Midweek Josh Talk

I need times of transition. This is something that I have discovered about myself and my daily life. I have a difficult time jumping from one thing to the next, especially if I have spent a significant amount of time dedicated to a single focus. To contextualize what I am talking about let me say that on any given day I come up with a new list of three things to accomplish and I add these to my "daily six list." Those six are the things that I have prayerfully decided upon in order to keep myself accountable and effective in my calling and purpose. Applying both of those lists to my routine has taken a lot of time and discipline to include as an every day reality, but to talk more about that would be a blog of a different color. I usually don't need a transition between each of those nine daily items as they are similar in focus and the mental/spiritual/emotional preparation is the same. However, when I go home I need a time of transition to adjust my focus so that I ...

Friendship is a loaded concept. This past week I've been challenged by the parameters that I place on this kind of relationship when compared to what I see in Scripture. Last Sunday, the sermon looked at the fact Jesus referred to us as friends and Ty pointed out the conditional nature of that friendship as Jesus said, "You are My friends if you do what I command you" (John 14:15 HCSB). Living in covenant with my God means that I am walking in friendship with my Creator, Redeemer, and King. In our culture we embrace labels and often apply them to ourselves and others as the definition of identity. When I think of Jesus, I don't connect our friendship to His identity. He is, "I AM" and I relate to Him as a friend when I follow His life giving instructions. That got me thinking about my other friendships. Do I identify people by the level or kind of relationship they have with me? The Bible shows friendship to be a covenantal relationship yet I usually only ap...

This past Sunday I told a story about my boy having bad dreams. I said that I would talk more about how that was resolved so I wanted to take this time to write an encouragement to all of you in the church. If you remember, Cora came to tell us that her brother was crying and would we please do something about it because, she said, "It's keeping me awake."  We decided to bypass the lack of compassion in this very tired sister and so Mom went down to comfort the boy. As Beth went into his room, Toby was softly crying but she could see that he was shaking and covered in sweat. She brought him out of his room and held him close but he wasn't settling down. Beth tried to talk to him about the dream but he could only say that it was bad and he didn't like thinking about it. He was clenched up in her lap and he was still whimpering in a way that told Beth just how scared he was. Her response was to get him to talk.  Beth: "Toby, tell me something that i...