Michael Kelley's Blog, page 225

Fridays Are For One Question

I think of myself as an early morning guy. When given the chance, I’ll wake up at 4 am any time over staying up until midnight. I’m more alert and productive in the morning versus the evening.

But twice in the past couple of weeks I’ve slept right through my alarm. Normally that might not be a big deal, but each of those times there were guys waiting on me – guys who did NOT sleep through their alarm – at the gym. That’s what makes it stink. So in order to keep this from happening again, I’m turning to the blog and today’s question:

“How do you ensure not oversleeping when you absolutely have to get up on time?”

Are We Sure We Want to Claim the Promises of God?

God always keeps His promises.

We echo this mantra to our kids, hoping that it’s going to sink in and might even serve them well in the coming years of adolescence. But there’s another side to this statement; one that doesn’t get as much press.

See, when we say that God always keeps His promises, we typically think of the kind of promises that lead to our comfort. So, yes, in that instance, we do indeed want to claim the promises of God. We want to claim the promise that He is going to work all things together for our good (Rom. 8:28). We want to claim the promise that God will complete His good work in us (Phil. 1:6). And we want to claim His promise that He is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Heb. 13:8) and that He will never leave us nor forsake us (Heb. 13:5).

These are comforting promises.And like kids who have been promised a treat after dinner, we sit at the table of the Father counting on Him to keep His word.

But these aren’t the only promises of God. And not all God’s promises are quite so easy to claim:

“In this world you will have trouble” (John 16:33).

It’s not a “maybe, maybe not” kind of thing. It’s a promise. As real as God’s constant presence, as real as His engineering of circumstances for our good, and as real as His abiding love. It’s a promise.

We should keep this in mind when we want to “claim” the promises of God on our lives. The promises of God aren’t like a cafeteria line where you can take the ones that taste like Jell-O and leave the ones that taste like broccoli. It’s a full plate that comes to you in Christ, like it or not. God always keeps His promises:

“You will have trouble.”

But amazingly, even in this promise, the gospel echoes on, for that’s not the only thing Jesus promises in this passage. After this promise of suffering and trial, Jesus plainly says that despite this we should be courageous because “I have conquered the world.”

That’s the good news that accompanies the not-so-comfortable promises of God. It’s that though we will have trouble – though we will suffer – though we might even be brought before rulers, governments, and authorities to answer for our faith – Jesus has conquered the world.

We can, then, have very clear expectations from God because He keeps these promises. Will there be difficulty? Yes. Will He be present with us? Yes. Will His victory be declared over all creation? Absolutely.

God always keeps His promises.

Two Great Movies Coming This Fall

Anybody up for a double feature? I’m not sure I could handle it in the same day, but holy moly…

What if I’m Questioning the Love of God?

Last week, I was doing a seminar about some of the central themes of my book. We were discussing suffering, God’s sovereignty, and His emotional response to the suffering of His people. One of the main things I tried to emphasize was that pain is the common denominator of humanity; because we live in a broken world, the question isn’t “if” in terms of pain and suffering; the question is what happens next. We got finished with the seminar and the folks started to disperse, but one young woman held back.

She explained to me that she works in an urban area mostly with young girls who have experienced some sort of trauma in their lives. One, for example, just had the anniversary of the death of her sister in a gang shoot out. Another was a victim of sexual abuse. Most of the rest had at least a sense of abandonment since their mother, father, or both are absent.

She resonated with my premise that pain is one of the things that links us together in our humanity. She lives it every day, even if the young women she works with don’t realize it. But she did ask for my perspective on what is a deceptively simple question:

“How do these girls know that God loves them?”

That’s when it gets real, isn’t it? I mean, I know that my wife loves me. I know that my kids love me (most of the time). And I know that my parents love me. How?

Part of it is because of their words. They tell me the love me. But it’s more than that. I know – really know – they love me because they show me.

It’s interesting, then, that when Paul reflected on the love of God, he used some very specific language: “For while we were still helpless, at the appointed moment, Christ died for the ungodly. For rarely will someone die for a just person—though for a good person perhaps someone might even dare to die. But God proves His own love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us!” (Romans 5:6-8).

See it? God proves. He demonstrates. He backs up His claim. He closes the case. He settles the issue. He leaves no doubt.

How do we know God loves us? We know He loves us because of the cross. That’s how we know. It sounds so simple, but if you find yourself in a situation when you question the love of God because of your circumstances, think of the cross.

Think of Jesus, over and over again. The Father did not spare the Son, but gave Him up for you. And for me. Because He loves us.

Case closed.

Dwight Shrute Calls Out Facebook Statuses

Somebody give that man a Shrute buck:





(HT:22Words)

Discipleship in Context: What I Do at LifeWay Christian Resources

Regardless of where you are, what you do, what your age is, and where you’ve come from, there are some core components to growth in Jesus that remain the same. That is to say whether you’re in suburban Chicago, inner city LA, or rural Kansas, and you want go grow as a disciple of Jesus, you can be sure that there are certain practices that are common. These aren’t rocket science; they’re the same things that believers have been doing for centuries as a means of both expressing and growing in their faith. Things like:

- Praying

- Studying the Bible

- Living on mission

- Gathering to worship

- A growing understanding of the gospel

But anyone who has lived in more than one area of the world will tell you that the manner in which these disciplines are fleshed out vary widely depending on your context. You pray for different things. The obedience Christ prescribes for you is different depending on your community and life stage. That understanding – that these core components of discipleship remain constant and yet are fleshed out differently in different churches – is what is motivating the initiative that I lead at LifeWay Christian Resources.

Our project is called Discipleship in Context, and it’s an approach to providing Bible studies to churches that are built around the specific culture, demographics, and communities of those churches.

Imagine for a second with me:

- Imagine that your church could have custom created Bible study based on your specific needs.

- Imagine that these studies would embrace your cultural values, strategic vision, and even the visuals that people associate with your church.

- Imagine that all the groups in your church – adults, students, and children – could be aligned to study the same sacred texts and themes.

- Imagine having a trusted partner in ministry that deeply knows and understands you and writes specifically with your church in mind.

Churches across the world have seen the benefits to doing this; that’s why many have for a long time been writing and publishing their own studies for their people. Though doing so provides the kind of specific focus and direction that can truly unite their people, it’s often a huge time and energy drain on the staff and volunteers. But imagine having a trusted partner in ministry that functions as proxy staff members for that church, freeing up pastors and volunteers to focus on building relationships, developing leaders, and moving the church forward.

That’s what we do.

It’s a huge privilege right now to spend half of all my days talking with church leaders across the country, learning about who they are and how God is working in their midst, and then dreaming together of how we can custom create Bible studies that help people grow deeply in Christ.

So that’s what I do here. It’s a pretty great time.

If you’d like to learn more about this service, download some samples of how we are helping other churches, and find out if this is a good fit for you, please visit us online.

The Waiting Room

The following is excerpted from my book, Wednesdays Were Pretty Normal: A Boy, Cancer, and God:

There is nowhere on Earth like a hospital waiting room. Most people have been in one at one time or another—waiting because your appendix is bursting, waiting because your kid has a gash that needs to be sewn up, waiting because a friend has been in surgery and you are holding vigil for her recovery. You wait. You wait alongside the smell of stale coffee, of Maury Povich on the hanging television with the “Do not change channel” sign on it, of the pacing, bleary-eyed occupants clamoring for a doctor’s update.

We spent plenty of time in the waiting room. Though Joshua spent more than his share of time in a hospital bed, we also got to spend a lot of time at home. After the initial two or three weeks in the hospital, we were allowed to do his chemotherapy on an outpatient basis. But there were caveats to that freedom.

One of the unfortunate aspects of chemotherapy—along with the nausea, hair loss, and general awful feelings—is that chemo is an indiscriminate killer. The medicine attacks good cells as well as bad. And the intense regimen of medicine left Joshua susceptible to disease because along with fighting the cancerous cells, it broke down his fighter white blood cells, too. So wherever we went, we armed ourselves with two things: Purell, for excessive washing of hands in an effort to keep away germs, and a thermometer. We had the thermometer under the strict instructions that if Joshua ever got a fever that reached 100.5, we were immediately to come to the emergency room because of his low tolerance for disease. A fever could signal an infection, and because Joshua didn’t have the strength to fight infection, it could be really dangerous. So we spent a lot of nights rushing to the hospital, only to sit for a few hours in the waiting room.

In the waiting room you sit alongside people of every race, culture, and economic background. You wait there together. This place—though full of grief, hardship, and anxiety— might be the closest place on Earth to the kingdom of God. In the waiting room all the things that separate people from one another tend to drift away. Somehow, in that small, glass-enclosed space, you don’t seem so different from people of different nationalities. Or different social circles. Or different styles of dress. Or different languages. You hold one thing in common with everyone in that room—pain.

The pain takes different forms. For some it’s actual physi- cal pain. For others it’s the emotional pain of watching some- one close to them suffer. But pain unifies every black, white, brown, or otherwise colored person in that room. Indeed, pain is the common denominator of all humanity.

Regardless of where you come from, how insulated your lifestyle, how stable your finances, or how healthy your habits, you will have a moment in the waiting room. And in that moment none of that other stuff seems to matter very much. Everyone hurts in one way or another. The question is what you do with that pain…

Find the book here.

If the First Moon Landing Would Have Failed

Two days before Apollo 11 landed on the moon and Neil Armstrong stepped into the history books, presidential speech writer William Safire sent a memo to Nixon’s Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman. The dispatch contained prepared remarks for the president in case NASA’s mission failed and the astronauts were left stranded to die on the moon…

(HT:22Words)

Fridays Are For One Question

Last week, we saw Clint Eastwood speaking to an empty chair at the Republican National Convention.

Last night, we saw the President and Vice President address the Democratic National Convention.

I think I’ve had about enough national conventions for a while. But it did get me thinking.

Often, these political meetings are boiled down to a series of one-liners and sound bites played over and over again as a means of summarizing the main points of speeches and platforms. So let’s imagine this scenario today.

You are at the podium at a party convention. It’s your moment to address the room. You’ve got your speech prepared, and you know that there is one line – one zinger – that you want to be played over and over again. So here’s today’s question:

“What’s your one line? What’s your pivotal statement? What’s the main point of your address?”

What “The Avengers” Can Teach Us About Identity

“Identity” is a motif that runs through a lot of superhero stories. In most cases, the hero in question has a secret identity – Spiderman, Green Lantern, Wonderwoman – and then they have their walking around self which is usually some version of a mild-mannered something or other. But there is one superhero that brings the issue to another level. One of the key points of The Avengers involves the participation of the apparently introspective and philosophical mind of Bruce Banner, aka the Incredible Hulk.

The issue at hand is about the real self. The true you. The one at the core. For Bruce, the question was simple: Is it me, or is it the monster that lurks inside?

Not to be overly dramatic here, especially since we are talking about The Avengers for crying out loud, but the question should mean something to you, too. It certainly does to me. It’s one that I’ve wrestled with for a long time from the perspective of a Christian. To put it in those terms, it goes something like this:

Sometimes I sin. Sometimes I practice the acts of righteousness. But which one is the real me? Because it feels like there is a war inside of me between these two people.

Before we get to the answer, let’s first ask whether or not such matters are really worth our time. Is it really significant which one is the real you?

The answer is an unequivocal, absolute, yes. It matters deeply.

If the real you, the one at the core, is really the sinner, then it means that all this stuff you do – the daily battle of choosing good rather than evil, of seeking moral purity, of singing songs to the Lord – then all that is just a change in behavior. In the end, it’s only play acting. You know who the real you is. The evil down inside. And much as you want to behave better, you know you’ll always come back down to selfishness, greed, and all the rest.

But if indeed the real you, the one at the core, is really the saint, then it means that every time you choose godliness and the good that comes along with it, you are behaving in accordance with who you really are.

Yes, it matters. It matters very much.

There’s a good and a bad news answer to this question of what lies at the core. The bad news is that all of us, without exception, once were the sinner. And every time we chose to behave rightly, be it in big or small instance, we were choosing something wholly out of character for us. A plant with a damaged root might occasionally produce a flower, but in the end, it will need to be dug up because at its deepest level, it’s damaged. And at our deepest parts, we are damaged and broken.

That’s why the gospel of Jesus Christ is so much more than a prescription for better behavior. And that’s why, whenever you find Paul or James or whoever giving you behavioral instruction in Scripture it’s tied to something deeper.

The gospel doesn’t tell us to do better; the gospel makes us better. It is through the identity-altering gospel of Jesus Christ that the sinner is made into the saint. It is through the paradigm-shifting gospel of Jesus Christ that what was dead becomes alive. It is through this greatest of great news that we become new.

I don’t know the answer to Dr. Banner’s question, but I know the answer to mine. I once was lost but now I’m found. I once was alienated but now I have a seat at the table. I once was an enemy of God but now I am a chosen and privileged son.

It’s more than what I do. It’s who I am.