Wildfires are some of the most potentially dangerous natural disasters. In just seconds, a spark can set off an inferno that can overtake thousands of acres, threatening property and lives in its path. Once a wildfire begins, it can spread at up to 14 miles per hour. For combustion to occur, three things need to be present – fuel to burn, air to supply oxygen, and some heat source to bring the fuel up to its ignition temperature. When fighting wildfires, the firefighters work to remove one of the components of the fire triangle (fuel, oxygen, heat) in order to contain and eventually extinguish the fire.

In recent weeks, due to the extreme dry conditions, we have wildfires burning on both coasts, destroying everything in their paths. Scripture talks about our tongue in that same way. If left uncontrolled, our tongue is like a spark that can set a forest on fire, causing unfathomable destruction.

James, the half-brother of Jesus, likened an uncontrolled tongue to that of a spark that sets a forest on fire – “If we put bits into the mouths of horses so that they obey us, we guide their whole bodies as well. Look at the ships also: though they are so large and are driven by strong winds, they are guided by a very small rudder wherever the will of the pilot directs. So also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great things. How great a forest is set ablaze by such a small fire! And the tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness. The tongue is set among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of life, and set on fire by hell” (James 3:3-6).

He goes on to say that an uncontrolled tongue is also like a restless evil, full of deadly poison (v.8). Sadly, we see forest fires and deadly poison in so much of today’s dialogue.

Conversely, our words can also be of tremendous kindness and hope to those who hear them. Or who read our words on social media platforms. The Bible speaks frequently about guarding what comes out of our mouths. Let me share three verses –

 Proverbs 12:18 (NIV) – “The words of the reckless pierce like swords, but the tongue of the wise brings healing.”

Ephesians 4:29 (GNT) – “Do not use harmful words, but only helpful words, the kind that build up and provide what is needed, so that what you say will do good to those who hear you.”

Proverbs 16:24 (ESV) – “Gracious words are like a honeycomb, sweetness to the soul and health to the body.”

So, today, I ask you and I ask myself – is your (my) tongue a honeycomb, sweeter than honey, or a spark, one capable of igniting the forest? 

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We have two cats. No matter what might be going on, they love to be near us. Either walking between our feet or cuddled up in our lap. Sometimes looking out the patio door or even napping in front of the fireplace. Always near us. When I paint, both cats love to sit near my feet. Their constant purring has a calming effect on me. Our cats never seem to let what they might be doing keep them from being near us.

This is the time when most of us are beginning to plan those annual holiday gatherings. I think more so than other times of the year, during the holiday season we want our gatherings to be warm and cozy, comfy and inviting, filled with wonderful and lasting memories.

Not only is there much time and effort put into the preparations, but once the guests arrive, we are constantly “doing,” wanting everything to be perfect, like a scene straight out of a Hallmark movie, and we never really get to sit and just “be” with the guests. It is only after everyone has left that we find out from our spouse that the neighbor’s kid got accepted into one of the military academies and the guy down the street, who recently moved in, has cancer. Hospitality toward of our guests is not a bad thing. Just sometimes it causes us to not be able to savor the enjoyment of spending time with those whom we care about. We often put so much time and effort into planning and executing our holiday gatherings that we sometimes end up being too exhausted to really enjoy the holiday season.

We often do the same thing with Jesus. We are so busy “doing” for Jesus that we fail to simply “be” with Jesus. There is a story in the Bible that you might be familiar with. It is found in Luke 10:38-42. Jesus stops by the house of his friends, sisters Mary and Martha. The text tells us that Martha was distracted by all the preparations that needed to be made while Mary simply sat on the couch and listened to Jesus. When Martha showed some displeasure with her sister for not helping with the work, Jesus gave an answer that very likely surprised her – “Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, but few are needed – or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken from her.” (vv.41-42)

What is Jesus saying? He was giving Mary and Martha, and is giving us today, a lesson on priorities. Neither sister was necessarily wrong in her response. Jesus is not teaching the value of a contemplative life compared to a life of action, but instead He is teaching that serving Him and those around us should not fill our lives to the extent that we fail to spend time with Him. We cannot let our “doing” get in the way of our “being.” Before we can “do” the work of God the Father, we need to first “be” energized by God’s Spirit through an encounter with God’s Son.

We must learn to give our Lord and His Word priority, even over loving service. To fellowship with Jesus, we might have to leave some things undone, even good and worthy things. Jesus is more interested in our undivided hearts than He is in our big acts of sacrifice.

So, today, I ask, are you busier doing for Jesus than you are being with Jesus?

And we should take a lesson from cats – this holiday season, do not let your doing crowd out times of just being with God and with those you love.

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We are a world that is in perpetual motion. We run full bore from the minute we climb out of bed until the moment we collapse back into bed at night. Then once we climb back into bed at night we roll around and find ourselves not able to sleep; our bodies are exhausted, but our minds are still racing, thinking of a million things. Our cell phones are never out of arms reach. Even weekends and vacations are of no help; we take our work and our technology with us wherever we go.   

The beginning of the long holiday season is just two weeks away, and with it comes perpetual motion. From Thanksgiving to Christmas most of us are in a constant state of “full speed ahead.” And during the holidays we also often replace trips to the gym with trips to overcrowded malls, buying more and more gifts. Seriously, does your brother really need another titanium driver to put in his golf bag? And we replace quiet evenings at home with holiday parties, school concerts, extra hours at work to finish up year end projects.

Before the craziness begins is a perfect time to look over your own life and intentionally build times of silence and quietness into your schedule. Your body needs down time to rest and recharge, and your soul needs times of silence and quietness in order to hear God’s voice. God sometimes speaks in loud tones, but most often He speaks to us in gentle whispers (see 1 Kings 19:11-12).

It is really hard to hear God’s voice if you do not build times into your daily routine to dial down and simply be at rest. Psalm 46:10 tells us that we are to “be still and know that I am God.” And among other things, Isaiah 30:15 tells us that “in quietness and trust is your strength.” Two other be still and silent verses come to mind: Psalm 37:7 and 62:5.

Being still and blocking out the distractions helps us focus on what God is doing in us and around us. Samuel, Israel’s last judge, was passing the baton to Saul, who would become their first king. In Samuel’s farewell address, he instructs the people to be “stand still” in order to both be reminded of God’s past and current righteous acts (1 Samuel 12:7) and see His divine power (12:16).   

If you know anything about wheels, then you know that they turn around an axle. There are two types of axles – live and dead. Live axles rotate with the wheels, transferring engine power to the wheels, whereas dead axles are simply load bearing. In rear-wheel drive vehicles, the rear axle is live and the front axle, dead. In front-wheel drive vehicles, the opposite.

So, in either case, even when the wheel is turning at 65 miles per hour, in the dead axle there is no movement at all. It is static, even as the wheel around it turns. And just as with the axle, while life around you and me turns at a high rate of speed, it is of utmost importance that we find a place where we can go to be alone with God in stillness and quietness. That place of no spinning.  

It takes commitment to carve out time and space to stop turning and slow down your pace of life. The time and space looks different for everyone, but one thing is common among all who say they regularly hear from God… they spend time in His presence, away from the speed of life.

So today and throughout the upcoming holidays, I encourage you are be counter cultural and amid the busyness, also slow down. Your body will be glad you did, and it gives your soul time to find rest in Jesus.

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Are you the type of person who isn’t satisfied with simply knowing information? Instead, you like to dig into the “who, what, where, when and why.” Last week I wasn’t satisfied with just knowing that there were 538 electoral votes available to the presidential candidates. I wanted to know why it was 538. If you care to know, the answer is each state gets a certain number of electors based upon its representatives in Congress, plus three for the District of Columbia.

Sometimes it is fine to just look above the surface while other times it might be important to dig a little deeper. One area we often try to figure out, and always come up short, is trying to understand the ways of God. God works how God works and it is up to us to be faithful. If we knew all the answers to how and why God works, it wouldn’t really be faith now would it? And even if we knew those answers, we wouldn’t always understand (see Isaiah 55:8-9).

In the Old Testament book of Job, one of Job’s friends, Zophar, asks him this question regarding God’s supreme power, His unfathomable wisdom, and the reasons for His actions – “Do you think you can explain the mystery of God? Do you think you can diagram God Almighty? God is far higher than you can imagine, far deeper than you can comprehend, stretching farther than earth’s horizons, far wider than the endless ocean” (Job 11:7-9, MSG). Zophar was seemingly under the false impression that he had access to the deep things of God, thereby allowing him to torment his friend for not holding the key to knowing God’s ways.

At the end of the 11th Chapter in the Book of Romans we read this doxology – “Oh, the depths of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out! Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor? Who has ever given to God, that God should repay them? For from him and through him and for him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen” (11:33-36)

Our role, as followers of Jesus, is simple. We are called to be obedient and trust God in all things, even when those things don’t make sense. Proverbs 3:5 (using CEV) tells us, “With all your heart you must trust the LORD and not on your own judgment.” That verse is the what and v.6 gives us the why – “Always allow him to lead you, and he will clear the road for you to follow.” Other versions say, “he will make your path straight” or “he will show you which path to take”.   

So today, focus less on trying to figure out the whys and why nots of God and more on trusting that He is in control and that His plan, His path, is way better than any plan or path you could ever dream up. Yes, even better than the yellow brick road.

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Humility is not a concept often used or demonstrated these days. We live in a culture that is full of showboating, you know, that excessive and often annoying behavior done after someone has “done something good” that is intended to bring attention to the person doing the showboating. The term “showboating” is derived from the theatrical performances produced on riverboats on the Mississippi River in the late 19th century. These riverboats became known as showboats and the verb “to showboat” comes from that origin.  

Just turn on the television and watch any sporting event. You will not have to watch too long before you see a player make a good play and after the play is over that player “showboats,” as if to say, look at me, look what I’ve done!

Sometimes showboating even becomes a craze. From 1988 to 1991 fullback Elbert “Ickey” Woods played for the NFL’s Cincinnati Bengals. When he scored a touchdown, he performed a celebration that became famously known as the “Ickey Shuffle.” Woods would shuffle his feet to the right while holding the football out to the right, do the same moves to the left, then do three hops to the right, all before spiking the ball into the ground. This showboating led the NFL to create a rule against “Excessive Celebration” which is enforced as a penalty against that team. While Ickey Woods has not played professional football for more than twenty years, his famous end zone dance lives on. Click here to watch a one-minute video highlighting the NFL’s most famous dancer.

Jesus describes an incident of showboating in Luke 18:9-14. In this parable, two men, a Pharisee and a tax collector, went to the temple to pray. The Pharisee thanked God that he was not a sinner like the other people, especially that lowly tax collector. Maybe even this religious leader did his own version of the “Ickey Shuffle” as he exalted himself (arrogance, spiritual pride). The tax collector, on the other hand, would not even look up toward heaven as he beat his breast and cried out, “God have mercy on me, a sinner” (v.13).

What Jesus said next caught everyone off guard. He said that the tax collector is the one made right before God, not the Pharisee. He concludes this parable by saying, “I tell you this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted” (v. 14).

We find this warning in James 4:13-16 – “Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit’ – yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.’ As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil.”

And Solomon, in pushing back against boasting, said this – “Let someone else praise you, and not your own mouth; an outsider, and not your own lips” (Proverbs 27:2).

Celebrate your accomplishments in a way that brings honor and glory to God and not in a way that says, “look at me.” And as many football coaches have told their team, “When you get to the end zone, act like you’ve been there before.”

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This is a post-election revised edition of a writing from earlier this year. I trust it to be needed by us all.  

Okay, here we are. The morning after. Do you feel exhausted, empty, drained? Physical exhaustion. Mental exhaustion. Emotional exhaustion. Social exhaustion. 24 hours a day news exhaustion. The current climate in our country certainly is nothing short of chaos, absurd, frightening, divisive, and I could add any number of more adjectives, all of which lead us to exhaustion.  

In my opinion, one of the toughest things in our crowded, loud, and chaotic world, is to create enough space and silence to find genuine rest and calm. Whether or not chaos finds us, or we create our own chaos, its effects all around us seep deep into our souls. Even when we are away from constant noise, our heart, mind, and souls are not really quieted. Even when we are at rest, our heart, mind, and souls are not restful. Even when we put our heads on the pillow to sleep, we don’t really sleep well, which then brings on even more fatigue.

This constant clutter in our heart, mind, soul also makes it difficult to hear God’s “still, small voice”. But if we are to follow Jesus in a serious life-changing way, we must find regular time to be quiet and listen. There are many voices competing for our attention and loyalty, and most often God is not the loudest of those voices.

While God is always by our side offering advice, He is not like The Great Gazoo in the old animated TV series, The Flintstones; that tiny green floating scientist who came to help Fred and Barney, but usually created more trouble than help.  

Building the discipline of hearing God, waiting on God, resting in His presence, requires work. It begins with a desire to carve out space. It always requires giving up something, desiring to turn off the noise and find stillness (Psalm 37:7), find quietness (Zephaniah 3:17), find intimacy (James 4:8), find rest (Matthew 11:28-30).

The 23rd Psalm begins with these words – “The LORD is my shepherd; I have everything I need. He lets me rest in fields of green grass and leads me to quiet pools of fresh water. He gives me new strength” (vv.1-3a GNT).

Timothy Leary, the Harvard clinical psychologist, and of hippie fame, encouraged young people in the Sixties to “turn on, tune in, drop out.” While his countercultural phrase encouraged the usage of psychedelic drugs to find true consciousness, and that’s certainly not my advice, I do think that if we “turn on” a sensitivity to God and His presence, if we “tune in” by listening, and if we regularly “drop out” of the noise around us, we will “find” God and be better able to hear, and be changed by, His “still, small voice.”

“Be still, and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!” (Psalm 46:10).

“For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence, for my hope is from him” (Psalm 62:5).

“Teach me, and I will be silent; make me understand how I have gone astray” (Job 6:24).

“But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother; like a weaned child is my soul within me” (Psalm 131:2).

“I love those who love me, and those who seek me diligently find me” (Proverbs 8:17).

Do you desperately desire peace and calm, stillness and rest? Where are you looking for the cure for your exhaustion?   

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