Deep-End Discipleship

“The truly happy person doesn’t follow wicked advice, doesn’t stand on the road of sinners, and doesn’t sit with the disrespectful. Instead of doing those things, these persons love the Lord’s Instruction, and they recite God’s Instruction day and night! They are like a tree planted by streams of water, which bears fruit at just the right time and whose leaves don’t fade. Whatever they do succeeds.” -Psalm 1:1-3 CEB- Have you ever had to make a really difficult choice? It can be very difficult to decide between multiple options for a situation, and decide which one you are going to choose. Sometimes these choices are between multiple good things, and sometimes it’s between good and bad. There are so many things that influence the things that we do every single day. TV shows, friends, parents, social media, peer pressure and many other factors come into play everyday as we decide how we act and operate in our daily lives. It is sometimes crazy, and scary to me how influenced w...

 “ Don’t go on and on, talking so proudly, spouting arrogance from your mouth, because the Lord is the God who knows, and he weighs every act.” - 1 Samuel 2:3 CEB - What comes from our mouth is so easy to let fly sometimes. The moment a thought comes, it instantly spits out from us. Whether a joke, a blunt truth or even just a raw emotion, the words we say without thinking tend to be the ones that hurt those around us the most. It is easy to rationalize that they are just words, but what we say counts as our actions to God just as much as doing the right thing. In fact, words create life in ourselves and others just as much as they can create death and destruction. We all have some kind of words or messages in our head that lean us towards negative self-thinking. Likewise, we all have moments when friends have spoken loving words to us that have raised our spirits. Each and every word we speak can be a blessing or a curse for those around us. ...

  “ I said, ‘Mourn for me; I’m ruined! I’m a man with unclean lips, and I live among a people with unclean lips. Yet I’ve seen the king, the Lord of heavenly forces!’”  “Then I heard the Lord’s voice saying, ‘Whom should I send, and who will go for us?’ I said, ‘I’m here; send me.’” - Isaiah 6:5 & 8 CEB - We don’t often use the phrase ‘unclean lips,’ but it doesn’t take much to think about what it could mean. In our society, we classify certain things as ‘dirty words’ or ‘dirty language.’ But I do not think cussing or talking about lewd subjects is the only ways our lips can be unclean. How often do we think about the implications of what we say? Sure we realize that we might not always say the best things. Instead of saying a loving or kind word we simple just say something OK. Sometimes we do not say anything at all and hope that is better than what we wanted to say. After all, there is the motherly proverb of “if you can’t say something nice, don...

After John was arrested, Jesus came into Galille announcing God's good news, saying, "Now is the time! Here comes God's kingdom! Change your hearts and lives, and trust this good news!" - Mark 1:14-15 (CEB) - I love stories fantasy fiction stories. I love the adventure, the lessons learned, and the incredible creatures. My favorite mythical creature is the Phoenix. The Phoenix is a huge magnificent bird of red, orange, and yellow colors. At the end of their life, they burst into flames and disintegrate into ash. Soon after, the Phoenix is reborn from the ash and begins life again. Even though the Phoenix is mythical, I think it is a symbol that represents a great degree of truth in life. In Mark 1:14-15, we see the beginning of Jesus’ ministry and the end of John the Baptist’s. John prepared the way for Jesus and called people to repent and be baptized. John’s ministry ended by being arrested by Herod and later put to death. Even from this tragic end, t...