An Inconvenient Christianity

This is yet another one of those rare blog posts from me. Actually, the truth is that I have started other posts, but never finished them for publication. This time is different, though. The Holy Spirit would not let me abandon this blog post. Not this time.  At various points in the year, I have been noticing a shift. In the world. In the church. In myself. In the atmosphere. Anybody else feel it? It feels like the time is fast approaching when business as usual will no longer be enough. It feels like the same old way of operating will fail us. It feels like we need to step our game up, so to speak. In literally EVERYthing. EVERY aspect of our lives....but especially spiritually.  I am woefully incapable of articulating what I feel in my spirit about the upcoming year, but I know that 2018 will be uncommon. I believe that God i getting ready to blow our minds in the upcoming year. And I don't necessarily mean with blessings. But this time will also require an uncom...

Okay...so the phrase "reclaiming my time" has become an internet sensation since Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) uttered it several times during Sec. Mnuchin's testimony on July 27, 2017. If you haven't seen it,  please take a moment to do so. Trust me, I enjoyed that immensely...and then I started thinking about the spiritual aspect of that statement. My most recent blog post  Perfect Progression  got a lot of reactions. Most of them were positive. A few people contacted me privately to share their own stories and/or ask questions. The thing people wanted most to know was how I was able to forgive myself. Before the Maxine Waters video, I did not have the phrase for it. Now I do. I reclaimed my time. The Lord showed me in His word ( Ephesians 5:15-17 ) that the time I wasted being devoted to the wrong person had to be reclaimed and more importantly, that I shouldn't waste more time beating myself up for what was already done. See, what I learned was that God gets...

This blog has been a long time coming. I started several versions of it, but this is the first time that the Holy Spirit released me to write it. The title comes from something a good (and occasionally wise) friend wrote today. Suddenly, it was time. Perfection has been a goal of mine for as long as I have known myself. I fall short of it. ALWAYS. (Side note: what an awesome and merciful God we serve!). As much as I have talked about commitment and getting rid of the distractions in this blog, the truth is that I was preaching to myself. I was trying to maintain a facade of perfection, while being anything but perfect. For longer than is decent to admit, I was in an inappropriate relationship with a married man. I have always been a good Christian girl raised in a good Christian home, so I tried to justify my actions to myself. I loved him. Or at least I loved the version of him that I thought existed (* spoiler alert * the man I thought he was did not exist...like, at all).  A...

Happy new year!! Yes, I know it's almost May, but this is my first blog post of the year and I thought it was appropriate to greet you all properly. Anyway, I have been meaning to write. So much has happened and so much needs to be said, but I have been putting it off. Not sure why exactly. Perhaps, I have just been fighting against the inevitable. Actually, that is exactly the reason. James Weldon Johnson has a poem called,  Prodigal Son , where the speaker proclaims that the subject's arms are too short to box with God. That's me. Desperately trying to spar with the Creator, but my arms are too short. The end result? No punches have landed, I'm fighting the air...and I'm tired. God's sovereign will is a heckuva thing to come against. So why do we try? I wish I had an answer for that. Something about the human will seeks to exalt itself. It began happening in the Garden of Eden and has been occurring ever since. Oh yeah, we sing songs like, "...

**This blog is about the election in an indirect way** So let me tell you all what has been going on. Recently, my pastor has been has been preaching a series on holiness. His emphasis has not been on physical holiness and purity so much as spiritual holiness and the way we (as Christians) treat one another. Reconciliation was the buzz word. You see, as Christians, we are obliged to forgive those who have wronged us. The so-called Lord's Prayer actually makes the Father's forgiveness of us contingent on our ability and willingness to forgive others. Across the board, I am unlikely to be met with any opposition about the Christian's duty to forgive. However, when it comes to reconciliation? That is another story. Indeed, a lot of the rhetoric our there in Christendom surrounds forgiving, but not forgetting (read: forgiveness without reconciliation). But how can we name the name of Christ and refuse to be reconciled? That was the point of my pastor's sermon series...

Yes, that "The Walking Dead." I am OBSESSED with that show . The season 7 premiere was so nerve-wracking and hard to watch (in a good way) that my chest hurt for a full hour even after the show had ended. (We can argue via email about whether a Christian should watch shows like that. I welcome your opinions.) For those of you unfamiliar the show, it is set in a post-apocalyptic world after a viral pandemic which causes the dead not to stay dead. So zombies roam the earth trying to eat living human flesh. The show tracks a group of survivors and their efforts to survive in this new reality. But by now, I'm sure you have guessed that this blog post will not be about the show. Not really. A very wise friend of mine on Facebook posted something yesterday that got my mental juices flowing. Here is my train of thought: According to 2 Corinthians 5:17, in Christ we are new creatures; the old has gone and the new has come. In other words, our sin nature has died. And ...

This post is not about Donald J. Trump. I mean, it is, but it isn't. I just feel compelled to address something that I find deeply disturbing. Dr. James MacDonald touches on it  here , but there is a nuance that I want to discuss from an inconvenient standpoint. On Friday, October 7th, the world was made privy to a private conversation that Trump had with Access Hollywood host Billy Bush. I will not provide a link the the video because it is disgusting and does not need to be accessed from my blog. Suffice it to say, the statements and claims about reprehensible and illegal conduct made by Trump were truly appalling. But he made those statements 11 years ago... He might be a different man today. Who knows? None of us knows his true heart. Only God knows that. So is it fair to judge him by his comments from 11 years ago? *Please note: For the purposes of this blog, I am addressing his comments in the Access Hollywood video only. I am creating an artificial vacuum to make a p...