Pastor John’s Blog

When was the last time you were really angry? I mean on the edge of exploding, hair standing on end, seeing-red kind of angry? Our family went to Phoenix this week to visit our oldest son who is in college there. Driving in mega-city traffic reminded me of the last time I was lose-your-mind angry. I was driving in heavy traffic back home and someone cut me off. Afterwards I had to ask myself, ‘Why?’ Why did that person cutting me off stir up so much anger? I allowed someone I’ve never met (I hope) and will probably never see again (maybe?) to ruin my otherwise pleasant afternoon drive. What was going on in my heart that I went so quickly from zero to sixty on the anger scale?

Godly Skill for Every Day Living In last week’s letter I wrote part one of some of the wisdom I learned from Dennis Rainey while serving with him in …

Working directly with Dennis Rainey was a diverse experience, full of opportunities to learn about leadership and gain wisdom. After moving into a new role, I spent some time reflecting on the wisdom-laced sayings I often heard from Dennis. This letter is a collection of the best of those sayings.

I’ve shared before that as a young man, I learned the importance of getting around people you want to be like. That’s true of friends, but it’s also true of mentors. Looking back I can see that one of the motivators was a hunger for wisdom. I was an avid consumer of knowledge, but often lacked wisdom. Knowledge is one aspect of wisdom, but wisdom is something else entirely. You may have heard the adage, “Knowledge is understanding that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is knowing not to put it in fruit salad.”

Last Sunday we wrapped up our series teaching through the book of 1 Peter. The final few verses we covered emphasize living well now to finish well tomorrow. We saw that Peter surrounded himself with faithful friends in the gospel to help him finish well, in particular Silvanus and Mark. His example serves as a reminder that we all need strong mentors, peers, and mentees. We all need people who are pouring into us, and people who are at a similar level of spiritual growth to continue to sharpen us, plus those who we are pouring into.

One of the resources I keep on hand and use often is a little booklet with a basic plan of salvation, a description of baptism, a few pages on Christian Growth, and at the end, a 12 day Bible reading plan with selected passages from the Gospels on the life of Christ. I love giving this to new Christians (along with a card we created that has the page numbers in our Church Bibles) because there’s no better way to grow than to be in God’s Word (Hebrews 4:12) and this reading plan makes it easy.

One of my dreams came true this NFL season. Well, almost, then sort of. It had to do with the Philadelphia Eagles. I’m not talking about their Super Bowl win, but what happened in their playoff game against the Packers. The camera caught one of their star wide receivers, A.J. Brown, reading a book on the side lines in between plays. I was skeptical at first, thinking it must be staged, as I didn’t know any football players that read books growing up-kidding! But once I realized it was real, I thought, “Finally! The first step toward reading becoming a sport.” Not so fast, as the sports media did not share the sentiment. Their responses were more like, “How could a truly committed player be reading on the sidelines? What? Is he bored? Is he ignoring everyone else? Doesn’t he realize there’s a game going on?” Of course people jumped to such conclusions pretty quickly without asking him.

In his book Atomic Habits, James Clear says the best kind of will-power is the kind you never have to use. Meaning, it’s a lot easier to resist whatever it is you’re trying to resist if you are able to avoid it all together. That’s why those who are trying to lose weight will remove all the junk food from their house. Sure, they could run out and buy more, but if it’s not there, that’s one less temptation lingering in the cupboard. 

The point of all this is that we can attempt to fix something but unless we get to the root of the problem, it will continue. We might fix it in the short-term but no lasting change will come unless you tackle the problem head on. This is true when it comes to our actions and behavior. What we do is always motivated by what we desire and think. Our desires can be positive or negative but it is what motivates us. Jesus helps us to understand that to experience the life-change of the Ten Commandments and the Gospel, we must look internally before we try to correct the external.

I don’t find myself caught off guard on Sunday mornings all that often, but there were two moments this week that surprised me. The first was the wave of boos and moans and groans when I said I was praying for more snow. Based on the weather reports, you seem safe this week, but I will keep praying! The second surprise was the number of hands that went up when I asked people to commit to taking a break from all social media and news this week. I confess I had low expectations, assuming just a few hands would go up, because I know it will be a big commitment. But wow what a response. I don’t know the exact numbers, but it seemed like a fourth of the crowd put up their hands. That is a big response. And I think it shows that our church is hungry for a change and hungry for freedom.