Christmas Eve we were all singing by the light of the candles we were holding. I was on the front row because TJ, Levi, and I were leading the service which was coming to a close. As we sang, Sarah, Natalie and Bo – my three youngest grandchildren – came and hugged and stood with me. That made my Christmas for 2015!

I am thoroughly enjoying being the pastor for Northgate Church in Ottumwa. In some ways, the past year has been difficult as I’ve been reminded of all the ways Lois partnered with me in being a pastor. But God is gracious; I get to work with a gifted associate pastor and there are several Godly couples I’m learning to call on when being a single pastor might be awkward.

The big transition this year was for Kari Beth & Jeremy, Sarah & Natalie. They moved to LeClaire, IA when Jeremy received a promotion from John Deere which required a move to their headquarters. I am fortunate its only 2.5 hours away and I don’t think we’ve gone more than three weeks without seeing each other!

Tri State camp was in July and once again I had the privilege of leading staff as we asked God to use us in the lives of over 100 teenagers. I am continually amazed by the transformation I witness both in the lives of campers and staff.

In August I took some time off after a conference in Colorado Springs and met sister-in-law Beth & Bill for ice cream and then drove over the mountains to visit my Aunt Harriet and cousin Sue in Montrose, CO. On the way home I stopped and spent a day in Abilene, KS visiting the Eisenhower Presidential Library.

In October I once again participated in the CareGivers Forum in Green Lake, WI. CareGivers is a gathering of people who run retreat and counseling centers for pastors and missionaries and I’ve attended this annual conference since 2006. Even though I no longer work as a pastor-to-pastors, I do remain in contact with many of those people and find great value in the fellowship and encouragement as well as the networking.

I still live five miles north of Joy and Tony and their four boys and see them often. Brady, Broc, Brandt, and Bo are very active boys – there’s always something going on. I watched at least three baseball games a week from May-June!

Peter lives in West Des Moines where he is on staff at Lutheran Church of Hope in their IT department. We try to get together about once every six weeks but both of us are tied to church schedules so we sometimes default to long phone calls.

This year I have watched God work miracles in people’s lives as He turns chaos into order; depression into clarity; confusion into direction; grief into comfort; and darkness into light! I am so grateful to be a witness to His power.

My Dad loved fruitcake. Not just any fruitcake. Somewhere in the memory bank of his mind, Dad remembered a fruitcake that was exquisite; just the right ratio of candied fruit, nuts, cake – all aged and fermented to perfection. For years people gave us fruitcake they were convinced would be a match to Dad’s memory. And we bought fruitcake; carefully trying each one to see if it was good enough.

Then, in the fall of 1975, Dad announced he would make his own fruitcake. Lois and I were newlyweds and worked with my parents every day in the family bookstore, so we had front-row seats to watch the progress as Dad tried to re-create the perfect fruitcake. In early September he began collecting ingredients – as this was pre-internet, everything was done through catalogs and direct mail. By the middle of October Dad was ready.

By the end of a very long day there were eight “loaves” – in reality, rings of fruitcake. Dad had discovered what he thought was the secret to “curing” the cakes: wrapping them in cotton cloth soaked in a mixture of cooking oil and rum. Each cloth wrapped cake was then sealed with plastic wrap, placed in plastic bags, and stored in Tupperware containers purchased especially for this project.

Dad planned to let the cakes ferment and cure for eight weeks but at week seven his patience ran out. He opened a cake with great fanfare and groaned. It was dry, crumbly, and smelled sour. It was a flop. What a disappointment.

Like my Dad, you might be disappointed this Christmas. Maybe you won’t get the gift you are expecting; maybe the friends you hoped to be with will cancel. It’s possible this will be the first Christmas without someone who has been there in the past. Maybe the memories of a very happy Christmas will once again be un-matched. Maybe Christmas will be dry, crumbly, and sour.

Take heart. Look up. Listen to our Heavenly Father.

The essence of Christmas is simple: God generously and sacrificially gave us His Son, Jesus Christ, so that we, too, can give of ourselves to serve others.

If you find yourself disappointed this Christmas – give generously and sacrificially to someone else. The rewards are deeply satisfying.

And keep looking for the perfect fruitcake.

I just returned from an errand: Several weeks ago the laser-cut key for my car broke off the key fob and because of the design the key was useless.  I had to order a new one and it arrived last week. The dealer called several times reminding me to pick it up and I finally got it done today. Just picking it up was quite a process and the Parts Manager was very patient as we walked through a number of steps. He was gracious to walk out to my vehicle to make sure the new key worked and to program the buttons on the new fob.

I thanked him and said I hoped he would have a great Thanksgiving.

As I drove back to church I wondered how he would celebrate. Even more specifically, how will you celebrate Thanksgiving? Family? Food? Football? Shopping?

In the middle of the all the activity, let’s take time to remember that God poured out on us His mercy – forgiveness we could never earn and which none of us deserves. God gives us grace – endless rivers of goodness – which we see and experience in love, family, places to live, food, etc. God is the object of our thanks; our praise; our gratefulness.

The writer of Hebrews instructs us: “Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, ²⁹for our “God is a consuming fire.”” (12:28-29). The phrase, “God is a consuming fire” is from Deuteronomy 4:23-24 and it almost sounds like a warning! Maybe it’s something we should take more seriously.

In the middle of family, food, football, and shopping make sure to set aside time to sincerely thank God for who He is; for His gift of Jesus Christ; for the presence of the Holy Spirit. God loves you with such passion that He is jealous when ignored. Be still. Be silent. Listen to Him.

Enjoy Thanksgiving.

Somehow I failed to get everyone to ignore my most recent birthday. As much as many of us would like to skip these annual events they happen – ready or not! Thanks to all who sent cards, left voicemails of singing, called, posted greetings and congrats on Facebook, and told me in person. I do appreciate each of you and thank God for such an amazing group of friends and family.

For me, this particular birthday is significant because it marks the beginning of my second year as pastor at Northgate! A year full of learning new names and faces; listening to the stories of scores of people; growing in an understanding of what God is already doing here; and praying, laughing, and crying with many as we do life together. There are three things I am taking with me from the past year and three things I am praying for in the year to come.

Lessons from the first year

1. Northgate is a family not an address or a building. We are just a small part of the world-wide body of Christ but a major participant in all God is doing in our community.
2. We are not the only lighthouse of truth but a sincere gathering of Christ-followers with moving, personal stories of forgiveness and restoration, mercy and grace.
3. We are learning to connect with Jesus in communities that care. These core values are not just words; we are living them out together.

What I am trusting God to do in the year ahead

1. Give us a vision for our community so big it will require outrageous faith and irrational generosity.
2. Help us exploit our strengths both as individuals and as a household of faith.
3. Give us an insatiable desire to see lives changed. The transforming work of Jesus is the only hope for this crazy, hurting, messed up world.

Heavenly Father, I pray as I begin another year of life and my second year at Northgate, that you would make me more and more like your Son, Jesus, who is everything! Amen.

Carl was cruelly, painfully, and wrongfully terminated from the church he served as pastor – a political move by miss-informed elders who manipulated others for selfish reasons. Carl and JoLynn were bruised and beat-up but the wounds were not fatal nor did they result in permanent damage. When I met them in 1991 I recognized and related to the pain but was also impressed with their hope for what God was preparing them to do in the future. They were totally depending on God.

They were invited to join the same ministry I was working with – but that turned out to be a detour which ended in a road block. Next, Carl and JoLynn thought God was calling them as missionaries and began raising funds but after two years the hoped for support totaled less than $200 per month in pledges. Another detour and road block. More time to practice intentional dependence.

There were more detours, more unexpected turns, including a return to school for Carl to earn a doctorate in counseling. The test of patience was excruciating, but slowly God cracked open doors and cautiously Carl and JoLynn stepped through. It was a time of intensely and intently depending on God as they found themselves with pastors and missionaries in Eastern Europe and Ukraine.

About ten years ago, God directed them to Austria where Carl and JoLynn began to host retreats for missionaries and pastors. They found themselves trusting God in every way as those retreats gave birth to intensive, one-on-one counseling with ministry couples; often for two weeks at a time. God is using Carl and JoLynn to touch the lives of scores of people in ministry.

For Carl & JoLynn, intentionally depending on God has not gotten any easier; it’s still a daily exercise of self-discipline. No one has written a multi-million dollar check. Every time a couple shows up; every time they travel to another location for ministry; every day is a new reminder of how utterly dependent they are.

I’ve known Carl and JoLynn for 24 years and we just spent a few days together at a conference in Wisconsin. As we talked and shared I was reminded that life has not turned out the way they had planned but God has revealed His plan and provided in miraculous ways to accomplish some amazing things. It all comes back to their decision to depend on God.

What about you? What tough turns has life brought your way? Do you find yourself on a detour that has you confused? Have you run into a road block? Wherever you are, in whatever situation you find yourself, I challenge you to be intentionally dependent on God.

In southern Alabama there is a town called Enterprise, where one can find a monument to an insect: the Mexican boll weevil. In 1895 the boll weevil destroyed field after field of cotton, the major cash crop of the county. Desperate to survive the farmers looked for something that would grow in the soil and climate; they knew they had to diversity or die.

Soon they were planting peanuts and by 1919 the county’s peanut harvest was 10 times greater than best cotton crop on record. That year a fountain and monument were built and the inscription reads: “In profound appreciation of the boll weevil and what it has done as the herald of prosperity this monument was erected by the citizens of Enterprise, Coffee County, Alabama.” Out of a time of struggle and crisis had come new growth and success.

Adversity produced blessing.

That’s a difficult lesson – one we work hard to avoid. We want to escape trouble and hard times. We often pray for God to rescue us from problems and make everything nice and easy. We want to be comfortable!

Please don’t miss-read this! I’m not suggesting we start building monuments to a divorce, bankruptcy, or cancer diagnosis. But maybe we should consider the possibility that God is leading through those trials to a greater purpose.

Evil, enemies, hardship, pain, grief, foolishness – all have a purpose. They expose the deception of Satan. The truth is all evil has already been defeated. All enemies have already been scattered. All folly has already been exposed!

Instead, our strength is in the Lord who gives us the spiritual eyesight to see what Joseph saw. God is exalted forever. In light of that truth and principle, all else fails to have importance.

“Senseless people do not know, fools do not understand, that though the wicked spring up like grass and all evildoers flourish, they will be forever destroyed. But you, O LORD, are exalted forever.” Psalm 92:6-9

Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote, “Many Christians are unthinkably horrified when a real sinner is discovered among the righteous. So we remain alone with our sin, living in lies and hypocrisy . . . He who is alone with his sin is utterly alone.”

Not one of us is perfect. We know that about each other but most of the time we find it convenient to ignore that reality about ourselves. I don’t just make mistakes or mess up – I sin.

It’s time to stop blaming the environment, a spouse, our parents, a boss, or our neighbors. No longer can we go on ignoring our responsibility to live life according to God’s standards instead of our preferences. Just because we see someone else acting in sin does not make it right. We can’t justify our sin based on what “everyone else is doing.”

Too many times, what starts as a confession often ends up an excuse: “I didn’t mean to yell at you; I was having a bad day.” There is no excuse for sin. There is no one to blame. Don’t ignore it or pretend to not notice.

It’s time to admit it: I am not perfect.

“To confess means to own up to the fact that our behavior wasn’t just the result of bad parenting, poor genes, jealous siblings, or a chemical imbalance from too many Twinkies. Any or all of these factors may be involved. Human behavior is a complex thing. But confession means saying that somewhere in the mix was a choice, and the choice was made by us, and it does not need to be excused, explained, or even understood. The choice needs to be forgiven. The slate has to be wiped clean.” (John Ortberg in “The Life You Always Wanted”)

Sin must be confessed. Repentance must be genuine. Change must take place in our lives. In fact, genuine, authentic repentance always results in change.

“If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word has no place in our lives. My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have one who speaks to the Father in our defense–Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.” (1 John 1:8-2:2 NIV)

As the U.S. observes the 14th anniversary of the terrorist attacks in New York, Washington D.C., and Pennsylvania, I am rejoicing in the sixth anniversary of my wife Lois arriving in Glory! Six years ago on September 11, 2009, at 11:50 am, Lois was completely healed; the cancer was gone, she received a perfect body, and she joined the crowds in Heaven who arrived ahead of her.

There are still times when I miss her! Especially in the past ten months serving as a pastor. It’s something I never imagined doing without her and it’s a reminder that my strength comes from the Lord and I have to rely on Him.

I did not lose Lois – I know exactly where she is. Her skin and bones were left on the couch in the living room where she took her last breath. Her soul, the real Lois, is with God the Father and His Son, Jesus. Fortunately we have the Holy Spirit to comfort, encourage us, and remind us of the reality of eternal life.