Ecclesiastes 12:10

    This New Year I resolved to scrape away some barnacles.   No, I don’t own a yacht.   This isn’t the nautical type of barnacles. It is a term I recently heard in a financial discussion.   There it referred to items that attach themselves to our bank account. That gym membership we don’t use, a trial of Pandora we forgot to cancel, and that yearly fee we don’t think about till it is due. They are those things that attach to your money and slow down your ability to make it grow.   But this idea isn’t just for better finical planning. Life has barnacles. Things you get stuck with that are not useful anymore but we can’t seem to shake them off. Bad habits, odd obligations, time vacuums. We might think they were once useful but now they just help drag us down. Therefore be careful how you walk, not as unwise men but as wise,   making the most of your time, because the days are evil. Ephesians 5:15-16      I don’t think I’ve met t...

      T he Koreans have a term to describe a person who’s better at everything than you are, Umchina . If you translate it literally it’s "mom's friend's son".   Things are not that different here.   Everyone can find that person who we always fall short of (If you can’t ask your Mom). The standard of others is always a standard that will be a little too big for us. It can make us feel inadequate and incapable.   Aren’t you glad God doesn’t do that?   All of us will not be held to the standard of others but to our own. Another person's judgment will not factor into it (Romans 14:4). It won’t matter what your mom’s friend's son did but it will matter what you did! But you, why do you judge your brother? Or you again, why do you regard your brother with contempt? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God.   For it is written, "AS I LIVE, SAYS THE LORD, EVERY KNEE SHALL BOW TO ME, AND EVERY TONGUE SHALL GIVE PRAISE TO GOD."  ...

   Paul was worried about the brethren in Thessalonica. He barely had any time with them before circumstances have driven him from the city. Paul had wanted to return to them but Satan had kept that from happening. All he really wanted to know was ‘were they faithful”?     Finally when he receives the news from Timothy that yes they were Paul is overjoyed. It had been a tough time for him. Mistreatment, suffering, accusation, setbacks had plagued his efforts. Yet when he hears from the brethren are on the right track, he is comforted. He says in 1 st Thessalonians chapter three verses seven and eight: “for this reason, brethren, in all our distress and affliction we were comforted about you through your faith;   for now we really live, if you stand firm in the Lord.”   Do you want to make a minister quit? Do you want to break an elder? Do you want to burn out a preacher? It’s not the long nights or the hard choices that do it. It isn’t tight budgets ...

    Psychologists have found an interesting trick to make people like you. Act like them.   Not acting like the psychologist, (unless you want them to like you) but the person whom you’re trying to win affection from. The process is called mirroring. It is reflecting the manner of speech and movement of another while speaking to them. It works because it is subconsciously triggered that the person is like we are and therefore worthy of consideration.   It reminds me of Paul’s words in Titus 3:2-3, “... showing every consideration for all men. For we also once were foolish ourselves …” It can be hard to not speak against those whom we see behaving in ill manners. It’s easy to bash the foolish government or the young and dumb when they are just a faceless entity. But when we think of them as a person and more so a person not wholly that different than what we were at one time, it becomes more difficult to hate. We give ourselves a lot more rope than we tend to gi...