…we often post status updates, links, and personal information heedless of who it might offend. We make private meetings on public Facebook walls, regardless of who may feel left out. We tag photos of ourselves with friends because we happen to look particularly good in them (regardless of how our […]
There’s a story in the Bible of a young king named Josiah, who lived 640 years before Christ. I think Josiah could have related to me – being religious but ignorant of God. Josiah’s generation had lost God’s Word. And I don’t mean that figuratively. They literally lost God’s Word. […]
This is the crux of The Joseph Road: Not knowing one thing about the future, Joseph simply did good in whatever tasks or opportunities came his way. He had no bargains or promises given him, no “steps to success.” He was still a slave – a slave who was now […]
Some of the best advice I received early on in my career was from an older, wiser female friend who had left a big company and had begun her own consulting practice. I was at her office late one Thursday afternoon, as we were getting ready to knock off work and head […]
In one statement I can show you why your earlier attempts to lose weight and change your life failed. Something in your past convinced you that this time isn’t going to be any different from the rest. Deep inside, you didn’t believe you could change your thinking, your lifestyle, your […]
The fact is, people are not the same. They consider and weigh spiritual matters in differing ways. In other words, they’re on a variety of different faith paths. One person might say, “I believe what I do because I was raised with that belief.” Another relies on mystical feelings and […]
The Longview is written to ministry leaders, but longview principles are for every Christian striving for authentically biblical leadership, whether in ministry or the marketplace. How will you choose to face the challenges of leadership? Will you choose to pursue immediate results – or will you choose to follow Christ […]
Like an eagle that stirs up its nest, That hovers over its young, He spread His wings and caught them, He carried them on His pinions. – Deuteronomy 32:11, NASB Learning to Soar is based off of Deuteronomy 32:11 and has four parts. The first part is how God uses […]
And now, more than ever, you need the ministry of comfort. Not covered dishes and sympathy cards, but a safe place with a safe person, somewhere you can grieve without being rebuked or misunderstood. You need someone who will let you be real, someone who will let you weep or […]
One of the biggest jerks I ever knew was a twenty-three year old college graduate whose anger and arrogance spilled into many of his relationships. His hypocrisy was astounding as he claimed to be a Christian one moment and then acted like a son of hell the next. If it […]
I don’t know what you do up here in Northern Indiana. Where I came from, on Friday nights, we used to get in our Dads’ trucks cause they used to build those trucks so that you could run over anything and it wouldn’t hurt them. You know, the old gravel roads, they just ran straight for miles and miles and miles. You never had to turn your car because you were always going in one direction until you wanted to go in another direction and then you had to wait until you came to a road to make a turn and then you’d make the turn and go straight in that direction for a long ways.
It was pretty easy driving, so what we always liked to do is go out as far in the country as we could get to where there weren’t any houses or anything that we could find. Then, you’d go as just about as fast as you dared going and you’re turn the lights out. Then the truck, in the middle of the night… It wasn’t a real smart thing to do. But luckily, they built those trucks real sturdily. And our dads always just thought they were getting beat up out in the field. They didn’t know it was in someone else’s field.
So one time I was driving from Philadelphia to Miami, Florida. I was going down Interstate 95 through Maryland, which I don’t ordinary think of as being a beatuiful part of the world. But it’s shocking how beautiful Maryland is. Of course, it was about 2 o’clock in the morning and it was a full moon and so just about any place is pretty at 2 in the morning with a full moon if you’re all by yourself.
And I started thinking about how we used to do that when we were kids. How we used to turns those lights out and drive a little bit too fast on gravel roads. And I wondered if I could still see by moonlight like I could when I was younger. So, I looked around and made sure there weren’t any cars and clicked them off right there in Maryland. Only this time, I didn’t drive too fast because I wasn’t quite so young anymore. I had gotten in the habit of trying to soak up things instead of speed by them.
Looking at Maryland I began to think of just the goodness that I was not blind. Sometimes you have to go to Maryland to remember what a joy it is to see. But then I began to think about even if I was in the middle of Brooklyn – with that moon – if there was a power shortage and there weren’t any lights to interrupt – probably even Brooklyn would be pretty with that moon. I remembered how it used to look when you’d drive in the spring and the corn was just starting to come up and the rows were real short.
You know, sometimes we think that everything is changing. But I’ll tell you what – the same moon is up there tonight. The same stars that Abraham saw – they’re all up there. The same God that put them there and made them shine, He’s still there too. And I don’t know what life has for you. I don’t know what life has for me. But I know this: I know that God is good and I know that God does not lie. I know that God has given us the gift of our lives. Sometimes we wish He would have given us someone else’s life. But He chose to give you your life. Don’t despair of it.
Rich Mullins
