Business meeting was tonight and I had some amazing crawfish étouffée at the church.  I dropped off some Wendy’s to Mom and Dad.

Today we received some hard news on Jon’s cancer.  It seems to have progressed to his jawbone. Praying for a miracle.

Darlene is coming in tomorrow night and I’m taking Friday of. We’ll spend the next three nights at Tall Timbers. We’ll do the minister’s wives conference Friday night and Saturday. The rest of the time we’ll just relax.

If I have the words and appearance of an angelic messenger and have supernatural gifts, but neglect love, I am like a blaring, off- key trombone and clanging cymbals at 6:00 a.m. And if I have a gift for solutions and meanings, and though I have faith that could make stuck things move and heavy things light, and have not love, I’m an obvious zero in the Kingdom. And if I give everything I own to charities and die on the battlefield of creeds and principles, and have not love, it means absolutely nothing in the end. Love is willing to put up with a lot of injustice. It smiles when frowns are in order; it goes against the flow of hatred by being kind. It doesn’t look at others and say, Why not me, God? Love does not boast; it doesn’t thrust its credentials to the front. It’s not stuck up. It doesn’t fly off the handle. Love isn’t self-serving. It doesn’t answer to the bell of heavyweight bouts. Evil? It doesn’t even go there. It doesn’t find gratification in revenge or smutty living. Instead, it is turned on by truth and justice. Love carries all things, has faith in God’s will, has hope in dark valleys. It puts up with a whole lot of junk. Love is undefeated. Sooner or later, the prophecies will be over, the tongues will be silent, the knowledge will be unnecessary, and it will dematerialize. Right now we’ve got a glimpse, a very small glimpse, of the overall landscape of eternity, and we preach what we know. When we see our lives on this earth, we are going to see it all face-to-face and in living color. But this one thing will be the same after we see it all: three things won’t move an inch. There will be faith, hope and love.
These three. But the greatest of these is love.

This has been my work for about 2 hours tonight.  Getting ready to shut down an old blog. tullos.org.  Lots of memories and thoughts about life so far. When I reflected on how life was back about ten years ago I am reminded about how constantly I was weary as a Dad, Pastor, Editor, commuter, husband, worshiper…. Life is calmer these days even though I have three jobs right now. I whispered my repentance for the days I chose busy-ness over fellowship with Jesus.

Blessed are those that admit the truth. They know that they live in abject spiritual poverty outside the grace of God.

Blessed are those who see God as Holy and mourn because they realize that they are never better than anyone because righteousness is found only through Christ. Abba Father will comfort them.

Blessed is the person that doesn’t need to promote their power to feel important. They let God do all the heavy lifting and the earth is theirs as an inheritance.

Blessed are the ones that crave to be like Jesus and are sickened by their rebellious nature. God will fill them up with righteousness.

Blessed are the ones that don’t understand the law of pay-back but revel in the practice of forgiveness and reconciliation. God will settle the score and forgive their debts.

Blessed are the ones that have trained themselves to think the best of people and look only to the good. They are focusing on God’s view and they will ultimately see God.

Blessed are those that do their best creative work in making peace. Those people are God’s and God’s alone. He’s the Father, Prince, and inventer of peace.

Blessed are the people who pay the ultimate price in this temporary life because God saves the best for all eternity.

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.

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.

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.

flesh and blood do not make man
he is wildly and ever alive
never ambivalent or fleeting when fire and flood collide.
Man bids farewell to the shifting steps of boyhood. 
His ancient blood leads him not into abundant whims and brief adulation
but a man is daring in times of sudden catastrophic overture
he rarely counts the costs of self
he knows the greater portion of history
in seconds of dooming fate
a man strikes hard– the perilous tide
never recoiling, rarely denied
he is the forest of will and hope of humanity.
he looks to truth not voluminous data.
he fights darkness not deep introspection 
He is far more than the cunning seeking harlots
Man is alive within himself 
standing, fists clinched against injustice
he strides toward the catastrophe of the fallen
He is often alone
away from the raging masses
and the scent of the cruel and houses of inebriation
sober and kind
slow in speech and purposefully incited by God.
Ah, this is man!
clarity is his cloth and virtue his mantle
earthen counsel judges him and finds him to be a perplexing steward
tending the gates of covenant like a holy bandit
guarding his truth war-like and primeval.
He expels the treacherous and will raise high the roof beams of his salvation
Man holds secrets and yet never speaks double of anyone
his voice clear and strong, never waivers
and yet he grows and learns, repents and repairs
Ah, this is man!
from dust to sudden pearly triumph his power encompasses the span of a beating heart 
he is the worshiper, the tremulous one who gains newness every morning bright or dreary.
He is never more a man than when he says no with yeses all around.
he is never more triumphant than when he is captured by the holy passions of life.
Ah, this is man!
Not a lusting lunatic compelled to fantastic never-wills.
Man is much more than male
more than job, or dream, or pastime. 
He is reborn on the backside of deserts
adorned in camelskin and water
He sings in prisons.
He whirls the deathstone at gawking giants
He hammers out a new beginning before deluge and dawn
He will not bow to king
He will not seek recognition
He refuses the lures of his great lasting hunger when better fare is beyond him.
He crushes stones and slaughters lions
He mocks the false gods of the mainstream
He falls and rises.
He conquers and restores
He can be beaten, harassed, bloodied, and mocked
But he will never refuse the call to adventure
Ah this is Man!

There is a comfort of grace, in discovering that He knows it all and remains.

He sees through our well-scripted liturgies, our intricate facades and discovers the child hiding inside us. When we realize that He sees all the details– the real us and loves us still, life, perhaps for the first time, becomes real. Only God could see it all and remain faithful to us. I’ve spent most of my life trying to hide the ugliness of shame and promote the achievements, acknowledgments, and the awards of my life. Really, it is madness and idolatry. He is most glorified in our weakness. When we cast light on our weakness, God says, “This is the work I did. My body and blood redeemed this also.” It would be easy for God to redeem that which is already good. BUT He is glorified greatly when He transforms the wretched. Today, may we share our struggles with each other and discover Christ’s stubborn, unfailing love for vagabonds and misfits.