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It’s been a good week (January 7 – 12, 2019, after Clemson won the National Championship on Monday). I wore my Clemson colors all day Monday through Wednesday, and on Tuesday and Wednesday, I was amazed at how many greetings I got! “Good job!” “Your guys were great!” “Congratulations!” Most of these were from total strangers. No question, it feels good to win!

But I can’t take the personal accolades seriously—I didn’t do anything! While I tell myself that wearing orange way out here in Colorado helps the team, the fact is my total contribution to this season’s success is zero. I’m reminded of Galatians 6.3, 4:

For if anyone thinks he is something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself. But let each one test his own work, and then his reason to boast will be in himself alone and not in his neighbor.

I knew of a church where it was common to hear, “I’m glad to be part of a church that…” has a prison ministry or helps the poor or sends out relief teams to disaster areas… It’s great to be part of such a church, to be sure, but I am accountable for what I do, not for what people around me do. 

I’m proud to be part of The Navigators, but the question isn’t, “What are The Navigators doing?” Instead, it’s, “Bob, who are you investing in?” Or as my Navigator hero Skip Gray used to say, “Where’s your fruit?”

So then each of us will give an account of himself to God. (Romans 14.12)

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It’s trivial, but I just solved a geometry problem! The problem wasn’t trivial, it was medium difficult, but my solving it or not solving it is certainly trivial. I do math for fun, and to keep my brain sharp, I subscribe to Brilliant and try to solve one problem each day. This particular problem has been hanging around since before Christmas, and I just solved it. I had been all around it, but I hadn’t put the pieces together just right until today.

What are the lessons? 

• Persistence is certainly one. I persist until I succeed (sometimes!). We are called to persistence in prayer; see, for example, Luke 18.1. We ought also to persist in tasks that need to be done. Nehemiah persisted through difficulties and finished the wall. 
• Flexibility is another lesson. When one approach doesn’t work, try another. Old-time Navigator Leroy Eims wrote a book called “No Magic Formula,” in which he observed that every Old Testament battle was different. They only marched around the walls to defeat one city – Jericho. Gideon took 300 men and used surprise. Joshua in defeating Ai took a lot of men and used a ruse. Flexibility. Churches are sometimes guilty of running the same program year after year because it worked once. 
• That leads us to creativity. God gave us the gift of creativity. Adam’s’ first task was to name the animals. Joseph was creative in how he reconciled to his brothers while giving them a chance to redeem themselves.

Persistence, flexibility, and creativity: not a bad set of lessons from a geometry problem!

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I’m trying to get into the habit of blogging every day. (Those who do say the first 1,000 days are the hardest!) To do that, I have to write whether or not I feel inspired. I started today with nothing in mind to write so I’m talking with God, and I’m on the lookout for a word.

I started my day by writing three thank-you notes. The idea was that I would get those written and mail them while I was out for a breakfast appointment. So I wrote the notes upstairs and took them downstairs to put stamps on them in preparation for leaving. Then the notes disappeared! The pen that I had written them with was downstairs on my desk (brought down from upstairs), but no notes. I looked “everywhere.” Finally I went to breakfast with no notes to mail.

Then it hit me, “Without me, you can do nothing.” (John 15.5) I can’t even mail a note! I’ve been urging us the past few days to do the next right thing. And that’s good counsel. But it presumes that we’ll do the next right thing in God’s strength and under his guidance. 

I finally found the notes about three hours later…mixed in with note cards that I haven’t used yet. When I put those away, I accidentally included the ones I had already written. 

But I hope I’ve learned something: do the next right thing with God’s help because “Without me, you can do nothing.”

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I am a proud graduate of Clemson University (B.S. in mathematics, class of ’68), and I’m very pleased, of course, with Clemson’s victory Monday night over Alabama.

There’s a lesson in Head Coach Dabo Swinney’s comment at the end of the first half when Clemson was leading 31 – 16: “Ain’t nothin’ less important than the halftime score.” He was saying what I wrote in this blog on January 6, quoting another head football coach Fisher DeBerry: “You’re only as good as your last play.” Dabo urged his team to come out in the second half with the same intensity as the first half and play like the score was 0 – 0. 

Many of us want to rest on our laurels OR let our past poor behavior cloud our future. But Paul wrote, “Forgetting those things which are behind…” (Philippians 3.13). 

Just go out and do the next right thing!

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The Christmas stories in Matthew and Luke tell of two different events in two different places. Luke speaks of the angel’s appearance to the shepherds and their visiting the newborn Jesus in the manger. Matthew tells of the wise men visiting the “young child” in a house some time later.

I just read that the early church has always loved the wise men, but it largely ignored Luke’s shepherds. Drawings of the wise men appeared in the catacombs 200 years before drawings of the shepherds for example. (E.A. Carmean Jr, art historian). The shepherds were low status men, poor, and did not seek out the Messiah until the angels called them. The wise men, on the other hand, were high status, wealthy, and had to work really hard and travel a long way. 

God used them both. The shepherds’ appearance was a confirming sign to Mary and Joseph, and the shepherds started telling about him right away (Luke 2.17). The wise men came later and didn’t tell anyone. However, their gifts would have funded the family for a long time. 

Here are a few simple lessons:

• The Messiah is for all people, rich and poor. 
• God works through ordinary people.
• God often calls people through their work. The shepherds were working when the angel appeared to them. The wise men would have discovered the star as part of their work. For that matter, Jesus called the first disciples while they were at work fishing!

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I wrote on January 6 that some folks try to excuse themselves from doing anything significant for or with God because “my spiritual life isn’t what it should be,” but that’s no excuse since what we do today is what matters: just do the next right thing. 

Here’s another reason why the alleged quality (or lack) of our spiritual life is irrelevant. Peter captures it in the aftermath of the healing of the lame man in Acts 3.

Acts 3.12 (ESV), “Why do you wonder at this, and why do you stare at us as though by our own power and piety we have made him walk?”

When we say, “I can’t do great things for God because my spiritual life isn’t what it should be,” we are saying that we do great things by our own power and piety! If only I spent an hour every day with the Lord! If only I spent 2 hours in prayer like Martin Luther did! If only…

Peter recognized and explained that the healing of the lame man was by the name of Jesus, not by Peter’s power and piety:

Acts 3:16 (ESV) And his name—by faith in his name—has made this man strong whom you see and know, and the faith that is through Jesus has given the man this perfect health in the presence of you all.

So go and do the next right thing…in the name and power of Jesus!

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“My spiritual life isn’t what it should be.” My friend had just written to ask if he might have a special gift for prayer, but then he quickly undermined it with the old standard, “I can’t be called to great things…my spiritual life isn’t what it should be.” And the answer to that is:

So what? Do the next right thing.

Paul said in Philippians 3, “Forgetting those things which are behind…”

I was just reading about Simeon in Luke 2, and his spiritual life was what it should be! The text says he was:

– A good man
– A lover of God
– Pure
– In touch with the Holy Spirit
– A believer in the imminent appearing of “The Refreshing of Israel”

A wonderful list. HOWEVER, if he doesn’t respond to the Spirit THAT DAY and go to the temple, he misses Jesus. What if he had been in the middle of doing something important? Or unimportant for that matter. What if he thought, “I’ve been a good guy for a really long time, isn’t it OK if I take a day off?”

Simeon’s responsibility, my friend’s responsibility, your and my responsibility is to do the next right thing: pray, spend time in the Word, meet a neighbor’s need, encourage someone, write the blog(!), serve your spouse,…. My friend Fisher DeBerry, former coach of the Air Force Academy Football team, had a sign in his office: “You’re only as good as your last play.”

Do the next right thing. The alleged quality of your past spiritual life, good or bad, is irrelevant.

Have a blessed 2019!

Now go up into the hills, bring down timber, and rebuild my house. I will take pleasure in it and will be honored, says the Lord. Haggai 1.8

This verse is in the middle of the chapter on priorities where Haggai challenged the Jews returning from captivity that they had built their own houses while neglecting to rebuild the temple. I’ve been using it as a challenge to folks not to make excuses for not having their daily quiet time, for example. And the verse implies effort: “Now go up into the hills and bring down timber” sounds hard! But it’s commanded nonetheless.

But I’m learning a new application for this text as I find myself, at age 71, with my warranty running out! I’ve just had shoulder surgery on May 10, three weeks before I’m writing this. The shoulder surgery was scheduled quickly so that I’ll be able to have knee replacement surgery in August. And this “simple, out-patient” shoulder surgery wasn’t, AND I came home on oxygen, a complication caused by anesthesia and living at altitude.

Haggai 1.8 came to me as I’m getting back to the stationary bike for aerobic exercise and using the little breathing exerciser they sent me home with. I don’t want to do the work! But the word is clear: my body is God’s temple, too (I Corinthians 3.16), and God wants it rebuilt! And the rebuilding will be difficult.

But there’s a promise, also. The older Jews thought the new temple was puny compared with the previous one (Haggai 2.3). But God responds: “‘The glory of this present house will be greater than the glory of the former house,’ says the LORD Almighty.” (Haggai 2.9) My orthopedist says I will be better than I was before! And God seems to be saying that, too!

So I need to do the work! If you find that your warranty is running out at whatever age, let’s encourage each other to keep both our spiritual AND our physical houses in order.

A friend of ours, in her 80s, was talking with June about a new experience she was having. Our friend is politically liberal, and, as nearly as we could tell, theologically nowhere. She and her husband hadn’t participated in church much until they retired and moved to a Colorado mountain town. There, they were going to a church in which they could discuss, as nearly as I could tell, their political causes.

So June was shocked when she said something like this: “We’re not going to church anymore, but we are participating in a discussion group that meets at 7am. We’re reading the Bible and sharing what we’re hearing from God. Have you ever heard of ‘Lectio Divina?’” (Lectio Divina, Latin for “Divine Light” is, at its simplest, a way of reading the Bible to listen for God to speak.)

Then our friend said, “The church has failed us.”

By which she meant, I’m over 80 years old, and I’m just learning how to read the Bible in a meaningful way.

Bill Hybels, pastor of Willow Creek Church, said much the same thing in an oft-misunderstood quote back in 2008:

We made a mistake… What we should have done when people crossed the line of faith and became Christians, we should have started telling people and teaching people that they have to take responsibility to become self feeders. We should have gotten people (and) taught people how to read their Bible between services (and) how to do the spiritual practices much more aggressively on their own.”

Bill discovered that Willow Creek Church, for all the good it was doing, hadn’t been teaching folks to read the Bible for themselves, and in that omission the church was failing its members. It was failing to make disciples. I’m afraid most churches and pastors fall into that trap. Churches have replaced training the people to be in the Word for themselves with never-ending spoon-feeding.

Ed Stetzer, a well-known church researcher, reflecting on what Bill Hybels said, wrote:

Willow is … repenting for what 95% of churches in America should also repent– not creating Christ-honoring, spiritually formed disciples. For thinking that sitting people down and having them read studies will make them disciples.

Folks, if you’re not yet reading the Bible for yourself, please click The Adventure Series tab at the top of the screen and scroll down for some resources. I recommend Brief Instructions and Journal for Daily Time with God that I wrote. There is more detail in my book Join the Adventure or Growing Strong in God’s Family or Every Man a Warrior, both described on the Adventure tab.

If you’re a pastor, please tap into these resources to help your members. Feel free to contact me at bob@ewell.com, and I or one of my Navigator colleagues can help. Let it not be said of us that we failed to train people to read the Word and hear from God for themselves.

I like to work! I’m 71 years old and NOT retired! Today, with The Navigators, I get to spend time helping pastors be more effective making disciples in their churches. I also mentor younger men and analyze corporate data for The Navigators. Before that, I was in the Air Force for 20 years and had my own statistical consulting business for 10.

Work itself is an honorable and necessary thing.

The first picture we have of God is that he is a worker (Genesis 1 and 2)

Many of God’s key people worked at “secular” jobs:

Continue reading A Biblical Perspective on Work →