Author: Jon Gauger

Cheese fries, funnel cakes, and elephant ears.  The air was heavy with the smog of greasy grills and heart-unhealthy taste treats. But what a fabulous fragrance it was smothering the grounds of the Bureau County Fair. Fleeing these temptations—and the sun's unrelenting heat—we dove into buildings where colorful ribbons declared the winners of creative competitions: largest pumpkin, tastiest apple pie, best pen and ink drawing, etc.

In one building, we saw folks handing out safety brochures, nail files, cup holders, and ten-thousand other logo-emblazoned products: many of them solutions in search of a problem.

Then there was the unassuming table where two unassuming men smiled at each person who walked by, offering them a Bible. Politely and winsomely, they asked, “Would you like a Testament?” Nothing huckster about them or their offer. Just plain folks with a plain invitation.

I watched as the steady trickle of humanity flowed past, the majority declining the New Testament. For a brief moment, it seemed that God might be pulling back the layers of time, showing me the scene from an eternal perspective.

These were not merely folks at a fair.  They were souls trudging toward eternity. Most of them—biblically speaking—were headed for hell itself, the Abyss. Yet overwhelmingly, they declined the Bible as casually as they might a branded pen or politician’s pamphlet.

Facing certain death, a horrific eternity in hell, they walked away from a little book that offers escape and abundant life. What foolishness!

Still, some—a few—were intrigued. Some took that Book—the only book that offers Life. And some will no doubt find it.

Humbly accept the Word God has planted in your hearts. For it has the power to save your souls.

-James 1:21

I should never have clicked the link that came with the headline.

I’m talking about the images of Zaki Anwari the 17-year-old soccer player determined to leave Afghanistan hanging on to a C-17. Capable of flying two M1A2 Abrams battle tanks, or 16 Humvees, the plane's belly swelled with passengers desperate to evacuate. You’ve seen the photos.

Zaki clutched at the landing gear with a gritty resolve as the transport accelerated to 50, then 100, then 120 miles per hour. Just a few hundred feet into the air, Zaki lost his grip. Nor was he the only one to die this way.

As awful as that is, I’m wondering if many of us who call ourselves Christ-followers are guilty of a very personal war crime. We’re able to feel sympathy for that boy—and others like him. But we are strangely unable or unwilling to go much further and engage this tragedy on a spiritual level.

We care—but not that much.

• Not enough to hold personal—let alone—national prayer gatherings.
• Not enough to ask what relief efforts might need our financial support.
• Not enough to resist seeing this as a geopolitical crisis that “was bound to happen at some point.”

That is a crime.

If you’ve seen the video sequence of Zaki’s fall, you’ll note that “all” we see is a black speck tumbling to earth. But Zaki wasn’t a speck. He had a soul. As do every single one of Afghanistan’s people. Shouldn’t that somehow soften our hard hearts?

Let’s stop seeing this as mere fodder for office banter. Let’s stop seeing politics and start seeing people.

When He gasped for breath hanging on those splintered beams, Jesus had the faces of Afghans in mind. How do I know? "God so loved the world."

Why shouldn’t we?

Taking offense.

In the last two or three years, it has replaced baseball as America’s pastime. These days, it seems everyone is offended and going to bat about something. There is nothing, it seems, over which we will not be offended.

While humans have managed to irritate each other since Adam and Eve, today's cultural climate offers two distinct differences. First, social media has created a global platform to air those grievances.  And air them we do. Second, a sustained pattern of lawsuits has given birth to the notion that "If I am offended, so you must placate me."

The implication is that others must change for me—so I can feel "safe" or valued or equal.  Gone is the idea that reasonable people might share reasonable—even sharp—differences of opinion without demanding one side cave in.

We should be able to disagree and remain civil. Anything else is opposed to biblical virtues like kindness, gentleness, and "esteeming others better" than ourselves (Phil. 2:3). The Bible argues love "does not demand its own way" (1 Corinthians 13:5). Who should be more civil than Bible-believing Christians?

But increasingly, I see believers adopting the world’s self-centered mindset, slapping godly labels on godless attitudes. We’re offended—and by golly, this evil world had better know it!

Certainly, there is much in our culture that is opposed to our Christian faith.

Certainly, there is much over which we could be offended.

Certainly, we must never call evil good or good evil.

But with all that said, there is precious little over which Christians have a right to be offended. Consider Christ. He endured insults, slander, jeering—regularly.  Yet we see not one hint of offense taken on His part.

The old chorus had it right:

They’ll know we are Christians by our love.

Not our sense of offense.

A friend at work recently texted to thank me for praying about a family health situation. Good thing it was a text and not FaceTime. I’m sure there was a strained look on my face as I pondered whether, in fact, I had prayed. Perhaps I did pray initially, but not nearly as much as my friend credited me.

Can you relate to that? Someone asks you to pray, and you give hearty agreement to their request with every intention to follow through. And then, you don’t. Your friend is assuming you’re praying—counting on it. They've told others that you are praying, and people naturally think that you are. Only later do you find out that you've let them down. (Is that letting God down?).

My friend’s good medical report should have made me feel good. Instead, I felt guilt. Surely, I should have prayed more. But since God doesn't beat us up over these things, I concluded that perhaps my self-condemnation was a bit harsh. Maybe the worst of it—and this is no small thing—is that we miss out on the blessing that comes from being a committed prayer team member.  

Dr. Bob Moeller, a mentor of mine, once advised, “When someone asks you to pray for them, do it right there on the spot. Whether in person or on the phone—pray for them.” I haven’t always lived up to that advice, but I try.

Maybe that’s the best rendering of 1 Thessalonians 5:17, “Pray without ceasing.”

The very moment someone asks, or the very moment we remember we’re supposed to pray—we pray.

I dare you. Next time a friend or loved one asks you to pray about a situation, do it right then. In your office. In your house. As you’re together in church. As you’re out in public together.

The moment you hear the words, "Pray for me," go ahead and pray—out loud. The place doesn't matter, but the prayer does. So—pray!

Attempting to put sunscreen on a two-year-old is like trying to catch a greased pig. You can try, but it’s not going to be pretty.

Yet Emma wanted to play in the park and it was sunny outside and since she was in our care, we dug out the sunscreen. A dab on her nose and each cheek should have been easy to smooth out.

Should have.

Did I mention Emma is two? She looked this way and that and up and down and around. I tried rubbing that lotion in for all I was worth. And failed.

Her head was wiggling and wobbling and there was no way that sun screen was going to get smoothed out.

Finally, she’d had enough and—spoiler alert—she did not decide to sit still.  Instead, she muttered, “Come on!”  As if I was laying down on the job.

Emma could not know that A), I had her best interests at heart and that B), she herself was the cause of the delay. All I wanted was for her to sit still so I could finish my task.

I wonder how often our Heavenly Father feels the same way about us. He’s trying to protect us from something. And we’re wiggling and wobbling and increasingly frustrated that “nothing is happening.”  We even wonder (secretly of course) if He’s laying down on the job.

But the whole time He has our best interests at heart.  And—like Emma—we are often the cause of our own delays. None of which keeps us from muttering a frustrated prayer that sounds remarkably like Emma’s: “Come on!”

Maybe it’s time to just sit and let God be God.

Air travel is back.  In a big way!

Between July 1 and July 5, TSA workers screened more than 10 million people.  That's a record exceeding any pre-pandemic numbers.

Snaking through the Disney-like security lines at O’Hare last week, I observed a flight attendant's ID tag marked in bold black letters, "Known Crew Member."

The speed with which she breezed through lines that bogged down the rest of us gave new meaning to the expression, "cleared for takeoff.”

Finally shoehorned into my airplane seat, I watched as fellow travelers attempted to mash luggage into overhead bins that seem to shrink with every flight. Naturally, we were all wearing masks—required by the FAA.

One lady sported a black mask with a single word in a white scripted font: “Filthy.” Wonder what her motive was.

The more I puzzled over this, the more my mind was drawn to things eternal. In the eyes of God, there isn’t a single one of us who isn’t filthy, spiritually. Isaiah 64:6 assesses that “all our righteousness,” meaning our Sunday best behavior, “is like filthy rags.” Now that’s dirty!

So, where’s the hope? Jesus! He died on the cross to pay the penalty for our sins (eternal death in hell). He made it possible for us to be forgiven—cleansed of all our filth.

1 John 1:9 promises, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

If you have asked Jesus to be the leader of your life—the Bible word is “Savior”—then your filth has been removed! Better yet, on judgment day (and there really is a judgment day coming), Jesus will see you as a “Known Crew Member.”

When that day is here at last, what will your ID tag say?

I heard something the other day that nearly curled my toes and curdled my milk. Some guy was relating a personal incident that he summarized with the phrase, "that's my truth."

Like a noxious weed, this expression is invading the landscape of American thought. The big deal? Truth and personal experience are both treated as equals. But there's an ocean of difference between the two.

Truth operates independently of experience. Experience is personal, flexible, and open to interpretation. Truth is impersonal, fixed, and not open to interpretation. Truth exists outside of opinion—yours or mine.

For me to claim that water boils at 212 degrees is not “my truth.” It is truth. To say that Sunday follows Saturday is not “my truth.” It is truth.

Experience, on the other hand, is highly personal and driven by taste. One person’s bad experience with Mexican food is another person’s culinary delight.

When we elevate experience to the level of truth, truth is the loser because it is stripped of any objective measurement. But this is exactly what society has done. Unnerved by judgments our culture despises, we have erased our guilt by elevating experience to the realm of truth. That way, any experience can be called good or truthful—particularly those behaviors that were formerly believed to be harmful. At the same time, those old-fashioned souls who believe in old-fashioned truth are dismissed or ignored or ridiculed (they are, after all, old-fashioned).

The journey is hardly surprising. When a society is determined to call evil good and good evil, it has no choice but to redefine truth as experience. This way, the "new truth" can be melted and molded as needed while still wearing that bullet-proof, don't-mess-with-me reputation that real truth still has.

Jesus didn’t say “I am a truth”—meaning one among many.  He said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”

Language matters—and that’s the truth.

What are you seeking most in life?

What’s the secret driving passion of your soul?

The honest answer is surprisingly easy to gauge. I say real because most believers are wired to give a “Sunday School answer.” That Sunday School answer, of course, would be Jesus: He’s number one in my life, we insist.

But here's a simple test to determine what you are genuinely seeking: it's the first thing you think about every morning and, likely, the last thing you think about at night.

Despite our claims to love Jesus best, many of us primarily seek comfort, power, influence, money, sex, fame, or success.

Psalms 14:2 is something of a wake-up call:

The Lord has looked down from heaven upon the sons of men to see if there are any who understand, who seek after God.

Catch that? To understand God is to seek God. We can’t say we understand God if we do not seek God. So, I ask again, what—or whom—are you seeking?

What if, for the next seven days, we chose to start each day quoting Scripture before we ever get out of bed? And what if at night, before drifting off to sleep, we decided to make Scripture our last thought? That would be a significant first step.

In the early 1800s, there was a growing sense of mistrust between the United States and Great Britain. Given Canada's relationship with Great Britain, the U.S. decided to build a military fort right up against the Canadian border. But in the middle of construction, a significant misunderstanding came to light. The surveyors had mistakenly positioned our fort on Canadian soil. Once discovered, workers immediately removed any unused materials and chose an alternate location on the American side. Still, the original fort remained and was given the unceremonious name, Fort Blunder.

It's one thing to build a fort upon a misunderstanding. It’s quite another to build a life upon a misunderstanding.

The Lord has looked down from heaven upon the sons of men to see if there are any who understand.

Do you understand?

You do if you seek after God.

 

 

Dressed in a powder blue paper gown, I sit crinkling on the exam table.  The doctor looks over every inch of my skin for evidence of skin cancer or pre-cancerous growths. Armed with her magnifier, she always finds something (thankfully pre-cancerous, to this point). Nothing escapes her examination!

The reward for all this probing and poking and intimidation? She blasts every problem area with a can of liquid nitrogen. It's an instant burn that throbs, turns red, then oozes, then scabs over. Maybe you’ve had the same (not joyful) experience.

Frankly, there is nothing about this examination that is pleasant. It is embarrassing and painful, and intimidating. But it has to be done. Every six months, in my case.

Whether we like it—or acknowledge it—such examinations have to be done, spiritually, as well. Proverbs 5:21 observes, "For a man's ways are in full view of the Lord, and He examines all his paths."

Thoughts are like paths. They all take us somewhere. Will your chosen paths today take you toward godly places or ungodly places? Toward Jesus or away from Jesus? What paths are you taking?

Today you and I will not take one step, speak one word, think one thought that God will not examine. We will not write one email, make one call, watch one show, surf one site that God will not examine.

As you plop your head on your pillow tonight and the diary of your day is officially closed, what will God see when He examines your paths?

The sticker stood out on that electrical switch box on the scoreboard at the football field. It said simply, "You are beautiful."

My initial reaction was, What a great message! Then the cynic in me said, Wait a minute. Nobody posts anything these days online, let alone on an electrical box, without some kind of agenda. Maybe it's an internet hoax or a British rock band or PR campaign for some new product.

After a brief online search, I arrived at the website, you-are-beautiful.com. There I learned that more than 5 million of these 1.5" x 2" friendly sticker reminders have traveled around the globe. And then I thought, What could be more uplifting than pondering how much God loves us—as we are?

Hear me clearly. As you read this blog, you are beautiful.  Right now.  Right at this instant. But let’s trade in the glittering generalities for some specifics.

Your TV is daily bombarding you with thoughts like you need a better body, better hair, better skin, better teeth, better everything. But David testifies before God for every single one of us in Psalms 139:14, “I will give thanks to You because I am awesomely and wonderfully made; Wonderful are Your works, And my soul knows it very well.” Let me spell this out.

 

If you're a girl reading this blog, consider:

You don’t need to lose a single pound.

Or grow an inch taller.

Or have smoother skin.

Or Botox lips.

Or less varicose veins.

Or “better” hair.

 

If you’re a guy reading this blog, consider:

You don’t need to lose a single pound.

Or grow an inch taller.

Or have bigger biceps.

Or chiseled abbs.

Or thicker hair.

Or hair at all!

 

God is thoroughly, totally thrilled with the "you" that He made. Seems to me some folks could use that reminder today.  Maybe you're one of them.