1 Peter 2

We live our lives as testimony to the Living God. Everything we do if in full display to God.

Our best testimony is found in our reactions. Do we trust the God who preserved the early church.

verse 24:  who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live for righteousness—by whose stripes you were healed.

For motivation for living the Jesus way, we need only to look at the cross.

When seized by temptation- look to the cross.

When angered by the words of enemies- look to the cross

When bearing the pain of illness and weakness- look to the cross.

Lord, brand me with your great sign of grace.




Just a Touch

Hope and mercy shine through the threshold of love everlasting
The eyes of ever born grace
Just a touch
As she crawls through the mass of shuffling feet
and the cacophony of voices.
Eternity kisses the distance
between normal and divine.
Speaks the woman:
I have heard of you.
I don’t ask for your embrace
and yet this act is selfish
(I believe)
I long to stretch toward the hem
of Almighty Wonderous Cross-bound God.

And now another one is reaching through the crowd on hands and knees…
Another spiritual beggar-
The one who writes these words.




Favorite Quotes on Brokenness

Whenever you find tears in your eyes, especially unexpected tears,   ¨it is well to pay the closest attention. They are not only telling the secret  ¨of who you are, but more often than not of the mystery of where you have come from and are summoning you to where you should go next.  ~Frederick Buechner

Learn this lesson: not to trust Christ because you repent, but trust Christ to make you repent; not to come to Christ because you have a broken heart, but to come to Him that He may give you a broken heart; not to come to Him because you are fit to come, but to come to Him because you are unfit to come. Your fitness is your unfitness. Your qualification is your lack of qualification. ~C.H. Spurgeon

The church is not a select circle of the immaculate, but a home where the outcast may come in. It is not a palace with gate attendants and challenging sentinels along the entrance-ways holding off at arm’s-length the stranger, but rather a hospital where the broken-hearted may be healed, and where all the weary and troubled may find rest and take counsel together.~ James H. Aughley

We want to avoid suffering, death, sin, ashes. But we live in a world crushed and broken and torn, a world God Himself visited to redeem. We receive his poured-out life, and being allowed the high privilege of suffering with Him, may then pour ourselves out for others. ~ Elizabeth Elliott

“A broken soul is not the absence of beauty, but a cracked and torn soul reeks of the sweet incense it contains.”

Your most profound and intimate experiences of worship will likely be in your darkest days – when your heart is broken, when you feel abandoned, when your out of options, when the pain is great – and you turn to God alone.~  Rick Warren

God uses broken things. It takes broken soil to produce a crop, broken clouds to give rain, broken grain to give bread, broken bread to give strength. It is the broken alabaster box that gives forth perfume. It is Peter, weeping bitterly, who returns to greater power than ever. ~Vance Havner

God is looking for broken men who have judged themselves in the light of the cross of Christ. When He wants anything done, He takes up men who have come to the end of themselves, whose confidence is not in themselves, but in God. ~ Harry Ironside

Like the rock that was smitten, we too need to be broken, before the rivers of blessing can flow out through us to others. The opposition of men and their false accusations serve to keep us broken before God.~ Zach Poonen

God is not looking for the powerful and the successful and those who are able communicators. Instead, He looks for the person who has a broken and contrite spirit. Those individuals, whether they are extroverted or introverted, humorous or melancholy, are regularly in the quiet place bowing before God’s Word with a trembling heart and seeking fresh enabling from the Holy Spirit. They have been brought to see that they did not make themselves, nor did they save themselves. They are totally dependent upon God’s grace (Isa. 66:2). ~Alistair Bedd

Excerpt From: “Untitled 3.” iBooks.




Praying for the Caners and the Christian Community

Like so many, the suicide of Ergun Canner’s son shook me. I grieve for the loss of a preacher’s son.  It disturbed me to find out that he had been sought out by a blogger who was attacking his father. After reading some of the tweets that have recently been deleted but were there very recently I can’t help but believe that the unwanted messages and public rebukes he received from the blogger about his language and his father’s ministry may have placed Canner’s son in a corner emotionally and caused him pain. When I read this the first thing that came to mind was – “This is bullying.”
Rule #1: If you have a problem with a preacher- Do not go after his kids. Period. (I can’t believe I am even writing this because it seems such a no-brainer for believers involved in a church.) Leave the kids out of it. Being a minister’s kid is one of the most difficult childhood paradigms out there. I don’t know what was going on with the son emotionally but may we all learn from this. If you are criticizing, or blogging, or tweeting about a pastor, the least you can do is realize that engaging with his teenage son is wrong. No matter what. Wrong.
I pray for the Caners and I pray for all those who are involved in the horrific events that led up to their son’s death.