Better said; I made a mess of yesterday. I was disobedient to God’s word. My choices were immature and childish. I did things that embarrass me today. My actions bring me guilt and shame.

This morning I woke up and put all that behind me. I confessed my sin to God in prayer. I made things right in my life to the best of my ability. I am starting fresh this morning and making every effort for today to be a great day.

In the book of Lamentations in the Old Testament, the prophet Jeremiah starts thinking about all the mistakes of his life, and then he writes, “Because of the Lord’s great love, we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. (Lamentations 3:22-23 – NIV 2011)

God’s compassion is new every morning. Our faithful God has given us another day to become more like him instead of destroying us. Praise be to God.

Yesterday was a mess, but we are forgiven through Jesus the Messiah.

Today I will let go of my yesterdays and start working again toward a brighter tomorrow because of the mercy and love of God.   

Every year I ask myself if I should continue blogging for another year.

It doesn’t take that much time. First, I use Evernote to keep an initial idea. That gets expanded and hand-written into a notebook. Then I plan out my future posts before I finally sit down to write. Next, I write several posts quickly and roughly. They will all get run through Grammarly to fix most of my issues. Finally, they go into a file for a day or two until I proofread them and make the last edits. They are then pasted to WordPress with the future date set, where they sit until they are published. It all takes a couple of hours a week, and I usually work two or three weeks ahead. 

Altogether I have posted over 2,500 times in the past ten years. I average roughly 3,000 visitors annually, and 6,000 posts are viewed individually. Several people go to the home page and read a week or two at a time and are counted as only one view. My numbers are not large, but they are consistent.

None of that information answers why I still do it and decided to do it another year. 

First, I love to write. It is therapeutic to sit down and get my ideas into a document. While sharing my thoughts, I am also learning to communicate better with every passing year.

Second, a few times a year, someone will walk up to me and tell me how much one post meant to them. It impacted their views, helped their faith, or encouraged them on their walk with Jesus. Still, a few more times, people will message me or drop me an email explaining how something I wrote touched them. These words and notes encourage me to keep at it. If what I do helps one person in their faith, inspires one other leader, or helps a Christ follower to stay on their path with Jesus, it is worth every second. 

So thank you to everyone that reads my posts. Thanks to everyone who shares them on social media. And thanks be to God, who uses my words for his glory.   

As a pastor, I am classified as a parachute drop leader.   

That phrase I learned when I started a new Church almost 25 years ago. Some Church planters have a mother Church to support them, others have a launch team, and some return to a place where they have a history, like a hometown. Other pastors, like me, feel like they are dropped out of an airplane into a foreign land. We don’t know the people, the customs, or the local language.

Almost nine years ago, I dropped into a community in Missouri. Before that, I landed in Alaska, Iowa, and Indiana. With each stop, I walked into a town not knowing anything about the people or their past, and they knew very little about me.

This procedure does have an upside. I can come in and make changes that are not taken personally. I do not know who started this ministry or habit, and I am not trying to offend anyone. I can bring fresh eyes to a Church, and a perspective insiders might have lost long ago. 

Obviously, it has a downside too. I am not a local; instead, I am an outsider. As a result, people struggle to trust me and have to work to develop a relationship with me.

It is complicated to connect to people who have recently met you. The only thing that makes it possible is that we all want to please God. As followers of Jesus, we are all on the same page regarding faith. We may see things differently, but we have far more in common because of Jesus than differences. Therefore, people of faith should never feel like strangers, no matter where they are dropped.

Most people are not looking for insight or advice. 

They simply want someone to support them when they feel alone. Your explanations and information might be helpful, but it is often forgotten. Your presence is what matters most. 

None of us want to feel alone. We want to know that no matter what happens, we have someone in our corner.

Like many families, we played numerous board games over the holiday season. However, of all the games we enjoy, we rarely play Monopoly anymore. Now, it sits on the shelf collecting dust while every other game gets a holiday workout. 

Why?

Well, there are two reasons. First, it is a long game. It takes so much time to play it, and everyone seems to get burnt out after an extended period. 

The other reason is that Monopoly is ruthless. To win, you have to buy up all the property. You put up houses and hotels and try to bankrupt people. Your goal is not to help other people but destroy them. There is no room for others to succeed in their game for you to win. No one cheers on competitors because they are the enemy of your victory. Monopoly is about the total domination of everyone at the table. 

As a result, my family chooses to play games where we can laugh and cheer one another on during the competition. We play games like Uno, Yahtzee, and Apples to Apples. These end with a winner, but no one at the table feels like a loser.

When you think about your life, ask yourself this metaphorical question, “What game are you playing?”

Perhaps the old saying is correct, “It doesn’t matter if you win or lose; it is how you play the game.”

Whenever someone approaches me on Sunday morning and asks me a question, I feel like I have two minutes to answer. There is always something about to start or someone else waiting to talk. Time is so limited on Sunday morning, and I sense the urgency of the moment.

It is not that a person’s issues are unimportant to me. In fact, it is quite the opposite. I want to give them the fullest, thought-through ideas when someone asks a question. Yet, time is limited. So I give everyone my short answer and pray for the best.

I assume I am not the only person who struggles with this in the Church. Teachers, worship leaders, and volunteers all find it challenging to handle significant issues in a short amount of time. In addition, the setting on Sunday morning is not entirely conducive to meeting complex needs.

You are not alone if you have been part of a Church community and felt like the people only give simple answers to complicated questions. We know you have real needs and problems and want to help you, but we need more time to make it happen. That is why small groups, Sunday school classes, fellowship time, and connection outside of Sunday morning are so vital to the growth of a believer. Most questions in life require more than two minutes answers, and if you give a Christian more time to talk, we will gladly give you the response you desire. 

Through the holiday season, the Church I lead made different decisions than every Church in my area. Then, the weather changed those choices into seemingly bad ideas, and we tried to adjust accordingly. My Church ended up doing nothing for Christmas and then having our candlelight program on New Year’s Day. 

It was hard to watch other Church communities having big celebrations and people posting about how much they loved their Christmas programs. I was at home doing nothing and feeling helpless. 

Then the Lord spoke into my soul, “You do not lead THOSE Churches. I called you to lead this one.” It was not an audible voice but a word spoken quietly into my heart by the Holy Spirit that changed my perspective immediately.

God called me to lead this local Church with this group of people. Together we made choices based on the needs and availability of the people. We discussed options, prayed for guidance, and acted in the best possible way for the people in this community of believers. 

Other Pastors and Church leaders have totally different situations. They are in other towns, have different leaders, and encountered different issues than we faced. They made choices based on their people and their needs. 

When someone compares two Churches, they are not comparing equals. Saying, “Their Church did this, and our Church did not,” is only part of the story. There were multiple issues involved, and we did what we thought was best for our group, with me leading the way.

God called me to lead this Church to the best of my ability along with the elders, deacons, and ministry heads. Honestly, sometimes it looks good, and sometimes it does not. But in the end, we are only trying to do what is best for this group that God entrusted to us.    

Preacher and author Rick Warren said there are five concentric circles of commitment within the community of believers. They start outside and move toward the middle with community, crowd, congregation, committed, and core. 

This idea means that there are different types of congregations within a Church. First, some call the Church home, some attend occasionally, and others only attend and do nothing else. Then, finally, some people come and serve and are connected to others who do the same. 

Every week at worship, I see these layers of people interact. Some are here for their annual visit; others come in and out without talking to anyone. Then a core group shows up early and talks to people in meaningful conversations. They hang around after worship, share stories, and often share a meal. This group looks forward to Church all week and deeply loves the people who are part of it. 

If Rick Warren is correct in his assessment of the Church, then if you come on Sunday morning and it is kind of bland, unenjoyable, and disconnected, the problem might not be the Church but your level of commitment to it. One of the best ways to get the most out of the Church is to become part of the core, which comes through a commitment only you can make.

The crowds that followed and listened to Jesus the most are referred to as three groups: tax collectors, prostitutes, and sinners. Two of those are specific professions, while the other is a general description of people who did not follow the God of the Bible. 

Prostitutes were women of the night who sold their bodies to have money to survive. There was always a willing client in a culture where men traveled by boat and horse for long distances for business. This type of work was widely accepted, and the people who did it were considered far from the grace of God.

Tax collectors are on the opposite side of the social spectrum. They had committed their lives to making money. They were wealthy but considered outsiders to the faith because of their taxation of the Jewish people. Their work was not godly, but it was hard to understand why they prospered while taking from God’s people.

I want to suggest that these two groups represent both sides of the same coin. On one side are the prostitutes who reached the bottom of society through a series of poor choices. On the other side are wealthy tax collectors who reached the pinnacle of society by making good financial choices. Yet, both of them reached the same place in life. Both realized that they were empty and in need of a Savior. They both saw that life without God was devoid of meaning and purpose. Both the poor streetwalker and the wealthy businessman were empty inside.

The natural human tendency is to quickly understand that prostitutes need Jesus and that tax collectors are okay without him. The truth is that people with great wealth are as empty as the hookers on the street. The gospel of Jesus is for both ends of the financial and social spectrum, along with everyone in between. 

So the next time you think, “Why would I share Jesus with them? They have their life altogether.” Remember that everyone needs Jesus.   

Some Christians like to talk about forgiveness while holding onto the hurt. Those old painful experiences become the excuse we use to avoid future actions. 

“They asked me to do that, but I am not going to cooperate. After all, you remember when they did that awful thing to me. Because they did that, I will not show them my kindness now. Oh sure, I forgive them, but that does not change anything about what they did.”

True forgiveness is a choice to let go of the hurt that has been done to you. In Christ, God forgave the worst in you, and now that you are in him, you forgive the worst in others. 

The place where forgiveness shines the brightest in the life of a believer is that moment when you want to say, “But don’t you remember what they did,” and hold onto that hurt.