A week ago, I received an unexpected appointment request via Microsoft Outlook Calendar from my friend. The appointment subject line read “Belated Birthday Lunch (Your Choice)”, and it specified the date and time (noon) she wanted to meet, but left out the location because she was going to let me decide where we would go. Of course I was excited and quickly accepted her invitation, as I love to eat and chat. The morning of our lunch date, I was thinking about where I wanted to go, and it hit me, Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles. Around 11:15a or so, I told her where I wanted to go, and she too got excited as she hadn’t been to Roscoe’s in a while either. Once we settled on the restaurant, we both decided that we should leave earlier than originally planned because Roscoe’s gets really busy during lunch hour, and we were both pressed for time. We agreed to leave around 11:30am. I Googled the directions and was ready to go, but then I got caught up reading a “quick” email. She got caught up on a “quick” phone call or something, and by the time we both were ready 30-minutes had gone by. Due to our time constraint, we both decided Roscoe’s was a no go. So after bouncing off restaurant choices, we chose Applebee’s because it was close by. Read more…

Honesty seems like the best policy, except when evaluating self. For when it comes to self, something in us will not allow us to judge, critique ourselves fairly. We are tempted to grade ourselves on a curve. The balancing scale of judgment always weighs more heavily on the “good” side of us. Somehow we rationalize that our good works always outweigh the bad that we do.  Besides, in comparison to others who are murders, adulterers, thieves, our little sins aren’t even worthy of mentioning.  However, when we begin to compare ourselves to the perfection, holiness and goodness of God, we realize like the Prophet Isaiah and Apostle Paul, what wretched people we are.  It’s only when we make God the bull’s-eye, we can truly see how much we miss the mark. Read more…

The Good Fight

Did you know we have God’s permission to fight? In fact, we are commanded to do so.  But before you go and punch your neighbor, boss or even friend and say “God told me to fight you” and start quoting Scriptures…let me add some clarity.  The fight I speak of does require us to fight something physically, but Ephesians 6:12 tells us the battle is spiritual.

I know you are thinking it’s impossible to fight a spiritual battle with anything physical, and that I contradicted myself.  But, notice I said we are required to fight something physically, not that we fight the spiritual battle physically.  The something that I’m referring to is comprised of many things. Things that  prevent us from being victorious in our spiritual battle. Things that put dents and holes in our armor, which causes us to be easy targets, easily wounded, and ultimately defeated by the enemy.   Read more…