Sometimes God asks basic, or even mundane, things of you. Other times, though, He’ll challenge you to do something you might only get a chance to do a few times during your life.
Here’s a pretty unremarkable example, but I hope it helps illustrate my point. About 49 times out of 50, whenever I post something new on this blog, the post goes live on a Thursday (the exception is during the week of Thanksgiving). Today is Thursday, but this is a special Thursday.
Today is Thursday, February 29th. It’s Leap Day. It will be four years before we get another Leap Day, but it won’t be until February 29th, 2052, that Leap Day falls on Thursday again. That’s 28 years from now. At this point I’m unwilling to commit to this website for that long. (Any guest authors out there?) That means today’s post may be the only daregreatlynow.com post that ever gets posted on February 29th.
God many times moves in your heart to do “ordinary” things. There’s nothing wrong with that; in fact, the consistent and reliable service of committed saints is what makes many ministries possible. Volunteering in the church’s nursery, helping out an elderly neighbor after a snowstorm, or visiting with someone who finds it difficult to leave the house are all things that serve God’s kingdom by being the hands and feet of Christ. Every now and then, though, He challenges you with something extraordinary.
There are limitless possibilities, and they often tie in with your unique circumstances, means, and interests. I can’t do the things you can, you can’t do the things I can, and that’s why God put you and I exactly where we are. Whatever that big thing is, the thing that scares you even though you know God’s whispering in your ear, I just want to encourage you to press on. It could be making a very large financial donation to something God-honoring, reaching out to someone you wouldn’t ordinarily engage in a meaningful way, or filling a gap somewhere where you seem to be the only one who notices. There is literally no end to the options that are out there.
I believe that if God led you to serve in those consistent and predictable ways, you should follow through on them. But like Queen Esther, sometimes God weaves the circumstances of our lives into opportunities for us to step into water that’s over our heads and be part of something extraordinary. Don’t pass those up, because they don’t come along very often.
Yet who knows–maybe it was for a time like this that you were made queen! –Esther 4:14b (Good News Translation)
Do you know what happened in the year 1380? I didn’t either, until I took a look to see what major events took place. For the whole year, across the entire globe, “the Google” only listed three things: 1. In July, Thomas of Buckingham’s invasion army lands on Calais (no idea who that dude is); 2. In September, Moscow’s great monarch Dimitri defeats the Mongols, beginning the decline of the Tatars (haven’t heard about this, either); and 3. In November King Charles VI of France was crowned at age 12 (hey, I’ve at least heard of France!).
Granted, there were a lot fewer people in the world to make news in 1380 than there are in 2024 (about 350 million then vs. ~8 billion now), but still, there were only three things that happened on the world stage for the whole year? I feel like we have three major things happen on the world stage every few days in 2024.
Know what’s really neat to think about? Before he even breathed life into Adam, God had history all mapped out. He knew what was going to happen and when. I wouldn’t claim that He did it this way, but imagine if God had a mugshot-style photo of every human that would ever exist, and He had them all hanging up in His office. He also had a huge whiteboard with an immense timeline. He went through and made conscious decisions about when on that timeline He wanted each of those people to be alive and breathing. “Let’s see, I’ve got two souls left; I’ve got an opening for a Philistine in 1010 B.C. and I need someone to be an American in 2024 A.D.” He made his choice. One ended up being a Philistine that cornered King Saul on his last day, and the other ended up being you.
Now this probably isn’t what happened, but it’s sort of an “outside the box” way of making the point that God knew what He was doing and clearly put some thought into the undertaking of selecting at what point in history you were supposed to be on the stage. Young or old, God made a conscious decision to have you be the exact age you are, right now in 2024, so that you could fit in with His plan.
The people you influence, the places that you go, and the things that you do…all of them are pre-known by the Lord, and He selected you to be the one doing those things in your lifetime. It’s not an accident that you’re in the here and now. God hand-picked you to be here for a reason.
In this life you’re going to do things that please God, and you’re going to do things that miss the mark. It’s important to pursue the life God wants you to, but it’s also important not to stop trying when you mess up. God saw your successes and your failures coming long ago, and uses them both for the stories He’s stitching together. Use your gifts and your time here in 2024 to tee up events in 2025 and beyond, so that Christ-followers who come behind us will be better equipped or gain otherwise-unlikely opportunities to spread the news of Christ with those around them.
Lord, though I may not understand why, You’ve placed me right here in this time for a reason. Please help me live my life in a way that honors You, help me not get hung up on details I don’t need to know, and be blessed by peeks into the ways You’re using me in Your grand story. Amen.
This coming weekend is a three-day weekend for a lot of people, and it reminds me of an annual retreat our youth group participated in years ago (and probably still does). Every President’s Day weekend our youth group went to a nearby Christian conference center for a mini retreat. Many of the other churches from our denomination’s district brought their youth groups as well. It added some excitement to the mid-winter doldrums for a lot of our high-schoolers. It was always a very uplifting time that saw many kids dedicate or re-dedicate their lives to Christ.
One year during this retreat our youth leader, Allen, took part in an annual tradition for the retreat. He arranged to make pizza available for purchase, and our youth group would then meet together (just us in a smaller setting…no other church’s youth groups) for some deep discussions.
As you may be able to imagine, a large number of teenagers can go through quite a bit of pizza. Everyone was told ahead of time to bring some extra cash specifically for the purpose of buying however many slices of pizza they’d want. Allen announced that he’d get a slice count first, then collect the cash afterward. He went methodically through the roster he brought, keeping a record of how many slices each person wanted. Upon tallying all the orders, he asked “okay, last call, does anybody want to make any changes before we call in the order?” There may have been one or two changes to the orders, but it wasn’t long before he tallied up the final count.
As everybody started pulling out their cash, he announced a surprise. An anonymous member of our church was a big fan of the effect this retreat had on our youth group, and had volunteered to pick up the tab for the entire youth group’s pizza dinner. While buying pizza may not sound like much, it was a very real and practical way to love on the kids from our church attending the retreat that year. As jaws fell open, many of the boys, especially, tried to revise their orders higher, but Allen had seen it coming and purposely double checked before announcing the news.
This was a great way to demonstrate to teenagers the concept of having their debt forgiven. While this was an infinitely smaller debt to overcome than Christ’s redemption of our souls, it was an example that struck a chord and brought a tangible joy with it.
For those who have maybe heard of Jesus but might not be real familiar with Him, He serves as the bridge for us to cross an impossible gap. You’ve probably heard of Adam and Eve. For a time, Adam and Eve walked in sinless fellowship with the Lord. It wasn’t until they sinned (went against what they knew was right in God’s eyes) that death became woven into the human experience. Only someone without sin would be able to escape the lasting consequences of death, and only Jesus Christ has lived a sinless life. Since Christ was fully man, He wasn’t impervious to death, but since He was also fully God, He was impervious to staying dead. Since death has no power over the sinless, Christ was able to stare death in the eye and do as He wished. Although His sacrifice created a way to redeem us if we accept it, all of us are still destined to live with the consequences of our past sins. Everyone reading this will one day pass from this life into the next, but only those that have accepted Christ as their savior will spend the next life with Him in heaven.
I pray you’d experience a similar example of having your debt forgiven, and gain an increased appreciation for the gift Christ offers all of us. For those that have been Christ-followers for awhile now, please pray that those who are seeking truth would find it, and that God would move mightily in their lives, and in the lives of the teens gathering for the winter retreat this weekend.
The other day my daughter pointed out to me that 2024 is starting out an awful lot like 2020 did. The 49ers are playing the Chiefs in the Super Bowl. This month has an extra day at the end because it’s a leap year. It’s looking more and more likely that it’s going to be a Biden/Trump presidential election. And at least at this point in the year, the Olympics are scheduled to take place this summer as long as a worldwide pandemic doesn’t change things.
Well obviously, I don’t have the inside track on how any of those things are going to turn out (though I’m hoping the 49ers can pull off a win over the Chiefs). Despite not liking to put many political posts on this blog, I feel it’s important to sometimes address things before they happen, hopefully helping you to prepare mentally for what’s ahead.
President Biden is polling abysmally right now. I mean, it’s bad. He listens to extremist advisors and espouses policies that are difficult to justify if the goal is to make America and its economy better (raise energy prices, force electric vehicle adoption in a market that isn’t interested, ban gas appliances, forfeit energy independence, etc.). Between many of his supporters wanting him to do more to punish Israel, along with Independents (and a big chunk of Democrats) saying “you know, I think you’ve gone too far with the border situation,” he’s got a shrinking pool of people he can rely on. At this rate, his only real chance is to make the other Presidential candidates look even less appealing than he does.
Nikki Haley is still in the race, but she’s going to have to pull off some convincing wins here very soon if she wants to realistically remain in the conversation. If she somehow pulls off a massive upset and gains the GOP nomination, Biden’s going to have his hands full trying to convince the country that he can do a better job than she can. I don’t really see her being much more than a nuisance to former President Trump on his path to the nomination, though.
I’m not sure of the latest numbers, but at one point there were over 90 criminal counts pending against Trump. That’s not a small thing. If he’s guilty, he should face the consequences. I do question the timing of the four cases, though. It strikes me as odd that no charges were brought until after it was evident he’d be running again. It seems suspicious that everything seemed to hit at once, almost as though it was a coordinated effort to keep someone in the courtroom rather than the campaign trail and force them to use money on legal defense instead of being used elsewhere. Between that “legal coordination” and attempts to keep him off ballots, I don’t feel it’s Trump that poses the biggest threat of election interference or threat to democracy.
Now I can’t honestly say I know what all those charges are, but based on the sheer number of them I’ve got to imagine he’ll be convicted on at least one of them. Those are all felony counts. Here I’m showing my ignorance on the legal system, but I would think that not all felonies are created equal. There are different levels of “badness” in the felony category. If he’s convicted of the most minor felony count, it can still truthfully be said that he’s been found guilty of a felony (even if he appeals and wins). If that happens, that’s the only thing you’re going to hear out of the White House, out of Biden surrogates, and from protesters between now and the election. They’ll hope a felony conviction of any sort will be enough to cause a sizable portion of voters to withhold their support from him.
This may just shape up to be a contest to see who can avoid looking the worst. Trump’s facing 90+ felonies, but Biden just got caught either lying to the American people or showing that he doesn’t quite have a solid grasp of the situation. Regarding the border bill that fell apart earlier this week, Biden has repeatedly claimed that its passage is necessary to empower him before he can solve the border crisis. The last president somehow managed to do quite a bit to secure the border, and the Democratic Senate that’s been in power since then hasn’t taken away any of the President’s powers. My guess is that Biden will tighten up the border just enough to say “look, we’ve reduced the number of people crossing into the U.S.” to try to take away Trump’s biggest weapon, and you’ll hear “felony, felony, felony” or “fascist white supremacist” about Trump.
Also like we saw in 2020, there are probably a lot of people that are going to say “I don’t like either candidate.” In an interesting turn of events, this year there’s a third-party candidate that’s benefitting quite a bit from a general dislike of the two-party system. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is picking up some steam. He comes from a more traditional Democratic platform, from before extremists took over the party. At this point he’s the most centrist candidate in the race, and he’s gaining support from people on both sides (though more of that support probably comes from Democrats). As we draw closer to the election in November he’s probably going to get more attention because a lot of what he says makes sense to people who are looking for less drama out of the White House.
What I’m about to say assumes that Kennedy gets a LOT more support between now and November, so keep that in mind as you read it. Presidential candidates win elections by gaining more than half of the nation’s 538 electoral college votes. You need 270 to win. If RFK Jr. peels off a state or two, he could conceivably prevent any candidate from reaching 270 electoral votes. In that case, the outcome of the election gets tossed over to the House of Representatives.
To reiterate, we’re talking about kind of a long-shot scenario here. If the House gets to pick the next president, it’s going to be under tremendous pressure to “do the right thing.” The “right thing,” however, is open to interpretation. Is it the candidate that got the greatest number of electoral votes? Is it the candidate that got the most popular votes? Will it come down to a party-line vote, and if so, how will that work if a few of the representatives are in the hospital or are otherwise unavailable in one of the narrowest House margins in history?
It’s still a very difficult time in our nation’s history. There’s no candidate that everyone will support. We’re stuck once again with picking the least bad option. No matter what party is in power, please pray for our president and officials in Congress. God allowed them to be there, so please pray for His hand on them, steering them toward what He wants to accomplish.
Lord, thank you for the blessings we enjoy by living in this country. I ask that You watch over our nation’s leaders, give them wisdom, and help them make God-honoring decisions. I ask in Your name, amen.
It’s that time of year again. Unless you’re an absolute champ and already have your taxes done, you’re probably gearing up to file them in the next couple of months. In this post we’ll ignore Washington’s inability to spend less money than it takes in, and instead focus on your taxes at a personal level.
Taxes are sort of a necessary evil. The government needs taxes in order to function, and unquestionably has the right to tax its citizens, but my view is that you shouldn’t pay any more taxes than you legally need to. I don’t have the time or space to get deep into taxes here, but I’ll try to provide some basic tips for those of you to whom taxes are a mystery. If you’re already well-versed with your own tax situation, this post probably isn’t for you.
With a few exceptions, every dollar you make is subject to tax. The obvious and most common source of income is your job, but in most cases if you’re receiving money that’s not a gift, that money’s taxable. If you have a side gig, or you have a yard sale, maybe you win the cash prize in your fantasy football league, or you win a bet with a friend, any time you’ve been given money in exchange for something, that means you’ve generated income, and that income is taxable. You’re responsible for reporting it come tax time. If you’re not reporting it on your taxes and the IRS can prove you received it, you have nobody but yourself to blame.
The U.S. has a progressive tax code. That means everybody is taxed lighter at low income levels, but income is taxed at higher and higher percentages as income levels rise. The lowest tax bracket right now is 10%, but rises to 12%, and then 22%. There are higher levels than that, but if you’re in a tax bracket above that level, you’re probably not going to learn much from this post. The system is a little deceiving if you haven’t ever paid close attention. If you’re in the 22% tax bracket, it doesn’t mean you’re paying 22% tax on every dollar you make; it means you’re paying 10% tax on all your income up to the cap of that first bracket, plus 12% tax on every dollar that’s in the next highest bracket, plus 22% tax on all the remaining dollars. That’s way better than 22% of every dollar you make. After you add up all the money you made last year from various sources, you can do a search for 2023 tax brackets to see where you fall.
Let’s say you’re married filing jointly, and between the two of you, you earn $60,000 a year. The government recognizes it needs to give people a break by not taxing every single dollar they make. Uncle Sam helps people out in the form of something called a deduction. If your tax situation is fairly simple (you rent your home instead of own it, you don’t donate much money to charity, and you don’t mess around with stocks or real estate), you should probably go with the standard deduction. It’s a value that’s updated every year, and in the 2023 tax year the standard deduction for a couple that’s married filing jointly is $27,700. That means you can subtract $27,700 from your annual salary of $60,000 (which shields almost half of your income from the tax man), and you’ll only have to pay taxes on the remaining $32,300. Deductions are good because they reduce the amount of your money that gets taxed, ultimately reducing the amount of tax you need to pay.
A second kind of deduction, called “itemized deductions,” is an option, but doesn’t make sense for everyone to take. For itemized deductions to provide you more value than the standard deduction, your itemized deductions (things like donations to charity, mortgage interest, property taxes, etc.) would need to add up to more than the standard deduction. It’s possible to do it with income of $60,000, but it probably doesn’t happen consistently unless you own a home and/or give a sizable chunk of your money to charity. If you’re making $60,000 as someone who’s married filing jointly, you’re probably going to want to take the standard deduction.
So if you continue with this $60,000 example (where you’re only taxed on $32,300), you calculate the tax according to the tax brackets. Ten percent of the first $22,000 (the upper limit in the lowest married/filing jointly bracket) is $2,200, and then you have to pay 12% on the remaining $10,300 ($32,300 minus $22,000). That comes out to $2,200 plus $1,236, for a total tax bill of $3,436. Don’t lose heart, you probably don’t have to cut a check for that much.
That’s the simplified version. If you have kids that are your dependents living with you, and you’ve provided more than half of their financial support for the year, you get to claim the Child Tax Credit. Depending on the child’s age, you get to subtract up to $2,000 per child directly from your tax bill. Tax credits pack more of a punch than deductions do, because while deductions knock a percentage of a dollar off the tax bill, a tax credit removes 100% of a dollar’s worth of tax liability for every dollar of tax credit you receive. Deductions = good, credits = better.
The last thing I’ll quickly cover is tax planning. Nobody likes to be surprised by a big tax bill when it comes time to file. Some people like to get a refund when it comes time to file, and others would rather pay at least a small amount when they file so they don’t have to give the government an interest-free loan with the money that comes out of each paycheck). I’ll let you decide what’s right for your situation, but the ideal tax planning scenario would be to owe no tax and be due no refund. If you know how much tax you’ll owe at the end of the year, it’s usually pretty easy to ballpark how much tax should be withheld from each paycheck.
Let’s use our example from above (assuming the couple has no kids and no major tax credits). They’ll owe $3,436 in taxes. If they’re paid every two weeks, we can divide 3,436 in taxes by 26 paychecks a year to find that if they withhold $132.16 from each paycheck for federal taxes, at the end of the year that amount should fully cover the tax they owe. They’ll have to readjust for raises or substantial changes in deductions or tax credits, but that’s the gist of it.
It’s too late to make adjustments to Federal withholding for the taxes you’ll be filing over the next couple of months, but since we’re only a month into 2024, you have a great opportunity to choose how much money you accrue by the end of the year to use in paying your ’24 taxes in the winter/spring of 2025. If you know roughly how much money you’ll make this year, you can also ballpark how much money should be withheld from your paychecks. Just make sure to account for the fact that some paychecks have probably already come in and the withholding from them might be different from what you want it to be for the year’s remaining paychecks. Your pay stub usually shows how much is withheld from each check, along with how much has been withheld so far in a given year. Once you determine what you want withheld from each paycheck, get in touch with your payroll department or submit an updated W-4 form to your employer’s payroll support provider.
I can’t even begin to tell you how complicated the U.S. tax code is, so please understand that this is very basic information. There are all kinds of additional considerations to look at (like filing single, married filing separately, and filing as head of household). The way you earn money also affects your taxes; if you’re married filing jointly and one spouse collects a paycheck while the other makes money babysitting, it’s likely that tax is only being withheld from one of those income streams, but both of them figure into the amount of total tax that’s owed, so you’ll need to plan accordingly.
This is only enough information to get you pointed at areas you want to learn more about. I’ve only discussed federal taxes here. State and local taxes vary by location and are in addition to federal taxes, so don’t forget about those. Of course, the best way to ensure that you’re getting it done right is to pay a tax professional to do it, but if you’ve got a fairly simple tax situation and don’t mind working with numbers, you can probably file them yourself. Tax software makes it easier to do on your own, and can often get it done cheaper than paying someone else to do it.
