God made a perfect world for us, then made us, and gave us free will, which we promptly used to defy Him and His laws of nature under which we were to flourish.

After generations of restrictions, God chose to redeem His imperfect creation with a sacrificial offer of divine and eternal forgiveness without restrictions to those who would willingly return to Him with a confession of belief and faith in the object of His supreme act of personal sacrifice, a humanly relatable demonstration of the depth of His abiding love for us.

Accepting His gift, we are restored to His original plan, promise, and purpose for an infinite future back in His realm.

That’s the gospel in a nutshell, foretold from the beginning, revealed for today.

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. —John 3:16

The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers,
so that they cannot see the light of the gospel
that displays the glory of Christ,
who is the image of God.—2 Cor 4:4

Like a brick wall.

Talking with certain people seems to move a conversation no closer to an understanding.

In town square issue discussions today, even hard evidence, fullest versions of edited weaponized sound bytes, independent statistical data points, and to an even lesser extent, first hand personal accounts, count for little to nothing to those so glazed over by a durable resistant coating of politics, partisanship, irrational beliefs, or painful personal history, they develop a hard shell finish resisting any challenge.
Add deep fakes, autotune, and AI and the truth will soon be indistinguishable from reality.

Discussions of the spiritual realm are no different.

Take Paul’s abrupt and instantaneous conversion from persecutor of the faith to believer in the faith witnessed by many.
Take Jeremiah’s relentless proclamations of Christ to those who would listen and hear.
Peter, Philip, Jonah, and even Jesus himself, all testify to present compelling cases for faith and belief. All suffered avoidable gruesome deaths refusing renunciation.

Truth begs to be told, but today, it is the voice least often heard.

Use of personal and testimonial accounts and supporting scriptures are quickly written off by the ill informed as an appeal to authority supported largely by the authority’s claims, a basic philosophical error of fallacy by the same name.

Getting anywhere with anyone used to be subject to reasonable rules of engagement and debate where the better argument often converted observers.

God doesn’t blind people to truth. It is the god of this world who spins truth into lies, and ignorance completes the circle, imprisoning those caught up in it.

But don’t give up.

The holy spirit works alongside us to counter the insidious tactics in this war waged against truth, against us, and against those who desperately need the Truth.

I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances.

I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. 

I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. 

I can do all this through him who gives me strength.”

‭‭Philippians‬ ‭4‬:‭11‬-‭13‬ ‭NIV‬‬

Some of us need to learn this ‘secret’ already available to us. 

A secret is information known exclusively between one and another at the exclusion of others. 

My God will meet all your needs according to the riches of his glory in Christ Jesus.”

‭‭Philippians‬ ‭4‬:‭19‬ ‭NIV‬‬

God’s promise to provide for our needs means that out of His discernment of what our needs are He will dispense the right solution in the right amount at the right time and place and for the right reason. 

He’s rich in everything and we are His dependents. To be content in all things is to know His provisions are generous and good, given to satisfy our lack out of His wealth. 

That’s the “secret” solution unknown to those who still fail to believe. 

Be content and anxious for nothing.

Jehovah Jireh is my provider.

Gen 22 NIV

But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.
‭‭Philippians‬ ‭3‬:‭7‬, ‭10‬-‭11‬ ‭NIV‬‬

In all human experience, only one remains almost entirely unknown.

Despite hypotheses about what it’s like and relentless attempts at its description from every conceivable perspective, unhinged fantasy, limitless speculation and sordid detail, we still know nothing more beyond its cause except for the promise that we never will for as long as we live.

And then it will either be the nothing or the everything we ever dreamed of.

Paul had a goal.

His desire from prison was death itself in order to gain the experience of being resurrected because his faith tells him it is, indeed, everything ever dreamed of.

To live is Christ.
To die is gain.

As noble the thought may be, he also knows the world’s people won’t be saved by a bunch of dead Christians.

The more noble act is to remain here in faith and action, not to hasten our own demise just to experience the promise of our resurrection moment.

Paul was selfless to a fault, persevering in faith and action until one day in Rome when his faith resulted in his beheading and he finally gained that resurrection moment of which he had only dreamed of in prison.

Of all human experiences only death remains entirely unknown except that it is our promised gift for keeping the faith and a job well done.

Now, Lord, consider their threats and enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness.

‭‭Acts‬ ‭4‬:‭29‬ ‭NIV‬‬

For so many of us today, this has become our prayer. 

It took the bloody murder of an innocent man for us to realize our best and highest use is to speak the truth into others fearlessly while we still have a voice and they still have time. 

Seize just one opportunity today and share the gospel message of Jesus with someone who needs hope for an eternity. 

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.

‭‭Philippians‬ ‭4‬:‭8‬ ‭NIV‬‬

The mind is a terrible thing to waste.

We spend an unholy amount of neurons creating anxieties and emotions based on falsehoods and ignoble self-deceptions. 

We process 74GB of information daily, much of which is phony, false or character-killers. 

As we allow such thoughts to take root, they choke out the possibility that your internal garden will bear any fruitful thing of beauty or utility for you or those around you.

This verse doesn’t advocate a Pollyanna view of life through rose colored glasses. 

It’s more like ‘what you think on, you will become.’

The mind creates thoughts the heart follows and the heart then behaves in turn with anxiety accordingly.

My God will meet all your needs according to the riches of his glory in Christ Jesus.

‭‭Philippians‬ ‭4‬:‭19‬ ‭NIV‬‬

Recognize when you need to change your mind and allow God to feed that need. 

Your heart and your relationships will follow suit.

When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus.
‭‭Acts‬ ‭4‬:‭13‬ ‭NIV‬‬

Unschooled and ordinary yet courageous.

History remembers these kind of men, their messages, and their ministries.

Yesterday, the world memorialized another modern day martyr, unschooled and ordinary yet whose courage and convictions delivered him into the hands of Jesus.

Like Peter and John, he was not ashamed of the transformative truth that reaches in, grabs hearts of flesh, and delivers souls to crowd the kingdom come.

For the rest of your life, be courageous.

Your reward will be the best rest of your eternal life as you hear his words, well done good and faithful servant.

Be confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.

‭‭Philippians‬ ‭1‬:‭6‬ ‭NIV‬‬

If you’re like me, you’re notorious for starting projects and losing time or interest before completing them. 

Something more important or urgent steals away our finite attention until our best intention becomes just another piece of unfinished business we promise ourselves to complete someday. 

Thank God—literally—your salvation is not something He loses interest in because of your lack of participation. 

Once begun by heartful profession of faith, it lands you a place in the center of God’s workbench where you are always worked on even when it doesn’t feel like it. 

This fact usurps your feelings.

Jesus is the completer and finisher of our faith.

But when you reassume a more active role, the progress is evident.

Be confident. He’s not finished with you yet.

In the words of a song by new musical artists Caleb & John:

He’s not done with me

He’s not done with you

No matter what you’re goin through 

Our hope is in 

An empty tomb

And a God who’s still not in it. 

From dope dealing to hope dealing. That’s how I roll now.

We all know at least one still unrecovering addict whether you realize it or not.

Statistically, 12 is the number of addicts you’ll know in your lifetime, probably a lot more.

Some will make it over the addiction hump and sadly, some will be buried under it.

But addiction’s not going anywhere. There’s too much money to be made from it.

The real question is: who do you become when you’re around them?

That depends on a number of variables and your life experiences. So to bring the question closer to home: who are you called to be around them?

Is there any moral or spiritual imperative that supersedes the common, reflexive human emotions of hate, disdain, disgust, or mistrust?

I’ll be first to suggest against wholly trusting an addict.

Addiction 101 clearly taught me that manipulation and lies are the tools along their pathways that lead to using.

However, to maintain hope for all people, we have to believe that all people are redeemable and worthy of redemption en route to getting clean.

That means we addicts need chances at becoming what once and one hundred times in our lives we always wanted to be: clean and sober.

Like “normal” folks, addicts struggle every single day to be better people, some more successfully than others. They are the fortunate few who’ve been surrounded by people of compassion.

To be a people of compassion is our calling.

They are the people of the Second Chance, just as we, ourselves, were once and again given.

“Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”
‭‭Philippians‬ ‭1‬:‭2‬ ‭NIV‬‬

Despite how he sounds, Paul was not a nice dude.

While he opened his letters with this signature greeting, he’s best known for the harsh rebukes that followed.

Grace is unmerited favor, something bestowed upon us that we cannot and did not earn apart from our salvation and life in Christ.

Peace is both a feeling and a condition. The feeling of confident assurance while under the condition of our absolute redemption, having made peace with God.

Paul’s greeting IS the gospel in its simplest and most elegant form.

Together, these two are pronouncements from Paul to believers, not wishes for something that might still come to pass. It’s his affirmation of identity of those in earshot of his letters.

Grace and peace are what the world needed most both then and now.

Before you launch into what might be an uncomfortable discussion, it behooves you to first acknowledge the grace and peace we share as brothers and sisters.

Your greeting might be their only takeaway.