G3 "GOD GETS THE GLORY" BLOG

06/11/2018

Life is a journey.  It's going to have its ups and its downs.  We are going to be victorious some days and fail hard on others.  There is no way to avoid this.  It's just a fact of life.  One of those philosophical truths.  If there is one thing I've learned, it's that we can't control what life does.  But we CAN control how we respond to it.  That's actually the only thing we have any semblance of control over. So what's the best way to respond when life kicks us in the gut?  Being a black and

06/07/2018

Life is a constant struggle.  We all know it.  We have our ups and our downs, our highs and our lows, our peaks and our valleys.  Whatever terms you want to use, it all boils down to the same thing.  Living anywhere in the world, one of the really neat things is the diversity of the scenery.  Let me give you an example.  In the United States, we have everything ranging from mountain ranges to prairies to swamps to deserts and everything in between.  Now, I took a trip across west Texas several

06/01/2018

We live in a world of illusions.  Where things aren't always what they seem.  Appearances are deceptive.  We like to believe that things are under our control.  But the truth is VERY different.  The truth is we have no control.  And things AREN'T what they seem.  We put our trust in manmade things.  We look to man to solve our problems.   So what happens when things spiral out of control?  What happens when our world falls apart?  To whom do we turn?  Well, if we have relied on man, then we

05/31/2018

Wisdom... We have been seeking wisdom for as long as man has existed.  Philosophers have pondered it for eons.  Heck, the word philosopher itself stems from the two Greek words, philos and sophos.  Philos means a love of and sophos is the Greek word for wisdom.  We all long to make wise choices in our lives.  But where do we start that search?  How does one start to seek wisdom? Perhaps the wisest man to ever have existed was King Solomon of Israel.  The entire book of Proverbs are his little

05/30/2018

Ever have the one that got away?  A missed opportunity?  If you've been fishing, you've probably got several tales of fish that you almost had, but ultimately, they managed to elude you.  We've all got at least one story, whether it be fishing or romance or whatever else it might be where one got away.  That's the nature of life.  It happens to us all. But if we are Christians, we are called to be fishers of men.  We are called not just to live a Christ-like life, but to bring the Good News to

05/29/2018

We've seen the cartoons where the person is having an internal conflict, trying to make a tough decision.  Then THEY appear.  On the one shoulder, a miniaturized version of the character in an angel costume.  On the other shoulder, another miniaturized version of the character, but in a devil's costume.  And they are providing conflicting advice to the person.  You can tell that he or she is torn, uncertain of what to do.  It's an extremely black-and-white depiction of what happens internally to

05/25/2018

I love the rain!  It always brings a smile to my face when I look outside and see the droplets falling from heaven.  I can say with all honesty that out of all the different types of weather we can get, rain is, by far, my favorite!  There's the smell of the humidity.  The feel of the cool water on my skin.  And there's the cleansing effects of the rain.  Rain cleans  It provides the plants with what they need to grow and be fruitful.  It washes away all the "junk" that we leave lying around.

05/24/2018

Worry.  Dictionary.com defines worry as "to torment oneself with or suffer from disturbing thoughts; fret."  That's a good secular definition.  I've always thought of worry as stressing over things that are beyond a person's control.  That's what we do when we worry.  We get overly focused on things that are outside our realm of control.  We like to believe that we are in control.  We spend our entire lives trying to control our immediate surroundings.  We control what we do... where we go...

05/23/2018

Last night, I kid you not, I had an epiphany.  So many of the stories of the Bible finally opened up to me.  I looked back over my life and realized how many "golden calves" I had made.  I related to the slave who had been given one coin and had buried it in a field.  I thought about all the sins I had committed in my life, all the failures caused by those sins.  I pondered on all the blessings that God gave me and I squandered and wasted.  As a result, I had an overwhelming sense of

05/21/2018

How many times do we lament the "old days"?  We look around at our world and wish things hadn't changed or wonder where things went so wrong.  School shootings... Terrorists... Bombings... You can't watch the news without thinking about these things.  It seems that our world has gone to Hades in a hand basket. I love history.  There's a saying that if you forget your history, you're doomed to repeat it.  And I can tell you that if you go back through human history, you'll find a common thread: