OUT OF THE BOX

Below is a paraphrased excerpt from a letter wrote I about 6 years ago. I have edited out the "juicy" parts, but nevertheless it is a candid expression of what I was dealing with at that particular season. Many of you may identify with it to some degree. I would encourage you to follow it up with Psalm 73, which encourages God’s people to find their peace and solutions in the presence of God. A personal letter, Summer of 2003: “My life has come to a place of overwhelming shock to me. It is like waking up from a dream and finding I am in a nightmare. To start out with a vision for great things and to end up at the bottom has been a great and shameful disappointment to me. My life has been filled with wonderful signs of God’s presence and horrible pits of darkness at the same time. I have always tried to follow what I thought was the Lord’s way and direction, yet now I realize how I have been so influenced by my fears, anxieties, laziness, and lack of discipline. Over the years...

“And they made a calf in those days, offered sacrifices to the idol, and rejoiced in the works of their own hands (the idols)…” Acts 7: 41 “And…he…made a molded calf…and the people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play.” Exodus 32: 4-6 “It is…the sound of singing I hear….He saw the calf and the dancing.” Ex 32: 18-19. The verses above show that you can disobey the Lord and still have a party---at least for a while. One of the problems with human nature is that it so often loses sight of both reward and consequences. When we get caught up in the temptation of the moment or in what we want right now, we forget that there is a reward for faith and obedience, and a consequence and a reaping for evil and disobedience. And so like Israel, we make our “golden calves” and have a party. Moses had gone up the mountain to meet God face to face and to receive the commandments and the laws for Israel’s life as a nation. The people became impatient, discontent, perplexed, and maybe bored du...

Just for fun I decided to include some poems I wrote. The first two I think are quite witty. The first one I wrote in response to mine and Laurel's kidding about my tendency to repeat myself too much. The second one I wrote in response to my struggles to change in areas that would improve my role as a husband. The other poems are of a more serious nature and which share some spiritual insight gained from experience. Vain Repetitions My emails will say hello, communicate, and engage. They may even dazzle you with eloquence and prose. Expert tools of grammar will be utilized on each page. But no trite phrases, and no repetitions. No. None of those. Your heart will be warmed by thoughts so expressed In simile, metaphor, hyperbole, and other additions. But in the end you surely will have confessed The thing has a glaring absence of those redundent repetitions. His heart and mind are drawn with words Telling revelation, his schedule, truth, and no fiction. Impressing that pretty lady w...

Seeing so many things that could discourage us and seeing the failures of God's people we are tempted to lose heart and faith and to think that there is no use trying. We have seen what we thought were the wrong people succeeding and the wrong people failing. Like John the Baptist we have seen the glory and said, "Behold! The Lamb of God!" Then we have sat in our "prison cells" and said, "Are you the one or do we look for another? Did I miss it?" We have stood on the mountain top and cried out, "This is it!" And we have crawled on the valley floor crying, "Where did it go?" We have said, "Lord, I'll never leave you nor forsake you" and later denied Him before the rooster crowed. We have slept while others were in their Gethsemanes. We have had friends walk into our Gethsemanes and betray us with a kiss. We have seen churches fly and churches fall. We have been in the processes of God and were not sure whether we were ...

"...The wall of Jerusalem is also broken down, and its gates are burned with fire." Nehemiah 1: 3 "...Will they revive the stones from the heaps of rubbish—stones that are burned?" Nehemiah 4: 2 The drama of the church is often reminiscent of those scenes from war movies in which excited new recruits march toward the front lines while being met by weary veterans returning from battle, limping along bandaged and bloody, carrying their wounded, and still in shock from the trauma of conflict. The new recruits move forward ready to conquor the world, while the battle-weary veterans groan in the pain of failure and disillusionment. Multitudes start out in the Christian walk, everybody expects testing, they just don't expect it to be real. They expect either victory without battle (naiveté and untested faith) or battle without victory (skepticism and unbelief). Motives and untested faith must inevitably face the refiners fire. The disillusionments of time and tes...

Ralph the roofer is checking the hot asphalt temperature for the sixth time today. Human nature does not always learn wisdom from experience, does it?

Isaiah 50: 4 “The Lord has given me the tongue of the learned, that I should know how to speak a word in season to him who is weary.” Icy Hot or Preparation-H Years ago a lady in my hometown was suffering from that “burning and itching sensation” that we hear about in TV commercials. She sent one of her children to the drugstore to purchase a tube of Preparation-H Ointment, which was placed in the tiny medicine cabinet above her bathroom sink along with other medicines which promise relief from various physical ailments. Soon afterwards, her hemorrhoids began to “flare up,” and the pain drove her back to the medicine cabinet for the relief she so desperately needed. Reaching for the Prep-H Ointment she inadvertently took the Icy Hot instead. Icy Hot is a wonderful medication for muscular pain and various aches that need penetrating heat, but it was never intended for hemorrhoids. You can imagine what happened as she applied a very generous portion to the afflicted area. Job’s Comforter...

[Below is a personal word that I recently shared with a friend who had been hurt by friends he loved and trusted. Obviously this word is not meant for everyone reading this entry, but there may be others of you to whom it will also speak. –Billy Long] During my prayer time this morning I was reading about Jeremiah’s “perpetual pain” ( Jer.15:15-21 ), and realized this word is for you. I know there are no simple answers or quick solutions to the grief and pain you are experiencing. But I think the Lord has given me a word that will at least give a little comfort until you complete this particular phase of your journey into the Lord’s purpose for you. I believe the Lord did lead you in the path you took. It was not a mistake. He sent you there because he knew your pure heart and good insight would allow you to see the realities of the situation. He also knew that your integrity would cause you to speak up rather than sit silent. He knew it would be difficult and painful. He knew that you...

Hebrews 4: 13 “And there is no creature hidden from his sight, but all things are open and laid bare before the eyes of Him with whom we have to do.” We have all heard about the dumb criminal who robbed the convenience store after filling out an application for employment and turning it in with his real name and phone number on it. The police simply read the application and went to his home and arrested him. Here are a few other situations illustrating the truth that “all things are open and laid bare before the eyes of Him with whom we have to do." The men in the police line-up stood stood facing a mirror on the wall. Behind it was the victim who was about to identify the one who had stolen her purse. The men were being told to repeat the same sentence the thief had said to the woman when he robbed her. The officer addressed the first man, “Suspect number one, step forward, hold out your hand and say, ‘Give me all your money.’” The man complied. The officer then gave the same...

"When with rebukes you correct man for iniquity, you make his beauty melt away like a moth," Psalm 39:11 Discipline is often painful but is not harmful unless it is stubbornly resisted, despised, and rejected. Discipline has a positive purpose. Discipline is God's love providing us with incentive to obey, working to help free us from disobedience and harmful ways, and attempting to bring us closer to Him. Surrendering to God’s discipline results in strength, righteousness, peace, maturity, wholeness, and holiness (Hebrews 12: 12-17), but stubborn refusal to break leaves us stripped, bruised, and spiritually disabled (Isaiah 1:5-6; Psalm 38:1-5). David is a wonderful example of how to respond to God’s discipline. He was quick to humble himself with a broken and contrite spirit before God. He acknowledged his sin and attempted no excuses or self-justification. His prayer was, “Have mercy upon me…for I acknowledge my transgression.” (Psalm 51). Psalm 31: 9-10 ...

I am sharing from my journal a couple examples of how the Lord encouraged me with a word in season when I needed it. The entries go back to the beginning of 2001. January 29, 2001 I was sitting at my desk preparing to go to work one morning and struggling with frustration at where I was in my life. I had gone from being a successful pastor to facing the failure of a new church plant and trying to find a job that would provide for my family. Looking through a notebook I came upon a poem I had previously written to encourage myself to persevere and trust the Lord in the waiting process: “When it seems you are forgotten and your good days in the past, His grace brings forth a new song. He saves the best for last.” The poem was based on the words spoken to Jesus when He turned the water into wine: “Every man at the beginning sets out the good wine…and then the inferior. [But] you have kept the good wine until now” (John 2: 10). Laurel and I believed this was God's plan for ...