You know the story; Jesus and the disciples drop in on Martha, Mary and Lazarus, and Martha gets steamed at Mary for leaving her to do all the serving by herself while Mary reclines at Jesus feet. Martha is upset enough that she even throws a little lip Jesus’ way (Luke 10:38-42). Sermons about the encounter typically conclude with “be a Mary, not a Martha”. Of course, such sermons are NEVER delivered on the same day that the church holds a potluck. No one gets served if everyone is a Mary.

The Greek word used to describe Martha’s serving is the same word used in Acts 6:1, when the apostles decided that serving food was a hassle and foisted the job off onto 7 deacons so they could focus on prayer and the word of God. Except for the Greek, one wouldn’t see the connection because the King James renders the word “serving” in the passage about Martha, and “ministration” in the passage about the apostles. I guess that means when women serve food, it’s service, but when the men do it, it’s ministry.

A discussion of daily devotion and prayer time featuring Karen Helser. The transcript for this episode can be found at RSS.com.

In the spring of 1966, the entire 4th grade class was marched to the gym where we were made to take a musical aptitude test. Other than listening to single notes played on a variety of instruments and answering whether or not they were the same, I remember little else about the test. Three weeks later, I came home from school and my parents greeted me saying “the school called.” Oh, how those words could make me sweat bullets and launch my suspicious mind into a frenzied inventory of excuses even before hearing the school’s complaint.

“Do you remember the music test you took?” my parents asked. “Uh, no” said I. Dad continued with a grin “it’s difficult to believe, I know, but the school says you have a talent for music.” My little mind did a Bat-Turn** trying to anticipate what was next. “The school wants you to play an instrument in the orchestra.” Ah, there it was – punishment – and I didn’t do nothing wrong. “But Dad! I want to play ball with my friends at recess, not play in some dumb orchestra!” In those days, the orchestra practiced during class lunch hour.

The Lord gave me a prophetic experience one spring that went a long way toward dealing with the guilt I’ve felt over NOT being successful in bringing change to the institutional church I attended for several years.

But first, I need to share a little background. I was born and raised in a suburb south of Seattle and lived there for 42 years before the Lord directed me to move to the rural Midwest. The good ol’ boys had themselves quite a time kidding me about being a city boy and I often joked about corn, bugs, stifling heat, and hog farms common to the area. I’ve written song parodies about farm life and sang them for the locals, along with the inspirational and worship music I write.

This episode is excerpted from the first short inspirational article I wrote, about the fall of 1999. I had forgotten about it until recently when the Father thought I needed encouragement and reminded me about it. The message is simply for the family of God in Christ who are down and discouraged by the evil goings on in the world today: WE WIN! I hope this blesses and encourages you as it has me.

When I was 14, I accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior. Not long after, some of my new Christian friends introduced me to various beliefs about the Rapture of the Saints. That was the 1970’s, and Hal Lindsey’s book “The Late Great Planet Earth” was causing quite a stir, and prompted many rapture debates. I can remember one friend who asked me: “are you pre-, mid-, or post-trib, pre-, post-, or a-millennial”? Biblical scholar that I was then – after all I knew John 3:16 inside and out – I gave her my most profound answer: “Both!” and then I changed the subject. She was one of those Bible Baptist kids and us Presbyterians knew better than to engage one of them in a debate. Eventually, I adopted as my own the popular beliefs at the time. Certainly that was easier than searching for the answers myself.

When we moved to the Olympic Peninsula, we hoped to meet a few brothers and sisters in the Lord and decided to visit a small independent country church. Before going, we talked about our intents and purposes and resolved to keep mum about our history, gifts and callings. The very first service we attended, the new pastor was introduced and within 5 minutes of hearing him boast, I said to Karen “he will destroy the sweet fellowship here”. When the service was over, I chided him about a gross contradiction between his message and the men’s program he promoted. He threw his head back and laughed, dismissing what I said by the Spirit of Truth. In hindsight, that should have been our first and last visit, but we decided to check out the Bible study prayer group meeting the following Wednesday.

The leader was spirit filled and conducted the Bible study with learnedness and sensitivity for every person’s participation. Her devotion and preparedness was obvious and we regarded her a genuine sister. Midway, the study broke for refreshments, where my dear wife boasted to the woman who asked about us “my husband is a songwriter and worship leader”. “Ooooh!” said the woman as she rubbed her hands together “we’ll have to put him to work right away”. So much for keeping mum and avoiding church work.

(This post was originally published in April 2017) I’m not a fan of writings that for the most part seem assembled from the quotations of scholars, historians, and theologians, weaving them together like some great tapestry of spiritual enlightenment. To me, such writing seems oddly disconnected from the soul of the author which leaves me cold. I’d so much rather read a personal testimony from the author’s own life experience. What was your condition, how did the Son intervene, how were you healed or blessed, what did you learn? That’s what I want to know, for no derivative or commentary ever touched my heart like the open, honest, and vulnerable testimony of a brother or sister in the Son.

And yet, it was a daily devotional I receive by email that had me on the receiving end of the Lord’s chastisement several times during a health scare. Whoever is in charge of publishing excerpts from an author who died in 1971, had obviously been spying on me and selecting them with intent to hit me squarely between the eyes.

It first happened while lying on a gurney in the emergency room, strapped to an EKG monitor, and with an IV in each arm. I’m sorry, this is emotional. There I spoke frankly to Karen about the possibility of my death. She refused to hear it of course, admonishing me to speak faith but still I wanted her to know that I loved her and she was free to return to her family in Illinois, leaving the care of my elderly father who lived with us, to my siblings. Again, Karen spoke words of encouragement, even while I lamented the garden I’d started in faith but now could not finish because of the heart attack.

Talking with a friend about New Year’s resolutions, he reminded me that I’m already a new creation and asked “so what’s to resolve”? I thanked him for that amazing insight and resolved then and there not to make any resolutions! So much for diet, weight loss and exercise regimens this year!

Seriously, I was thinking about a resolution for the new year to focus more on Jesus and less on the religious system I left behind. About that, I had been considering Lot’s wife, who couldn’t keep her eyes on where she was going, but instead looked back and paid with her life. Though there is no mention in scripture why Lot’s wife looked back, the Hebrew word for “looked” (H5027*) means to “regard with pleasure, favor or care.” The simplest explanation is not only did she disobey God’s command not to look back, she looked favorably upon what God called an abomination (Genesis 18:20) and that put her in opposition to God. For that, she was turned into a pillar of salt.

There is no pleasure in looking back at the religious system I left behind. And while the teachings there provide an abundance of blog-fodder, is it productive to expose and correct their every error?

There’s this vague recollection I have of a comedy skit where Adam is in the garden with God and names the animals. The Adam character is a trifle lazy and, as memory serves, hillbilly-ish. In between laughs from the audience, Adam makes quick work of naming the animals; for example, all birds are “flappers”, fish are “swimmers”, waterfowl are “paddlers”, and so on. I half expected God to point out that waterfowl are both paddlers and flappers, but He must have figured hillbilly Adam couldn’t handle such profound revelation. I thought maybe it was a scene from the musical comedy “Cotton Patch Gospel” but Adam wasn’t a character in that one that I recall. Anyhow, the way my mind works, I can’t help but remember that skit and chuckle to myself whenever I read the account of creation in Genesis.