In honor of Thanksgiving here in the United States, I thought I would share the video I took of some turkeys out for a morning jog.
Cathy and I saw this nutty flock as we drove to church a few months ago. Turn up the volume and watch them trot!
Happy Thanksgiving!
Of all the questions leveled against Christianity, few others cause such heated controversy: “Is Jesus the Only Way to God?” For many people, Jesus’ words equate exclusivity with arrogance:
I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but through Me. —John 14:6
(Photo: Dome inside Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Courtesy of the Pictorial Library of Bible Lands)
The exclusivity of those words is unmistakable. Millions question: “How can Jesus be the only way to God? That’s not fair. It leaves out too many people.”
But if you think about it, the real question isn’t, “Is Jesus the Only Way to God?” but rather we should ask, “Is God holy”?
Here’s why that’s the real issue.
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The Total Money Makeover: Classic Edition [Book Review] (Thoman Nelson, 2013)
In a world of get-rich-quick schemes and scams, it’s refreshing to read some common sense about money.
Dave Ramsey’s The Total Money Makeover walked me, a skeptic, step by step, from reluctant reader to Dave Ramsay fan. It’s easy to see how so many people have come to sing Dave’s praises. His method for financial freedom is simple, but it isn’t easy. Each chapter contains testimonies from those who have used the system and benefitted from it.
The “makeover” includes these steps, which I’ve paraphrased:
Years ago I met a man named Igor who told me a story I’ve never forgotten. As a child growing up in the Soviet Union, Igor always believed communism’s assumption that God does not exist.
Yet as a gifted medical student and scientist, Igor studied the intricacies of the human body and natural world and struggled over their implications. Such precision in nature demanded a Designer—something his deep-rooted atheism refused to embrace.
Then one day as he and a friend drove through a wintry countryside, Igor saw a distant snowman all alone in the middle of a field—and the truth struck him. He slammed on the brakes.
“Look!” he said, pointing to the snowman. “How did that get there?”
His friend replied with the obvious answer: “Somebody built it.”
“There was no way,” Igor told me, “the details of nature just happened by chance. I decided I must find the truth.” Just as the snowman had to have been made by someone, so did nature.
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Every Christian who takes a journey to the Holy Land experiences life change—especially if they prepare for the tour. I don’t mean we learn some secret that stops our struggling. The change occurs another way.
(Photo: Sea of Galilee from Mount Arbel. Courtesy of the Pictorial Library of Bible Lands)
A Holy Land tour exposes us to the context of the Bible in a way we never imagined. We gain a deeper understanding of and appreciation for the Word of God. And God uses Scripture to change us.
But then . . . we come back home. We face the stack of bills. The yard that needs mowed. The bloated inbox at work. And our luggage has two weeks’ full of dirty laundry. Suddenly, the benefits of your trip to Israel get shoved to the back of a full plate called “life.”
You’ve invested a lot in your Holy Land tour—both in finances and in time—far too much to lose those benefits to the tyranny of the urgent.
After taking and leading many trips to Israel, I have discovered these 7 ways to keep the benefits of a Holy Land tour.
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At the 2013 Platform Conference in Dallas, the time between speakers often included giveaways that required goofy conduct— like dancing!
Luckily, when Ken Davis took the stage to boogie, I had my iPhone handy.
Fun!
Me and Michael Hyatt at the Platform Conference
When a man is getting better, he understands more and more clearly the evil that is still left in him. When a man is getting worse, he understands his own badness less and less.
