What’s been messing with me is this visual of the priests leading with muddy feet. You see, the people walked on dry ground, but as they kicked up the dirt, you can almost imagine the feet of the priest, once wet – now caked in mud. As priests and leaders unto our king, there are times we too must lead with muddy feet. We know we must step out in faith so others can find their destiny. It’s messy, it’s uncomfortable, it’s muddy – but it’s also the greatest place to be.

In your eyes your steps caked in mud may seem heavy or burdensome, perhaps not as clean and as swift as you would prefer them to be; but take a step anyway and keep your trust in God. If you find yourself here today, embrace your muddy feet – these are the feet that reflect the beauty of an obedient servant taking a step of faith.

Exodus 15:13 captures God’s approach well. It shows us how “Love” leads. You see, in spite of their attitudes – love drenched God’s every response towards them.

Exodus 15:13 HCSB

You will lead the people You have redeemed with Your faithful love; You will guide them to Your holy dwelling with Your strength.

When love leads:

• Complaints are heard and valued, even when expressed in a personally offensive manner. (Ex 16:2)

• The leader may be charged with enmity, yet never treats his followers as an enemy but keeps their best interests at heart. (Ex 16:3)

• In the midst of loud complaining and outright disobedience, love still offers stability and redemption to those who will receive it. (Ex 15:13)

• Though people deserve less, love remains faithful to offer more. (Ex  16:11)

Love will always bring strength to our leadership if it has an opportunity to lead. Will those we lead consider 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 as a picture of our leadership? I think it’s a good mark to shoot for. My prayer is that God will help me to be a leader that grows in allowing love to lead!

How is Jesus influencing you today? Good question to ask, don’t you think?

Psalm 3:5 (nlt) “I lay down and slept, yet I woke up in safety, for the Lord was watching over me.”

God watches over His kids, not only when we sleep, but also with every waking moment of our lives with a love that can never be matched. I can only imagine that He too admires His imprint, and is ever so pleased that we belong to Him. What an awesome Father we have…

John 15:5, 7-8 NLT

“Yes, I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who remain in me, and I in them, will produce much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing.

⁷ But if you remain in me and my words remain in you, you may ask for anything you want, and it will be granted! ⁸ When you produce much fruit, you are my true disciples. This brings great glory to my Father.”

Our first priority is to live in vital connection with Jesus Christ, and then our time with others should serve to mutually strengthen our relationship with the vine. Time with others, even with good activities, should never trump or replace what we can only get from Jesus Christ. When they do, we feel limp and weak. But on the contrary, when we have abided in the vine, incredible results follow:

1. Answered prayer (v.7)
2. A fulfilled purpose (v.8)
3. We bring great glory to the Father (v.8)

Jesus said: “He is the Vine – We are the Branches.” He is the Source and Supplier of everything I need, not only to survive but to thrive… to really live life. On a personal level, we discover that he is not just a source, He is our Source of:

• • Peace
  • Power
  • Significance & Purpose
  • Wisdom, Insight, & Understanding
  • Faith & Forgiveness
  • Creativity & Innovative Ideas

Have you prioritized your connection with the vine? You can start again, today!

It was a few weeks later that we started seeing baby Sago Palms coming up around it, a week later a whole new growth of fronds started emerging from the center tree (see pic). Somehow our unskilled yet deliberate pruning not only released the plant to reemerge in a healthy way, but we now have two new plants that will be transplanted in another part of our humble landscape. It works for Sago Palms and for our lives. John 15 tells us that our Father also serves as a gardener over our lives and likewise prunes so that we can be fruitful.

John 15:1-2 “I am the true grapevine, and my Father is the gardener.² He cuts off every branch of mine that doesn’t produce fruit, and he prunes the branches that do bear fruit so they will produce even more.” nlt

What might you identify in your own life as being

• Unproductive?
• Rotten?
• Full of canker?
• Just plain ugly?
  • In your lifestyle
  • In your relationships
  • In your work-style
  • In how you treat your spouse or your kids or your parents

Perhaps it’s time for a pruning. On the other side, there is fresh beauty and fruitfulness yet to emerge.  Let the pruning begin…

Psalm 103:5 HCSB “He fills my life with good things. My youth is renewed like the eagle’s!

I found this poem that has really inspired me to think differently. It was penned many years ago by Samuel Ullman. Thought you might enjoy it too…

Youth

“Youth is not a time of life; it is a state of mind; it is not a matter of rosy cheeks, red lips and supple knees; it is a matter of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions; it is the freshness of the deep springs of life.

Youth means the temperamental predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the love of ease. This often exists in a man of sixty more than a boy of twenty. Nobody grows old merely by a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals.

Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul. Worry, fear, self-distrust bows the heart and turns the spirit back to dust.

Whether sixty or sixteen, there is in every human being’s heart the lure of wonder, the unfailing childlike appetite of what’s next, and the joy of the game of living. In the center of your heart and my heart there is a wireless station; so long as it receives messages of beauty, hope, cheer, courage and power from men and from the Infinite, so long are you young.

When the aerials are down, and your spirit is covered with snows of cynicism and the ice of pessimism, then you are grown old, even at twenty, but as long as your aerials are up, to catch waves of optimism, there is hope you may die young at eighty.”

A driven person is usually caught in the uncontrolled pursuit of expansion. Driven people like to be a part of something that is getting bigger and more successful.… They rarely have any time to appreciate the achievements to date.… Driven people are usually abnormally busy. They are usually too busy for the pursuit of ordinary relationships in marriage, family, or friendship … not to speak of one with God.

As a driven person, it is easy to fall into the trap of pursuing the good over the best. Where do you begin to get things back on track? You, like me, can start by asking yourself some tough questions and responding to them honestly.

Questions such as:

• Have I stopped to appreciate all that God has done?
• Am I just way too busy?
• Would my wife and my kids feel I pursue and prioritize them more than my career or ministry?
• Am I making more progress in my relationship with God than in my work for Him?

I know if you saw my answers you will be as unimpressed as I am. However, there is never a better time than the present to make adjustments. Thank God for His grace and leading – I am making some changes.

Their sound is a global one – current, expressive, liberating and refreshing music that heralds the anthem of the local church. Yet, as it should be, very much Christ-centered. Hillsong’s  musical expression balances depth with rhythmic ease. The Psalmist David, a fellow hymn writer, would have been proud (at least in my opinion). They stand among the great worship leaders of the church today.

So, I just wanted to give honor to whom honor is due and thank God for the gift of Hillsong United.

Get a taste at - Hillsong United

There’s a catch to this story that comes later. I hope you read to the end. I think you’ll be encouraged. I was. I read in a recent issue of Books and Culture a review (by Timothy Larsen) of a new biography of Alexander Cruden, the man who single-handedly wrote one of the early concordances to the King James Bible (Alexander the Corrector: The Tormented Genius Who Unwrote the Bible by Julia Keay). That means he recorded every one of the 777,746 words in the Bible and made a note of every place where it occurs. For example, the word “him” (6,667 occurrences), “her” (1,994 occurrences), “God” (4,444 occurrences), etc.

In the mid-1720s, Alexander Cruden took on a self-imposed task of Herculean proportions, Himalayan tedium, and inhuman meticulousness: he decided to compile the most thorough concordance of the King James Version of the Bible to date. The first edition of Cruden’s Concordance was published in 1737. How could he have possibly completed such a project? Every similar undertaking before or since has been the work of a vast team of people—in recent times made incomparably easier by computers. Cruden worked alone in his lodgings, writing the whole thing out by hand. The KJV has 777,746 words, all of which needed to be put in their proper place. Cruden even wrote explanatory entries on many of the words—in effect, including a Bible dictionary as a bonus. The word “Synagogue,” for example, prompted a 4,000-word essay.

Furthermore, Cruden’s day job was as a “Corrector of the Press” (proofreader). He would give hawk-eyed attention to prose all day long. Then he would come home at night, not to rest his eyes and enjoy some relaxation, but rather to read the Bible—stopping at every single word to secure the right sheet from the tens of thousands of pieces of paper all around him and to record accurately the reference in its appropriate place. He had no patron, no publisher, no financial backers: his only commission was a divine one.

Cruden’s Concordance has never been out of print. Some hundred editions have been published, many of which have been reprinted untold times; shoppers at a popular online bookstore today can choose from 18 different in-print versions of Cruden’s.

For this, thousands of lovers of the Bible thank God. They have studied the Bible seriously for almost three hundred years with Cruden’s help. If this is all we knew, we would simply be amazed at his industry and give thanks. But here’s the catch. He was, if not insane, utterly maladjusted.

Cruden was institutionalized for madness four times in his life. His behavior was often bizarre.

On another occasion, Cruden had apparently gone to break up a brawl but ended up spending the best part of an hour admonishing disorderly soldiers not to swear while periodically whacking them on the head with a shovel. He also would propose to women with whom he had established no romantic bond (one such intended he had not even met). Being unable to take no for an answer, he would then turn himself into a persistent nuisance, if not a stalker.

Eventually he decided that God’s call on his life was to reform the morals of Britain. “He therefore started a one-man campaign to have the King name him to a position hitherto unknown in British government, ‘Corrector of the People.’ He then went rambling about the country admonishing strangers to observe the Sabbath.”

He simply could not discern what was fitting and probable. This meant he did foolish things. But not all foolish things are bad. “He did not know—as all normal people do—that when a man gets propositioned he can feel sad for the plight of the prostitute, but there is really nothing he can do to help. Cruden instead hired her to do legitimate work, and she lived a respectable and grateful life thereafter.”

On another occasion “Cruden did not know that a prisoner’s case was never reconsidered when he was only a few days away from execution. He went at this campaign in his usual obsessive and forthright way and pulled off a political miracle—the man’s sentence was reduced to deportation.”

What encourages me about this is to realize that God’s ways are strange. “How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!” (Romans 11:33). And in this strangeness, sinful and sick and broken people fit into God’s designs. He has purposes for the mentally ill and for the emotionally unstable and for the socially maladjusted. And he has purposes for you.

As Timothy Larsen observes, Cruden did not have the sense to know that “one man working alone in his bedroom could not produce a complete concordance of the Bible.” And from this folly millions have been blessed. Beware of belittling God’s crooked sticks. With them he may write the message that that makes a thousand people glad.