Happy Veterans Day

To my dad – John Peter Backes. C'mon with a name like that you had to know his son was going to be a pastor J.

There are those in the world that think I'm a little off mentally sometimes. My dad's the cause of it. Back in the mid 1960's my dad VOLUNTARILY signed up to be a United States Marine and did a 13 month tour I believe (correct me if I'm wrong) in Vietnam.

Also, back where I'm from, there are many brave men and women who have served the United States faithfully through their military service. I love hearing the older generations talk about being in the Army or Navy, and what not.

My dad gave me many opportunities in life that I'm extremely grateful for. His, and folks just like him, service to our country gives us all opportunities that we take for granted far too often in our daily lives. By God's sovereign hand we live in a democracy. Also by God's sovereign hand, there are folks willing to make untold sacrifices and thousands have given the ultimate sacrifice.

On this day, we say thank you. But we should say thank you every day and honor that sacrifice with our lives and the choices we make.

Thanks Dad….

Eternity On My Mind

Nothing earth shattering in the tank today. Thoughts and a lot of life swirling around right now. But nothing pressing on the soul to opine about.

In some ways, people would call this a throw away post. To others, it would be less than ideal. It's hard having something to think about every day.

The most pressing thing going right now is to finish my prospectus for Eternity. I've in the middle of it and have finished Mission, Values, Summary View Of Ministry, and finishing up my section on the context in which I will plant which is Jefferson City, MO.

I'm coming face to face with the situation where I thought for years I knew how other churches were doing it wrong and how I would do it better. Now I'm having to get that down on paper and get rolling with it. It's a daunting task. I could use the prayer.

A while back, I asked here on the blog what people would write if they were writing a mission statement. I believe I've decided on the mission for Eternity. I'll end with that:

To labor for the Gospel as it transforms us, our city, and our world for eternity.

This Would Be Funny

If you couldn't honestly say that somehow it may be true.

The invitation. A funny and peculiar thing. Why do we do it? Where did it come from?

Response to God is an important part of faith and repentance. Peter exhorted those listening to his sermon to repent and be baptized.

Billy Graham made the invitation a cornerstone of the American church. Thousands upon thousands of churches followed suit. I've heard sermons on why not doing the invitation is sentencing people to hell. (BTW, the pastor who gave that sermon pastors a large Baptist church in a town that shares a name with a hippie gathering in the 60's)

Does it all depend on your theology? Is it emotional manipulation?

Can it be effective today in a culture conditioned to be skeptical of religious manufacturing?

Don't you get disgusted with the pastor who utters the words "just one more verse" because he doesn't want to be embarrassed by the fact that no one responded to his sermon and therefore he wants to try and force someone to come to the front so it can look like he had an impact?

If it's so effective, why did Billy Graham have to "engineer" movement by encouraging his counselors to begin moving forward first?

What if you don't give people a chance to respond publicly? What then? Should there be public response other than baptism? Does the public nature add undue pressure?

All things I ponder while waiting for another episode of Survivor and The Office.

Acts 29 Quarterly And All Things Tuesday

Yesterday was a great day in many respects. A beautiful day to drive from Ozark to St. Louis to Jefferson City back to Ozark. I love drive times alone with God.

The Acts29 quarterly was great as usual. Preaching was the topic. Highlights were:

• Jonathan McIntosh challenging us to examine our weaknesses in our preaching. He talked about three streams and how it is vital for preachers to be good in all three streams. He shared rightly that most folks default to one stream but that we needed to listen to guys from all three streams. The three he hit on were:
  
  • Normative – Truth focused (John MacArthur, John Piper, et all) – What to I want people to know or believe?
    
  • Existential – Emotion Focused (Martin Lloyd Jones – CJ Mahaney) – What do I want people to feel?
    
  • Situational – Action Focused (Andy Stanley – Rick Warren) – What do I want people to do?
    
• Catching up and sitting with Steve Easterwood from FBC Lake St. Louis.
  
• Having a chance to talk with Bob Werner about planting Eternity. Bob's first pastorate was in Jefferson City. He had many good words.
  
• Listening to Darrin Patrick, Ron Cathcart, John Ryan, and a great guy who I can't for the life of me remember his name (although he won a preaching award from Covenant Theological Seminary) answer questions about preaching ranging from:
  
  • How they prepare for their sermons?
    
  • How much time do they prepare?
    
  • What is their best advice for guys who are trying to find their voice?
    
  • Their advice on building preaching teams
    
  • Their thoughts on use of certain language in sermons
    
  • Their thoughts on being a communicator for God on Sunday morning
    
• Getting to say hi once again to Maxedon, Sam, Brian, Trey, and meeting Mike Hubbard and Marc Sikma
  

It was then time to head to Jefferson City and have a meeting with some folks about Eternity. For those who are just catching up, I am in the process of planting a church in the next 12 – 18 months named Eternity and Jefferson City is where that church will be. Last night's meeting was great. From everyone I've talked to, the area is in desperate need of a Gospel centered, culturally sensible church.

With every discussion I have about Eternity, I grow more excited and nauseous at the same time. I am growing increasingly aware how huge of a task it will be. I am also realizing with each day how great God is, how ignorant and sinful I am, and how I am in dire straits if God isn't driving this train.

But as each day goes by, Eternity becomes more and more a reality and the path to reality a little more clear.

It was a good day. Let's see what today holds!

Does Jesus Make You Happy?

It's a fair question. I would argue it's the most important question in life. Recently, a well known blogger and author posted a list of things that made him happy:

• The newly released album from the David Crowder Band.
  
• When my wife makes me go play golf with my son--who now owns his first set of clubs.
  
• Winning another fantasy football game.
  
• The smell of the church atrium now that the coffee shop is open.
  
• Finding out that I'm going to a conference after all
  
• Yard work...in moderation.
  
• Our Sunday evening service
  
• Learning that a friend is finally blogging
  
• Watching a football athlete speak.
  
• Discovering that iTunes has some competition
  
• Our new king-size bed.
  
• TV Shows
  
• When someone delivers freshly brewed decaf coffee to my office mid-afternoon.
  
• Spending time downtown
  
• Watching my daughter play soccer.
  
• Cool parts of my job
  
• Planning my next trip to the beach.
  

What you'll find striking about this list is that Jesus didn't make the list. For that matter, God didn't make the list. Church made it. But God didn't. There's a big difference. I tried to point that out to the author. The author chose not to publish my comment on his blog. It appears asking why Jesus didn't make him happy was not an acceptable comment for others to see.

But now the question looms for all of us. If you published your list on the Internet, would Jesus make it? You see the list above lists sports, coffee, stuff, leisure, etc but is that truly where our happiness and joy as Christians is supposed to originate. How exactly is the list above any different than a garden-variety pagan's list?

I'd like to give the author the benefit of the doubt. I was willing to. I assumed it was just an editorial oversight. He really did love Jesus and Jesus actually did make him happy. He had just missed putting Jesus in the list. But given the fact that my comment was reviewed and not acted upon, I can only assume once the minor detail was brought to his attention, he still didn't think Jesus should be included.

Which is sad, because I think there are millions of Christians that would make their lists and not include Jesus in the mix. When you get right down to it, Jesus doesn't make them happy, He's just a drag on their life. Too many rules. Too many don'ts. Too many things He expects of me. That's not fun. That's not happy. That's oppressive. Give me my family, my food, my fun and that's what makes me happy. Don't get me wrong, those things make a lot of people happy, and in many respects, there's nothing wrong with those things bringing happiness to your life.

But Jesus should be # 1 on that list. And you should find all those others things enjoyable only because first you find enjoyment in Jesus. It's in Him that we have life, breath, and everything. He is the giver of all those other things. He is the reason you can live with a smile and not in terror fearing for your life before a Holy righteous God.

He is, in every meaningful way, the river of living water.

Now, if He could only find a way to make his way up in the rankings of things we love in life.

The Days Ahead

Everyone is gone from Tan-Tar-A and has returned home to their churches in Missouri to continue their loving service to their congregations.

Micah has a good roundup this morning that I would like to interact with a little bit.

Getting to meet Darrin Patrick was a much more exciting experience than I imagined it would be. I have had the privilege of meeting a lot of guys who are very successful in ministry and who lead fast growing churches, many of which are considered mega-churches and I have never met a Pastor more congenial and laid back as was Patrick.

I'm convinced that if those in the Missouri Baptist Convention and really around the nation would actually spend time with us Acts29 type folks, and the church planters in our network, that they would discover we are not a bunch of beer-drinking liberal freakshows as many would like to paint us as. I read blogs that bash Driscoll and certainly Darrin has taken his load of criticism but much of that criticism is coming from ignorance and fear. As I spent time with guys like Sam Byers, Trey Herweck, Kevin Larson, Rik Maxedon and others, you'll discover that these guys are young, passionate; Gospel consumed people who just want to see Jesus be the hero in their churches.

And the fledgling reformation going on in American Christianity today in ironic ways is about returning to our roots and first loves rather than about leaving them. If you look historically, you'll find that the young church planters would share more in common the founders of the SBC than they do with the current SBC. The young guys are accused of deviating from tradition, but rather they in fact are the ones looking to restore the tradition. Reformed doctrine, Christ exaltation, Man centered renunciation, and a belief in only the Gospel as the possible means of transformation characterizes this group.

And like many times in history, the more that the other side gets to actually know where they are coming from and understand who they really are, the more they realize there is nothing to fear but rather to embrace. And I think many people are discovering that.

I am proud to be a part of that group and I am excited about what God is/currently/and will do through us in the days and years ahead. There is a passionate resurgence well underway and I think folks are beginning to see that. Guys like Darrin and Lane, pastors who are passionate not only about their churches, but the churches of the guys who will plant in the future are awesome to be around and I think typify the spirit of Paul in Acts. They realize that we won't reach the world with one church. And they are passionate about their roles in developing and coaching guys who feel the call of God to plant a church.

For those who might read this and not know a lot about Acts 29 or the young church planters currently in the MBC, I would encourage you to do the same thing Micah did. Just find a way to hang out us. You'll find we're not the boogey-man you may have thought us to be.

Missouri Baptist Convention (VI) – It’s a Wrap

At least for me. We headed home yesterday even though most of the crucial voting in the convention is set to occur today. For those who don't know, what is happening at the convention is of tremendous importance not only for Missouri Baptists but for the national SBC as well. Many states are looking at Missouri right now and observing what is going on. For those who need a primer:

• The conservative resurgence happened in Missouri as well
  
• The conservative resurgence (in the opinion of some) has gone too far in its legalistic stances on methodology, Acts29, alcohol, and other secondary issues and must be replaced by a more moderate, less antagonistic direction for the Missouri Baptist Convention (better known as Save Our Convention)
  
• That shift began taking place yesterday with a landslide victory by Gerald Davidson over the incumbent Mr. Green. Today's votes will carry significant weight as the rest of the officers are elected. It will either signal that a shift has truly taken place, or whether Davidson won on name recognition. Quite frankly I think a shift is underway, and I think you'll see that today.
  

So what to make of all of this. Rather than write paragraphs, I'll share brief thoughts in bullet form:

• It's time that alcohol consumption be dropped as a front and center issue for Baptists. We are clearly given liberty in Scripture for its consumption. We are warned of its excesses but we are warned of all excesses in Scripture that would result in idolatry. We have more central things on which to focus our time and energy (namely lost-unregenerate people).
  
• Some have said that they think David Tolliver took the high road in his address Monday night. I do not. I think it was a cheap shot across the bow and ill timed given the events that were set to take place the next two days. I do not know Mr. Tolliver, but after having listened to his address, I (along with many others at the convention) found it to be disingenuous and bad exegesis.
  
• I agree whole heartedly with Micah's first bullet point here. And I look forward to the second one as well.
  
• After observing the conference for two days, I am greatly concerned about how out of touch most folks are about the world they find themselves in.
  
• Having the chance to hang out with Acts29 guys who have actually planted churches was great. I look forward to being a colleague of theirs in the near future.
  
• I am more appreciative of Lane and Dennis and what God has done at LifePoint.
  
• Bobby Shows is awesome and I am proud to have him as a spiritual grandfather.
  
• Eternity may have just found a home the last two days….stay tuned.

Missouri Baptist Convention (V)

Mark Dever finished the 9 Marks portion of the MBC convention with a message on leadership based out of Acts 6.

He opened the address with a pointed support of mega-churches saying that:

The church at Jerusalem apparently had 1000's of members and we see nothing inherently un-biblical about it.

Mark also covered some interesting tangents as he worked his way into the leadership portion of the message. He talked about racism undermining our belief in the Gospel by not believing that it can overcome every barrier. He also cautioned pastors that division between people who would naturally be divided in the world eclipses the Gospel and shows our natural division to be more powerful than the Gospel. I had to let that one sink in for a while before I caught it but it was a great point.

He then returned to the main theme of his earlier address by reminding pastors that the apostles realized that ministry entrusted to them was more important than quick resolutions to conflict. Their priority was the ministry of the Word. He then went on to give a pretty thorough treatment of Elders, Deacons, and Congregations. He did so with good clarity and usually Dever skill.

He hammered home being able to manage priorities and keep the main thing the main thing. He championed the plurality of elders approach to church leadership. He re-introduced in a way the role of the congregation in church government. Overall, he did a great job.

It was also a big highlight of the trip to meet Mark and to spend some time talking with him about what he's up to and where's he headed over the next few months. I'm looking forward to seeing him in April at the Together for the Gospel conference in Louisville.

Stay tuned. Highlights and thoughts from today's sessions at the MBC are yet to come.

Missouri Baptist Convention (IV)

Matt Schmucker brought the right after lunch message on membership / church discipline. Matt did an OK job in a tough timeslot. This is tough stuff to deliver a sermon on so to speak so it came across as more of an academic address than it did a message aimed at motivation to change.

Gary Scott Lamb has a good roundup of the address over at his Thoughts And Adventures blog.

I'll highlight here Matt's twelve step recovery program to recovering biblical discipline and church membership:

1. Regularly proclaim the Gospel
   
2. Use a congregationally agreed upon statement of faith
   
3. Require membership classes
   
4. Interview your potential members
   
5. Think before baptizing and admitting children to church membership
   
6. Realize that admission to membership is an act of congregation
   
7. Publish membership directory
   
8. Give active pastoral oversight to the members
   
9. Create a culture of discipleship in your church
   
10. Limit some activities to only members
    
11. Consider reviving practice of church discipline
    
12. Recover the grandness of God's blessing
    

Missouri Baptist Convention (III)

Jonathan Leeman, Director of Communications for 9 Marks ministries, wrapped up the morning with an address on conversion and evangelism. He did a good job in the address, helping us see that preaching and evangelism are not distinct animals but rather one in the same. He talked about how preaching the Word helps three very distinct groups of people in our congregations:

1. Non-Christians – Here we must learn to apply sermons to their lives that will seek repentance and faith. Jonathan made a great point about not winning their approval but rather their lives with our preaching.
   
2. Nominal Christians – This is where he talked about the groups that I think I have been the hardest on in my blog and how we take way too much for granted with this group assuming that they have a grasp on the Gospel and they don't.
   
3. Christians – Even this group needs to hear the Gospel regularly to increase their understanding of it and to learn how to increasingly integrate it with the rest of their lives.
   

Jonathan then went on to talk about that conversion IS NOT:

1. Reciting a creed
   
2. Reciting a prayer
   
3. Walking an isle
   
4. Emotionally heated experience
   
5. Reaching a certain age
   
6. A journey
   

In contrast to what he believes conversion IS:

1. Turning from path your on
   
2. Turning from self-justification to Christ's justification
   
3. Turning from idol worship-god worship
   
4. Turning from self-rule to God's rule
   
5. He created the first time – he creates us the second time.
   

He then spent some time talking about a subject that quite frankly has plagued and is the biggest issue with the MBC and SBC. He said that misunderstanding conversion will cause our churches to be filled with serious pronouncements but not with people who have experienced a radical change. OUCH. He's absolutely right and that is the exact diagnosis that is wrong with a lot of churches in America today.

Jonathan did a good job. He had a lot of content and delivered it well. More to come on the afternoon sessions.

Missouri Baptist Convention (II)

Mark Dever was the second speaker of the morning. For those who don't know Mark Dever, he is the pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington DC. He wrote 9 Marks Of A Healthy Church and has been responsible for the creation of 9 Marks ministries

Dever started out by clearly stating what his whole sermon would be about:

If you're going to be God centered – that means you need to be Bible centered. And being God-centered doesn't mean giving your people what you think God tells you but rather giving them what God has given to us, namely the revelation of Himself through His word.

And in typical Dever fashion, he then went on to speak for forty minutes on the centrality of expositional preaching. He certainly showed some animosity toward para-church programs and publishers with this little zinger:

People always ask me what we are doing at Capitol Hill to grow our church. And I always tell them that we use the Jesus program. Now the Jesus program may not be very popular because nobody at Wheaton, Nashville, or anywhere else makes money off of the Jesus program. But that's what we use.

He then went on to challenge the current normative thinking that we need to focus on how to best engage the culture by arguing that it is not the degree to which we understand the culture that will make us successful, but rather the degree to which we are different from it. He argued that the quality of a church's life together is what will set us apart. He argued that the current generational deception is that figuring out the culture is the way to reach the world. Rather, he argued that the best way for us to reach the world is for them to see the Spirit's fruit lived out in the life of the congregation.

He then moved into completely disintegrating pastoral faith in statistics and judging success based on statistics. He basically argued that he who lives by the numbers will also die by the number but rather faithfulness should be the mark of success. Once again he took a swipe at the para-church business market by saying:

They are nothing more than economic interests that want to sell us stuff. We're an ideal market for folks to tell us that we'll have a successful church if we use their products. That's not true. What's true is what is in Scripture. By preaching the word. Telling them about sin. Grace shown us in Christ. Share the Gospel. We must preach the truth of God's word to God's people. That is how we will have a healthy successful church.

He then went to champion expositional preaching which he defined as:

Sermons which expound the text. Sermons that take the point of the passage, and make that the point of your message, and then apply into the life. EP is not to have your own novel thoughts about the point of the passage. It asks what is the point of the passage. It asks how you bring that point alive. It asks how that applies to their life. It is not tied to style or personality. It is not necessarily verse by verse. It could be an entire chapter. It could be and entire book. But the point of the passage is the point of your message.

He then made a great point about a distinction of preaching:

You are not called to preach. You are called to preach God's word. The minute you get away from that, you are just talking. You stop preaching God's word, your commission is gone. The truth you're talking about needs to be the truth of Scripture. Joyce Meyer can quote the Bible, but not say what the Bible is saying.

He then went on to talk a little about topical preaching:

Topical preaching will slant us toward saying what we want to say. The main point of text will not be main point of sermon. Topical preachers might lead people to be Catholics – where they depend on the preacher and not on the book.

Now I don't care who you are. Those are strong words. But if you think about it long enough, you'll discover he's right. Dever then went on to share his thoughts on pastors' and the length of service most of them have at churches:

Get rid of your bag of tricks, grab your Bible, and stay at your church. I'm not saying it's wrong to leave a church, but the faithfulness I'm talking about seems absurd and too slow. Or your view of ministry may be wrong. You may need to make a commitment to shepherding God's people.

He finished up with several things, but I think the most important was just some general advice on preaching:

Give people an idea of where the text falls in the Biblical storyline. Don't treat the Bible as a Chinese fortune cookie. Tell people how the text fits in the entire story otherwise a lot of the Bible will look and sound silly. And also, you need to have the Gospel in every sermon. Try to address non-believers and the way they are thinking in your sermons. Remember that the point is not to show your mastery of homiletical technique or to make your congregation the most learned. The point is share God's word with God's people.That's why you have a pastor and not a video feed. They see your life and they can imitate you. They know you and you know them. It's in that context that he has gifted you to apply God's word to those individuals. Also remember that the Gospel is not just individual but communal and has applications for your church as well as the individual.

Overall, a very strong address and a typical Dever message. Solid, to the point, and applicable. There are some things here that I'll pick through later, but you'll get the gist.

Missouri Baptist Convention (I)

We're meeting at lovely Tan-Tar-A resort at the Lake of the Ozarks. We arrived a bit late for the first speaker this morning Matt Schmucker – Executive Director of 9 Marks Ministries. I caught the last few minutes of his address but I think it was basically this:

The pastor's job is to preach the Word. Don't try to be relevant. Listen and preach the Word of God. Stay faithful to the Word of God and make that your soul focus.

That was the gist of the last 10 minutes of it. And it was well received by the pastors in the MBC. It'll be interesting to hear from Mark Dever to see how he follows that up. More to come…

Should Be An Interesting Day

I'm headed to the Missouri Baptist Convention at the Lake of the Ozarks with LifePoint today. As you may or may not remember, the MBC and Acts29 are not necessarily Mutt and Jeff.

This promises to be an eventful two days and there will be some blogging on-site hopefully.

In the meantime, I'll be pondering how to blog on this extensive article over at the New York Times. (HT: Bible Belt Blogger)

Here's a quick commentary on the the following paragraph:

So when Fox announced to his flock one Sunday in August last year that it was his final appearance in the pulpit, the news startled evangelical activists from Atlanta to Grand Rapids. Fox told the congregation that he was quitting so he could work full time on "cultural issues." Within days, The Wichita Eagle reported that Fox left under pressure. The board of deacons had told him that his activism was getting in the way of the Gospel. "It just wasn't pertinent," Associate Pastor Gayle Tenbrook later told me.

Ponder this: Does being an evangelical Christian or a Christ follower as we like to call them at LifePoint, automatically mean that you should align yourself with the agenda of the Republican party. And an even better question for you to think about:

Would Jesus have more in common with the Republicans or Democrats?

Give Me A D – Give Me An E – Give Me An E – Give Me A P

What's that spell? Depends on who you ask.

Perry Noble thinks it's about what you do and not what you know.

Jeff Vanderstelt thinks that busyness doesn't prove depth. (HT: Jared)

So which is it? Are you deep because you come and serve at church? Are you deep because you can recite the Heidelberg Confession? Can you do a lot of stuff and yet be shallow? Can you know a lot of stuff and still be shallow?

Who's right? Is James right? Is it a false paradox? Do you really have to choose one or the other? Why can't you have both?

Why are doers so resentful of thinkers? Why can't thinkers actually do something? Why can't doers actually think about something once in a while?

I've got my theories. Is deep being able to be both or all?

So many questions. So few answers. I'm finding I have fewer of them in life.

When People Aren’t Where You Wish They Were

The last few days have been challenging for me. I don't know about anyone else, but I fight myself all the time. I know that there is a man deep inside me that gets out way too often and there is the man God is forming struggling to keep the deep man under wraps. I'm a dominant personality. I'm a big personality. It is often my greatest strength. Too often, it is my greatest weakness. And the last few days have served as a reminder that I am far from being where I want to be.

One of my greatest struggles within myself is my evaluation and judgment of other people. My natural tendency is to write people off way too quickly. Because of my background and my journey of where I have come from, I can't understand why people approach life so passively. Why they sit back and just meander through their time here on Earth with no passion and no fervor. Why, although they may claim the name of Jesus, they share none of His passions and none of His sufferings. And when I encounter that, I immediately begin to attack that mentality. I may not do it forcefully but I guarantee you I'm loading up the bullets in my thoughts.

When I see folks who have been given so much yet do so little. When I see folks who have such fantastic opportunities right in front of them yet fritter them away. These things weigh on me. I have encountered this in my time of leading a ministry at a local church in St. Louis. I have seen this in employees that I led at Upward. And now I have seen this in certain people at LifePoint. And I have always struggled with the following tension:

When is it time to place a loving arm around them? When is it time to give them a firm, swift kick in the butt to the curb?

You see, Jesus didn't long-suffer with everyone. There were people that he sent away. The rich young ruler, the Pharisees, Judas, the proud, and the lazy were all folks who bore the inpatience of Jesus. There are folks and there are times when the best thing you can do for someone is to put them out. Paul said as much many times about the immoral brother. Jesus said as much when he spoke of spitting the lukewarm out of His mouth.

So what do you do when people aren't where you wish they were? Do you love them? Do you shepherd them? Do you challenge them? Do you guide them? Do you point them in the direction you would have them to go? Do you encourage them? Do you rebuke them? And finally, if all of that fails, do you forget them?

I'll tell you, God has been all over me that I am way too quick to forget them. I desire to wash my hands of them because they aren't living up to the standard that I think they should be living up to. I want to issues the ultimatum: Get on, get off, or get out! Why? Because that feels good! That doesn't require one ounce of patience or thought. That doesn't require one minute of time spent thinking about how the Spirit might be leading me to pastor someone. That doesn't require a single step toward investing something in that person that you may not get back. In short, it's easier to write them off, than it is to walk the road with them.

And God is hammering me right now to try and get me to walk the road with people. Not to tell them whether they belong on the road in the first place. He's been doing that for the last ten years. And because I'm so hard headed and stubborn, it's been hard to get that message across. But I sense that in my soul, the tide might be turning. And I'm excited about that.

What do you do when people aren't where you wish they were? You realize that you aren't where God wishes you were, but He loves you just the same and patiently walks the road with you. That's an amazing thought to live on.