encourage you?

After you do that, go encourage someone else. Tell them you were thinking about them or praying for them. Share a verse with them. Thank them for something. Tell them what they mean to you. Tell somebody something! Because you’ll never know how one sentence might impact another person’s day.

 

Why be Thankful?

Aside from the obvious, of course (God commands it – Colossians 3:15), what are the reasons that I should be thankful? You might even be thinking, “I know it’s Thanksgiving, but everything in my life is so frustrating right now, I don’t see much of anything to be thankful for.”

I hear you. I don’t have to try very hard to come up with things I’m not thankful for. I’ve been writing for a year and a half and I’m still not published. My brake warning light came on the other day and now I hear them grinding when I stop (just in time for Christmas). I’m exhausted every day. I need twelve more hours in a day to get all the things done on my list.

Sound familiar? You could probably add even more serious things to your own list.

But here’s the truth that complaints often ignore. Most authors take five years and multiple manuscripts to get their first publishing deal. My car is 14 years old and has NEVER given me serious problems. I have two meaningful jobs and God is providing for my family’s needs. And even though I feel like I don’t have enough time to get everything done, if I was a little less selfish, I’d get a lot more of the important stuff done!

Complaining has a deceptive nature to it, one that’s hard for us to recognize. On the other hand, Thankfulness, especially when vocalized, enlightens people to the truth. That’s what Jesus said in John 11:41a-42 when he was about to raise Lazarus from the dead. “ And Jesus lifted up his eyes, and said, Father, I thank you that you have heard me. And I knew that you hear me always: but because of the people which stand by I said it, that they may believe that you have sent me.”

Being thankful is one of the ways we share the Gospel. Because every time we talk about what we’re thankful for, we’re testifying to our relationship with our Heavenly Father, just like Jesus did. And isn’t that the good news? That God pursued a relationship with us to the extreme of sending His own Son to eliminate the one thing (sin) that separated us.

So, today, I am thankful for the most amazing life God could have given me. I’m thankful for my Savior and best friend, Jesus. I’m thankful for my bride, Beverly, the best companion I could have ever hoped for to share this life with. I’m thankful for all my children, who make me laugh, smile, and experience more living than I would without them. I’m thankful for my parents, my siblings, my in-laws, my job, my home, my car, my friends, and my Bible. And probably a heap of other things.

Yes, there are things I could complain about. But isn’t it much more productive to give thanks? Take some time and testify to your relationship with Jesus today by telling someone else what you’re thankful about!

Thankful My God is real

If you ask some people today, they will tell you that God isn’t real, but rather something mankind created to either 1) Control people or 2) Make themselves feel better in light of all the difficult things life throws our way. The Christian God is relegated alongside myths, fairy tales, and people too unintelligent to comprehend reality. It’s amazing that the atheist will relegate a believer to the realm of fools in light of Psalm 14:1 which states, “The fool has said in his heart, ‘There is no God’.”

This only proves that things are upside down in our world. That’s why Jesus commanded us to pray “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” Hebrews 2:8 says, “You have put all things in subjection under His feet … but now we see not all things put under Him.”

Now I know this already. And because of all the amazing things God has done in my life over the years, I don’t doubt his existence. Every once in a blue moon the enemy will put an untrue thought about the existence of God in my head, but it usually doesn’t last too long. What I find happens more often is that I ask this question: “God, I know You’re there. And I know You don’t need to do anything else to prove to me that You’re there. But could you just throw me a reminder?”

I have found that God often gives these little reminder’s to me through His Word. One of them came today. I was reading my devotion and it really didn’t seem to apply. Oh there was a situation it applied to in my life. It just didn’t seem that important – kind of a left field application. Something I would need down the road, but not in the near future. Regardless, I committed some things to God and thought nothing of it afterwards.

Well, low and behold, my wife came home from picking up one of the kids at school and mentioned something to me. Something totally unexpected and exactly what my devotion was about this morning. At first, I was kind of stunned, but then the Lord nudged me. “Just a reminder that I’m here.” It was quite humbling to say the least.

I’m so thankful my God isn’t a fairy tale. I’m so thankful my God is real and loves me even though He doesn’t have to give me reminders of His nearness. Have you thanked God for creating you and being there for you lately? Take some time to do so today!

Thankful God gave me a brain

“Come now, and let us reason together…”

Most of us have read this verse from Isaiah 1:18. What I find fascinating is that God wanted his religious, but stubborn and wicked people, to think about an offer He proposed to them. He wanted them to really think about his amazing offer of forgiveness and make a reasonable response to it. Romans 12:1 is the same type of call, but from Paul. “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.” In light of the mercy God has shown me in salvation, it’s the reasonable response to surrender my entire life to Him.

In light of all the access to information in our society, you’d think we’d be more reasonable right? We should make more educated decisions and think things through to arrive at the best possible course of action, right?

Yet, what I’ve noticed is that we reason through things very poorly as a society. We claim to be independent or free in our thinking, but it seems like very few really think through anything on their own. They just regurgitate what they’ve heard someone else say as if they’ve really delved into the topic themselves.

Case in point. Today my wife shared with me about a link someone put on Facebook. It was titled, “Defend Biblical Marriage” and had a poster in which 8 Old Testament laws about marriage were listed. For example, one concerned a time when Israel conquered a city. They were to kill all the males and make the women and children their servants. If a soldier found he liked one of the women, he could choose to take her as his wife. Hence, “Biblical Marriage” from a concept most of us would find pretty barbaric. Now, maybe you read this and it rocks your world a bit. Or maybe you think “why”? Most people don’t think about it at all. They just say, “Yep, there’s those crazy Christians with their crazy Bible.”

The reality is that someone saw this poster and decided to throw it up on Facebook without looking to see if the facts on the poster were true or to find out their place in the Biblical account. Because if they had, they wouldn’t have linked it. There wasn’t any reasoning at all, by the person who made the poster, or the person who linked it.

Concerning Old Testament marriage laws, Jesus said this in Mark 10:5-6. “For the hardness of your heart he wrote you this precept. But from the beginning of the creation … “  This is not a hard verse to find and its meaning is clear. All those Old Testament laws about marriage were given because people were stubborn and refused to do what God said.

It was common practice in that culture for a victorious army to rape the women of a city as part of the spoils of victory. God knew these things were deeply ingrained in the people, so he allowed Moses to put boundaries on the spoils of war. You want a woman? You have to marry her. And guess what? You can’t divorce her if you don’t like her later on. This would make each soldier think twice about having his way with a gal from a defeated city because it would have to turn into a lifelong commitment.

Now, that wasn’t so painful was it? Just a little bit of study and thought process would have prevented a lot of ignorance and blasphemy. Here’s the problem though. Someone is willing to hate the Bible, reject God, and go to hell over something they’ve never given serious thought to.

Now, I’m not saying that I have to understand every little thing about God or the world. And I’m also not advocating logical deduction as the answer to all the world’s problems. God didn’t give me a brain to use it. He gave me a brain to yield it to Him in how I use it.

But I am saying we should be willing to give things some reasonable thought, especially if it’s the Word of God. I’m so thankful that God is okay with me sitting down and thinking through something with Him. I’m glad I’m not a robot that doesn’t interact in a learning way with my Creator. I’m thankful for the opportunity to learn and grow at the feet of Jesus. “Study to shew yourself approved unto God, a workman that needs not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth, But shun profane and vain babblings: for they will increase unto more ungodliness.” – 2 Timothy 2:15-16.

If this post sounds harsh, please understand it stems from a heart that’s broken from seeing people believe a lie only because they refuse to take the time to think about what someone else claims before believing it.

Have you taken the time to thank God for making you so intricate and wonderful today? After you do, read the Bible and really think about what you just read!