Church

If you had only six months left to live, would you do what you are doing now? Would you live the way you’re living now? Admiral Hyman Rickover was in charge of the original development of naval nuclear propulsion. He was known as the “Father of the Nuclear Navy.” He was also known for his tough interviews. One of things he especially wanted to know was how candidates would act under stress. He kept a chair in his office that had a few inches sawed off the front two legs. When a candidate sat down, they would immediately be off-balance. His theory: If you can't handle sitting in an awkward chair, I'm not going to put you in charge of a nuclear submarine. Former President Jimmy Carter once interviewed with Admiral Rickover for a position. He tells the story in his autobiography entitled, Why Not the Best: The First Fifty…

You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. - Romans 5:6-8 While we might readily acknowledge that we are powerless to change our condition and that we were indeed ungodly, we struggle to admit the third truth - that we were sinners. I may make a few mistakes but I’m not a bad person. It’s why we can sing Amazing Grace without really thinking about the words … “Amazing grace how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me.” None of us like to think about how wretched we are. We’d rather live in the self-delusion that compared to others we…

You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. - Romans 5:6-8 What does it mean to be ungodly? It's really not all that complex. It simply means to be unlike God. But it does go deeper than that. Imagine a child wandering into The Louvre in Paris with a Sharpie and drawing a moustache on the Mona Lisa. What would you call that? A mistake? A felony? One appropriate word would be desecration.  At its core, desecration is a failure to respect a masterpiece, to not respect or uphold what is sacred. From the earliest pages of Scripture we learn that we are…

Sometimes we refer to the writers of the New Testament as “saints” such as St. Paul or St. Peter. But God didn’t seek us out because we were saints. He loved us when we were far from him. Listen to these sentences from Paul - they reveal three truths about ourselves and one amazing truth about God. You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. - Romans 5:6-8 Truth number one: we were powerless to change our own condition. A few years ago, I hurt my lower back. For the first several years I would have "flare-ups" every few months and they…