As a Christian, have you ever wished you’d had a greater hand in leading someone to Christ? Maybe you had general discussions about God with non-believers, or even prayed with them, but you’ve never been part of “closing the deal.”
Well, don’t despair. God doesn’t usually do major works in someone’s life all at once; He usually does His work over the course of time. Some people might only require a short path on their way to deciding to follow Christ, needing only a few conversations or teachings from the Bible. On the other hand, other folks require an extensive amount of steps before yielding to Jesus. They may hear the truth multiple times, they may acknowledge that the theory of evolution doesn’t explain everything, and they may assent to the idea that despite “having it all,” there’s still something missing. It takes people varying amounts of time to work through that paradox.
God works in some pretty amazing ways. We never know if someone’s going to become a Christian, and if they do, how many “steps” it will take to get them there. The important thing to remember is that whether it’s three steps or 705, each one of those steps needs to happen before they bow their knee to the Lord. Being a part of any of those steps helps them get to the end of the journey.
If you interact with someone in a God-honoring way at any point before they accept Christ as their Savior, take joy in participating! You may not learn in this life what happens to that person’s eternal disposition, but then again, you may have brought them a step closer to seeing them again someday after this life is over.
So even if you don’t pray with someone to accept Christ, don’t give up on helping them work toward that goal.
Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. –Galatians 6:9
Well happy Halloween, everybody. Anybody still dress up on Halloween now that you’re not a kid anymore?
The event wasn’t a huge thing for me as a kid. I do remember one year, though, I got a paper knight’s mask from Denny’s or some other restaurant, my parents wrapped some kind of box in aluminum foil, gave me a little cardboard sword (also wrapped in aluminum foil), and I used a pot lid as a shield. I was one mean-looking knight, let me tell you. I was, probably in my second or third year of college?
No, just kidding. I was a kid, probably 3 or 4 years old.
The fun part about Halloween (aside from the candy) is getting to dress up and pretending to be something you’re not. It’s fun for a few hours. Some people unknowingly embrace a lifestyle like that, though. Jesus called some people out for doing this.
Pharisees and those highly educated on the law held positions of authority and were responsible for teaching God’s word to a people who didn’t have ready access to their own copy of the scriptures. Rather than focus on justice and mercy, the spiritual leaders harped on strict adherence to the tiniest aspects of the law (even going so far as to institute laws God did not command). They did a great job tithing even to the smallest detail (giving the appropriate portion of their herb gardens) and made sure they sternly warned anyone who dared to walk too far on the Sabbath, but they completely neglected the things God actually valued.
When Jesus confronted them on it, here’s what He had to say: “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.” – Matt 23:27-28
(That was only a portion of what Christ said during an exchange where He didn’t hold much back.)
Jewish law forbade people from touching graves, which caused ceremonial uncleanness. Tombs back then were whitewashed on a regular basis, their brilliance causing them to stand out and warn people away from them. It also helped them look very clean and neat. In combination with sometimes having ornate decorations on the tomb, you could get the impression that these were very nice places to be, almost forgetting the decay, uncleanness, and defilement residing inside.
My point? Sure, have fun dressing up for Halloween for a little bit, but don’t forget…it might be easy to hide your true self from others, but God can peer right through your best costume and knows exactly who you are. If that’s not something you’re happy about, maybe it’s time to make some changes in your life.
Let’s build a little off the last post, which went through some reasons to take the Bible seriously. This one gets tricky to visualize though, so I’m going to use movies to tackle a tough biblical subject.
It seems like lately Hollywood ran out of original ideas, so they started rolling out sequels to decades-old movies. Some of them are fun and work well (Top Gun, Creed), others not so much (Indiana Jones), and a whole bunch I haven’t seen so I don’t know (Beverly Hills Cop, Blade Runner, Tron, Mad Max, Bill and Ted, Coming to America, etc.). One such franchise is “The Matrix” series.
The Matrix came out in 1999, followed by two sequels, both in 2003. Then, much later, a final (I hope) Matrix movie came out in 2021. Three different timeframes, all part of the same story. We’re going to use this scenario to help frame our discussion of Daniel’s prophecy of the 70 weeks, which I believe to be one of the most interesting prophecies in the Old Testament.
I have to give a little disclaimer here. There are a few different possibilities as far as the way things can be interpreted, so I’m going to present the way that makes the most sense to me. Things don’t jive perfectly the way I’m going to explain it, but they’re close enough that it makes you say “yeah, there’s something to this.” Just know I could easily be wrong about some of the details, but I encourage you to look into it for yourself and see what people much smarter than me on the subject have to say.
In Daniel 9, verses 20-27, Daniel receives one of the most interesting, but difficult to understand prophecies of the Bible. Daniel, a very godly man, is given the future timeline for some of the world’s most historic events.
Before jumping in, it’s important to have a little context. When you and I think of a “week,” we think of a seven-day period of time. They certainly used this term back in Bible times (God created the universe, earth, and humanity in a week in Genesis, and only a few verses after our text, Daniel mourned for a period of three weeks in Daniel 10:2-3). That’s not the only way the word “week” is used, though. The week you and I think of is a week of days. In this prophecy, a week refers to a period of seven years. Thus, the prophecy of 70 weeks totals a period of 7 x 70, or 490 years.
Here’s the Matrix tie-in. Remember how the movies didn’t all come out in the same year, but were kind of close together in the beginning, then had a big gap between the middle installment and the last one? That’s similar to what happens here. There are 490 years involved, but they’re not all consecutive. Daniel 9:25-27 breaks it down, though not in the most intuitive way. The 70 weeks is going to be broken down into three chunks: seven weeks, 62 weeks, and one week (49 years, 434 years, and seven years, respectively). The first two chunks run back-to-back, and the third one is off floating around by itself. What events are these chunks marking? The answer lies in those same few verses. “From the going forth of the command to restore and build Jerusalem until Messiah the Prince, there shall be seven weeks and sixty two weeks; the street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublesome times.” –Dan 9:25
This was written before Christ arrived on the scene. If we look back at history, we can figure out when that command was given and work our way forward. We know from the last post Judah was carried off to Babylon. That city changed hands, falling to the Medo-Persian Empire while Daniel lived there. When Daniel wrote down the prophecy of the 70 weeks (probably sometime between 536 and 530 B.C.), he was serving in the same city while Jerusalem lay in ruins. In the year 457 B.C. the Persian king Artaxerxes gave the Israelite priest Ezra permission to re-inhabit Jerusalem (Ezra 7:6-10). This starts the clock ticking on the first seven weeks from Dan. 9:25. I can’t point to a specific event, but 49 years later, Jerusalem once again had Israelites living in it (including a rebuilt wall and gates courtesy of Nehemiah’s leadership) and Malachi, the final Old Testament prophet, had spoken the last word from the Lord before the Messiah’s arrival. The world then entered a 400+ year period of silence from the Lord (the Intertestamental Period between the Old and New Testaments).
If we do some math here, 49 years plus 434 years comes out to be 483 years. If you add 483 years to that initial “re-occupy Jerusalem” green light in 457 B.C., you’re very close to the year 30 A.D. That’s the year Christ entered Jerusalem riding on donkey, one week before His crucifixion. (If you want to be more precise on the math, 27 A.D. is closer to the mark, which is when Christ began His earthly ministry.)
Okay, good, so Daniel’s 70 weeks prophecy is holding up so far, but we’re still short one week/seven year period. Everything we’ve covered so far is retrospective; the prophecy’s math makes sense based on the events that have already taken place. Now we shift gears and look to the future. We’re looking at that final movie sequel, the one that was separated from the earlier installments by a much larger period of time. Daniel 9:26-27 gives some more insight into things. This period refers to the rule of the Antichrist near the end of time, and takes place immediately following the rapture of Christians (when the Lord pulls His followers out of the world to spare them from the horrors about to take place).
That last week, also known in Revelation as the Great Tribulation, can be split in half. Following the confusion and fear accompanying the disappearance of a large fraction of the world’s population in the Rapture, a smooth-talking politician is going to burst onto the world stage, he’s going to calm the panic and broker a peace deal between Israel and its enemies, and everything’s going to feel like it’s fantastic for the first three and a half years. The Bible also refers to these halves of the final week as 42 months or “a time, times, and half a time” (one plus two plus one half). Then, at the mid-point of the seven years, he breaks the treaty, bans Jewish sacrifice, and demands that he be the only one anyone worships (Dan. 9:27, 2 Thess 2:4). It doesn’t give a timeline for when that final week commences, but when the Rapture happens, the Antichrist arrives on the scene, if not before.
There’s a great deal more to what happens during this time in the book of Revelation (chapters 6 to 18), but I recommend using a study Bible with a good deal of notes to help explain it. I believe the point of including this prophecy is to say “look, only God could predict these things with this much specificity, and if the first couple components of the 70 week prophecy have come true, the last part is probably worth taking a look at.”
Finally, let’s suppose you’re not a Christian, but you’re intrigued by what you’re seeing here and in the Bible verses I referenced. Either the Bible is true…or it isn’t. If it’s true, that means the whole thing is true. In light of that, don’t you think it might be a good idea to look around at what else the Bible says? Specifically, I’m referring to humanity’s inadequacy to meet God’s standard and our corresponding reliance on Christ’s perfection and sacrifice on our behalf.
The study of the End Times is fascinating, but for all its razzle dazzle, it’s not nearly as important as the central message of Christ dying for our sins and extending the invitation for us to join Him for eternal communion with God after we pass from this life. As I said toward the beginning of this post, it’s something I encourage you to investigate for yourself.
You might be a skeptic who’s not really into the whole “Christian” thing, or maybe you’ve been a Christian for awhile but haven’t spent much time exploring the Bible for yourself. If you’re in any type of situation where you’re thinking about checking out the Bible, trying to figure out where to start reading it can be a challenge.
I’m not going to tell you where to start, but in this post I’ll help you understand a little more about how the Bible’s laid out and some of the things that make it so compelling. Bear with me for some of the stuff you may already know, and then we’ll get to the interesting stuff.
Let’s start with the basics. The Bible is a huge book, and it wasn’t all written by the same author. We (Christians) believe God separately inspired multiple people to write down what we now know as the books of the Bible, and those various writings collectively form the Word of God without contradicting the doctrinal points of any of the other authors. Those authors’ lives spanned multiple centuries. Moses recorded the first few books of the Bible, but at least one book (Job) was probably written before Moses even came on the scene.
The Bible is broken into the Old Testament (the books written before the birth of Christ) and the New Testament (written after Christ’s birth). The Old Testament is made up of 39 books, and the New Testament has 27. The Old Testament (from Creation and the start of humanity until about 400ish years before Christ’s birth) spans a much larger time than the New Testament (from Christ’s birth to about 95 years after His birth, with a look forward to the end of time).
Many people who aren’t familiar with the Bible don’t realize just how spectacularly the whole thing ties together. Remember…there are many authors of the Bible, spanning over a thousand years. Sometimes it’s hard to get two people in the same room to write similar papers that don’t somehow contradict each other. There are many verses from earlier parts of the Bible that forecast what will happen later in the Bible. Skeptics figure since the Bible is so old and has been around for so long, its ability to accurately predict these things is easy to fake. This is where it gets interesting. It’s not a monolith; it’s 66 different books, all written at different times. While some of their dates of writing are known pretty well, we have to ballpark others. Some of the predicted events pertain to forthcoming “religious” things (like where the Messiah would be born, what tribe He’d be from, how He would die, etc.) and others were focused on more secular events on the world stage (like the rise and fall of different empires).
The Bible spans so much time, parts of the Old Testament actually predict events that come to fruition later in the Old Testament. For example, the Kingdom of Israel split into two separate entities: Israel and Judah. When they both stopped depending on the Lord and started worshiping other gods, the Lord gave them lots of warnings through the prophets He sent. Eventually He had enough. In Hosea 9:3 and 11:5 He warned Israelites Assyria would carry them into captivity if they didn’t repent. They didn’t repent and Assyria conquered them. In Jeremiah 25:8-14 God gave a similar warning to Judah: Babylon will conquer you and take you into captivity if you don’t repent! Guess what? Judah didn’t repent and found itself carried off to Babylon. Recordings of those captivities are elsewhere in the Old Testament, but these geopolitical events are also verifiable outside of scripture, and these two prophets of the Lord accurately predicted them before they occurred.
One really tricky part to understand, especially for the people living when these books were written, is that the Bible often refers to two future things at once, one in the not-too-distant future and the other waaaaaay down the road. Jeremiah chapters 30, 31, and 33, for example, talk about the restoration of Judah and Israel. Context helps determine whether it’s talking about restoration from its human captors (near-term) or restoration from its sin-tainted past (at the end of this world). Similarly, Isaiah chapter 13 talks about the importance of the city of Babylon both before it became a major player on the world stage and then again when referring to the distant future, “the Day of the Lord” when Babylon represents humanity’s final uprising against God.
Likewise, there are plenty of prophecies (predictions) about the Messiah. Almost all of them were about things outside a normal man’s control. Even if Jesus were an exceptional con man, he’d still have to be the luckiest dude in the world to fulfill all the messianic prophecies he did (have a look at the verses listed in the graphic below). What nobody really expected was that the Messiah would come to Earth twice. Nobody really anticipated Him showing up for awhile as a poor and humble average Joe, then visibly stepping off the world stage for almost 2,000 years (and counting) before coming back in full power and majesty. While the Bible does say the Messiah will be a mighty conqueror, it evidently referred to the second time He’d be coming. Everyone figured it would all happen at once. That’s part of the reason some of the most devout religious figures of the day scoffed at Christ. They expected a mighty warrior king to free them from Roman oppression, and when lowly Jesus didn’t meet their expectations, they wrote Him off, no matter how much sense He made scripturally, regardless of the miracles He performed, and irrespective of all the other prophecies He checked the box for.
In a future post I’ll take a look at a prophecy from the book of Daniel that involves some timelines offering further proof of the Lordship of Jesus. Part of the reason the Bible records these prophecies is to help its readers understand that there’s something supernatural at work here. How could something predict the future with such great accuracy unless someone with knowledge beyond time was involved? If you’re a truth-seeker, chew on that for awhile.
For now, though, where does that leave us? The prophecies that still haven’t been fulfilled give us an idea of what to expect. We’re still looking ahead to when the prophecies of the second coming come true. Internet searches for bible verses connected to “End Times” or “eschatology” should return verses from Revelation, Daniel, 1 Thessalonians, and many more. There’s lots of your own research to do here. The more you research, the more you’ll see how it all ties together.
After expelling Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, God posted angels with flaming swords near its perimeter to ensure they didn’t come back in. Ever wonder why?
The most obvious answer is as a consequence of their disobedience. God warned them what not to do; since they disobeyed, He had to impose consequences.
But an often-overlooked reason relates to what could still happen if humans got back in. The only limitation God put on the original pair was to avoid eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. They obviously missed the mark there, but the Garden still had a very special tree whose fruit would catastrophically affect fallen humans: the Tree of Life.
“And the Lord God said, ‘The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.’” – Genesis 3:22
Genesis isn’t terribly clear on whether they ate from the Tree of Life before they sinned, but it’s probably safe to assume they did at some point (how could you not try everything the Garden has to offer?). I can’t honestly say I understand what happens when sinless humans eat that tree’s fruit, but it would be a pretty big deal if an imperfect, sinful human ate from it. The verse above makes it pretty clear they’d be preserved in a sinful state forever. Christ still died for them/us, but without death, how can we ever be restored to true life?
In His infiniteness, God could doubtless still make a way to redeem them, but He chose, in His mercy, to prevent anyone from reaching the tree in the first place.
Still can’t get over the loss of that tree? Don’t worry, we’ll have access to it in the future: Revelation 22:1-3a notes “Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be anything accursed.” Don’t worry; you’ll get your shot at that tree (and its 12 different kinds of fruit) someday!
In the past I’ve shared about how God laid on my heart the task of writing a series of fictional Christian books.
To give you some context about how audacious that is for me, consider this. Far and away, the largest writing endeavor I’ve ever undertaken is this blog. None of its entries are very long. This entry is a little over 1,000 words. The longest document I’ve ever written was for a college course, with a requirement of 10,000 words, I think. What makes me believe, despite having no writing classes other than basic English courses in college, I can write a series of 10 books, each with 50,000-80,000 words, totaling over 600,000? With “Piece of Cake” at one end of the spectrum and “Impossible” at the other end, I’m a lot closer to “Impossible” than “Cake.”
It’s very important to remember: those God calls, He equips.
Well that’s a wonderful little platitude, but how are things going, really? The idea for this project first took root during COVID lockdowns. It’s been four years. Where are we on this?
To be honest with you, it’s tough. I’ve never written a book before, let alone ten of them. I laid out a plan for what the different books would cover, then started at the beginning with the first book in the series. When I got bored with that story I’d jump to a different one, then another. What I found was this method diluted my efforts too much; I made headway, but it didn’t feel like it was getting traction. With my hectic schedule, I don’t have big chunks of time to work on stuff like this, so I only get maybe an hour and a half or two hours to work on it, sometimes once a week. Although I’m trying to surpass a half million words, this method’s not going to allow me to make big leaps forward.
I started focusing my efforts on a group of three specific books, rather than dabbling in ten books. Over time I started adding 1,000 words, 1,250, sometimes even 1,500 words at a shot. I’d mess around with the table of contents, re-sequence parts of the story to make it flow better and make more sense. A new idea would hit at inopportune times, and I’d write it down on my hand or email myself from work. The goal is still to get over 600,000 words, and I still have hundreds of thousands of words to write, but you know what I’ve learned so far?
This insurmountable goal is looking more achievable.
The progress isn’t as fast as I’d like, since I do have other responsibilities (a family, a full time job, a blog, my daily/weekly routines, a house, yard, and vehicles to take care of, etc.). In fact, the majority of my writing happens during my kids’ extracurricular activities. I drive them somewhere, and rather than come home after dropping them off, I stay there and write until it’s time to pick them up. Considering the sporadic chunks of time I have to work on this project, I’m pleased I haven’t given up on it. Persistence in small bites translates into small chunks of progress, but those chunks have begun banding together to result in some solid headway on that group of three books. With a combined target of 200,000 words for the three, I’ve written almost 125,000 words. That’s over 60% of the goal.
I’ve written another 50,000 words across the other seven books in the series. That totals almost 175,000 words. There’s still tons of work to be done, don’t get me wrong, but 175,000 out of a projected goal of 630,000 words is pretty encouraging. Don’t look now, but by remaining determined to follow through, I’ve gone more than a quarter of the way toward this unreachable goal.
Yes, of course, there will be an obscene amount of work to be done besides the writing. Finding plot holes, missing chunks of story, editing for clarity or typos, finding a professional editor and going through all the associated back-and-forth, finding an illustrator, a publisher, maybe being involved in marketing, these are all things demanding lots of attention. At the early stages of this effort, though, everything hinges on having a story to work with. The other steps can’t happen until the stories come together on paper. For someone whose longest writing was 10,000 prior to this, 175,000 is downright phenomenal.
I share this with you not because I want to wow you or try to make you think I’m cool for trying something new, but to show you, as I’m walking through this right now, that when God challenges you with a massive undertaking or insurmountable goal, the sooner you get started, the sooner your efforts will add up to something He can use. The Lord’s commissioning of this project assures its eventual success, provided I actually follow through and complete it. If I don’t, He’ll achieve His aims some other way, but this is the invitation God extended to me, offering to let me play a part in His grander story. Whatever success comes of it should be credited to the Lord, not me.
I don’t know what God’s going to do with these books once they’re done, but I have to maintain the attitude He’s going to use them either in revival or in causing unsaved readers to start asking important questions. Getting where God’s leading sometimes takes small, persistent actions over a long period of time. It’s sometimes frustratingly slow, and sometimes victory means you haven’t yet thrown in the towel, but the following Bible verse helps spur me on:
And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up. Galatians 6:9
Is there something in your life God’s called you to do, and you need to be reminded not to give up? Hang in there. Don’t quit. If God called you to do it, it’s entirely possible someone down the road will either join or return to God’s Kingdom because of something you had a hand in.
Did you know you can tell what’s in a person’s heart by what comes out of their mouth?
The contents of your heart are important; they overflow your heart and come out of your mouth, acting like a window for others to see the type of things your heart contains.
A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart brings forth evil. For out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks. Luke 6:45
Think of this as an opportunity for a self-check. What kind of things are coming out of your mouth? Are there any changes you need to make?
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)
(If you’ve got an extra minute or two, have a read over the diary entry below. If not, feel free to skip it.)
We’ve all got quirks. They start when we’re young, but they don’t always resolve themselves as we get older (sometimes they become magnified). I think this becomes most evident in long-term relationships.
My wife and I have been married for over 17 years now. We definitely have quirks of our own. Some of them are stereotypical for men and women, others are maybe more specific to us as individuals. By way of example, if I’m looking for something specific in the refrigerator, I can open the door and turn the fridge upside down trying to find it, even looking right at it multiple times, and still not see it. Then my wife comes along and with a “seriously?!” expression, homes in on it in under a second and a half. At the same time, she can have a song in mind, and it sounds just like the real thing inside her head, but when she tries to hum it, no matter what it is, it always comes out sounding like Smooth Criminal.
I’m blessed to have a spouse that’s pretty easy for me to be married to. Even so, we have to deal with differences of opinion, different perspectives, and quirks in general. She’s very patient and polite when I hear a random voice inflection or odd combination of words or music notes that somehow reminds me of a movie scene from my childhood, or some bizarre scenario reminds me of a Calvin & Hobbes comic strip, and then I take an unreasonable amount of time to provide the context and summary of that scene or comic, which ends up being pretty unremarkable.
While not true in all cases, by and large, men tend to have a more compartmentalized mental arrangement as they go about their day. If you could peek inside our brains, you might see our conscious focus addressing only one thing at a time. There’s the wakeup routine. Then comes the commute. Then he’s at work, thinking about work stuff. Afterwards he has to run errands on the way home. All of those things tend to stay within their respective zones without much bleedover unless some sort of unusual circumstance affects things. My mind works this way most of the time, and is very helpful when it’s time to put certain things on hold. When I leave work, it’s time to stop thinking about work. When it’s time to sleep, I stop thinking about stuff and I’m usually out within two minutes of closing my eyes.
Women, on the other hand (again, not in every case, but more often than not), have “spaghetti brains.” There are no different sections of the brain that conscious thought is split into. It is literally everything, everywhere, all at the same time. There are individual lines of thought that touch on wildly vacillating topics. One may lead to the next, but they may just as easily have nothing to do with each other. All of the following thoughts can occur within the same minute: “Where did I put that thingy I don’t need anymore?” “I can’t believe Charlotte thought I took her yellow sweater in 7th grade; I should look her up and see if she’s sorry.” “Puppies!” “Don’t forget to pick up snacks for the kids’ soccer team.” “LAUNDRY.” “I’d eat a bug if they let me sleep in tomorrow.” “My bra hates me.” “Lose weight, lose wei…CANDY!” “Children are a gift of joy wrapped in toil.” “Organize 1,087,017 pictures into a slide show.” “The check engine light came on.” It’s a constant barrage of swirling and churning thoughts that would bring me to my knees. My wife and I can go to bed at the same time, but she’ll be awake much longer than I am because a lot of those thoughts need to fizzle out before sleep comes.
You can imagine that the communication styles of these two vastly different brain structures also require some give and take. I can do some multitasking, but I prefer to focus on one thing at a time. If I have an idea about something else while I’m working on my main task, I write down the other thing or email it to myself, so that I can focus harder on it when I have an opportunity. In conversations, I look for transitions to help prompt me that we’re moving on from one topic to a different one. I find that sometimes I’m ill-equipped to handle my wife’s communication needs. She can unleash a conversational stream of consciousness that I can’t possibly follow along with, covering a myriad of topics in a single breath. I struggle to see the connection between the different topics we’re zooming through. If I had a video of myself trying to keep up, I think I’d see myself listening with one eye squinted shut tight and the other bugging out of my head as I try to hang on just a little bit longer. Yet this conversational style is effortless when she’s among her sisters or close friends, while us brothers-in-law/husbands use about a fifth of the words they do (on a good day) and just kind of nod periodically.
These are some fun examples, but they’re meant to help illustrate the following point. We are different, and while sometimes those differences are great, other times those differences drive us nuts. Humans in general are hard to get along with, much less live with. Even so, God put a whole bunch of us here. A lot of the Bible is about how to get along with other people. Marriages are the basics for family life. I understand that not everyone is blessed to have two parents married to one another, but that’s what God intended. Those marriages require work, and they often require grace.
Our culture today says that you should be you-focused. “Do what makes you happy! You deserve it!” In reality, marriages are “we-focused.” You’re a team, and teams need to work together to move forward. You’re not perfect, and your spouse isn’t perfect. That’s why you both need to extend some grace and flexibility. It’s not easy, but it’s worth it in the long run.
Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Ephesians 4:2
About a month ago I mentioned that I’d do something of a “year in review” for this blog. At the time I was discussing the importance of following through with the remaining opportunities the Lord gives you to do His work in this life. During lengthier endeavors I think it’s good now and then to stop and reflect on how far you’ve come, recognizing that God is heavily involved and deserves credit for any success.
A little over five years ago God laid on my heart an absurd task: start a blog that honors Him. I say “absurd” because: 1. I don’t really use social media anymore, which seems like it would be kind of an important element of trying to gain attention for a website; 2. I’m an introvert and don’t relish the idea of trying to connect with nameless, faceless people out there in the electronic ether; 3. I’ve had little or no classroom writing training, so a writing-centric effort doesn’t seem to make a whole lot of sense. Despite those misgivings, I decided to obey and let God do whatever He wanted with this whole endeavor.
I can’t claim that I’m some kind of massive Christian influencer. In fact, some of my posts here don’t even mention God or religion. What I can say, though, is that my blog’s reach has extended beyond what I initially expected it to. The intent behind this post is not to say “look at me and how cool I am” or anything like that at all. By sharing this information what I’m really hoping to do is drive home to you the importance of taking small steps of obedience to Christ, because over time they add up and serve as opportunities God can use to work in other peoples’ lives. Even more than that, I’d like to show how a pattern of faithful consistency builds into a cumulative body of something larger. You don’t have to do one huge, mind-blowing thing, it’s probably more beneficial to do a lot of smaller things regularly. To help prove my point, here are a few interesting 2023 stats for the blog and what I take away from them.
During the year the blog hosted 51 new posts, once a week for almost the whole year. While it’s no surprise that IP addresses from the United States score the most number of hits on the blog, the U.S. is far from the only country that had someone stop in for a visit. Besides the U.S., DareGreatlyNow.com had hits from over 50 countries during 2023. Most of those countries accounted for only one, two, or three hits during the whole year. Of course, it’s impossible to claim any of those hits resulted in bringing anyone to Christ, and I have no actual insight into what people do with the posts they read on the blog. Many times God uses conversations, songs, articles, and myriad other things to speak into a person’s life, and I hope God uses my work here to do that very thing in others’ lives. For now I have to trust that God brings the right posts to the right person at the right time, and I have to be okay with knowing that I won’t get filled in on just about any of the details until after Jesus comes back or calls me home.
Of the website’s top 10 visiting countries from 2023, it’s not a shock that most of them are either English-speaking or have large percentages of English-speakers in their populations. Aside from the U.S., the rest of the website’s top 10 patron nations are, in descending order, Canada, China, Ireland, Germany, Norway, India, Australia, the United Kingdom, and Sweden.
Broken down by region, I see seven countries/islands from North America and the Caribbean, three from Central and South America, 20 from Europe, 14 from Asia, seven from Africa, two in Australia (Australia and New Zealand), and four in the Middle East.
Few or none of these stats are a result of my own personal work to promote the blog. I simply don’t have the time to work on drawing more attention to it. I write and post stuff, and God guides people to the site to bring them to see whatever He wants them to see. I have no idea what individual concepts He’s guiding them to. Sure I would love more people to come and read, but if I’m honest, that’s the flesh talking. I’d say that all these posts were worth it if one person decided to trust in Christ as a result of reading one of them. I believe that’s true, but I also know that the blog isn’t really geared toward non-believers, it’s geared more toward Christians that aren’t fully stepping out in what they’ve been called to do for the Lord. What truly needs to happen is that the right person sees the right post at the right time. While some posts are very time-sensitive and lose relevance quickly (current events, especially), many posts on the site age pretty well, and hold true from year to year. In fact, of the five most-viewed posts in 2023, three of them were posted prior to the start of 2023. I sit here reviewing some of these stats and get confused about why posts from 2019 or 2020 are doing so well, but just accept that God’s still using some of my older submissions to work in people.
Often you are the determining factor in whether or not a post has reach. Facebook is the top referrer of people to the site, and that’s not me doing that, that’s because of readers like you liking and sharing individual posts, which then sometimes take on a life of their own (that wouldn’t happen without you, so thank you!). After Facebook, search engines are the next-highest referrers bringing people to posts. Then there are a handful of other blogs that link directly to portions of the website, so thanks to other bloggers out there!
There are other insights to glean from last year’s numbers, but it’s time to wrap this up. If I had waited these last five years to follow God’s lead, these kinds of stats would probably still be five years away. Please keep this perspective in mind when God calls you to pursue different “absurd” tasks in your life. I want this post to serve as encouragement to take up the challenge He’s extending to you, and to do it without delay. Your tasks on their own, whatever they are, may not move mountains or get your name in history books, but if God’s placing the assignment in your path, it will add to the collective effort of other saints He’s got working on various projects and could very well lead to you someday hearing the wonderful words “well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.”
“Do not despise these small beginnings, for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin, to see the plumb line in Zerubbabel’s hand.” Zechariah 4:10
