I answered my cell phone’s ring and heard a longtime friend on the line. He asked me, “Are you sitting down?”
“I’m driving,” I answered.
“Well, pull over. I have something to tell you.” I did, and he said, “My wife has taken our daughter and left me. I had an affair, and she just found out about it. I don’t know what I’m gonna do.”
I got on a plane the next morning, and when I saw him, I said, “Are you willing to do whatever it takes to restore your marriage?”
Read MoreEveryone’s talking about Tiger Woods this week. Not only because he won the Masters golf tournament, not only because that was his 15th major win, but most especially because it was his first major win since 2008.
The years since then were marked with a series of dark chapters. Sex scandal. Divorce. DUI arrest. Debilitating back pain. At one point his world ranking dropped to below 1,000.
And while commentators hailed his victory as “one of the greatest career revivals in the history of sports,” I see something more. To me, the Tiger Woods comeback is a redemption story that shows all of us how to make our own turnaround. We are all Tiger Woods. He took at least four actions that will put anyone on the road to redemption.
Read MoreIf someone challenged you to choose three words to describe Jesus, which would you pick?
Righteous?
Compassionate?
Loving?
All those would be good choices, but here’s another description that doesn’t usually make it to the top of our list.
Honest.
Jesus was honest. He told a woman caught in adultery, “Go and sin no more.” He called the Pharisees and Sadducees “a brood of vipers.” To their face.
Jesus didn’t mince words. He said, “I am the bread of life. . . . Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. . . . the one who feeds on me will live because of me. . . . Your forefathers ate manna and died, but he who feeds on this bread will live forever.”
His teaching was so new, so fresh, so honest, that some who followed him walked away (John 6:35-60).
Read MoreIf you follow me on Facebook or heard me preach a couple of weeks ago, you know how moved I was by my first trip to Israel. Standing where the prophets walked, praying where Jesus stood, seeing the fields where first David and later the Christmas shepherds tended flocks—it was an experience I’ll never forget.
But meeting residents of Israel and Palestine—Jews, Muslims, and Christians, eating and talking with them in their homes and other informal settings—had the most profound impact on me. In this post I want to tell you what I learned from one of them.
Read MoreLast week I took the risk of being real. I shared five confessions about myself and my feelings about ministry. Not because I’m in trouble or on the verge of quitting. But because ministry is hard, harder than those outside of ministry realize. I’m doing this in an effort to encourage other ministers who may be harboring and hiding some of these same thoughts.
Thank you for allowing me to be real. And think with me about five more confessions.
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