I was a brand new employee at the time, having just joined the staff of a major international ministry. The mistake I made involved paper. Not just a few sheets of it. Not just a package or a box of it like you buy at Staples and carry home in the trunk of your car. But the kind that costs thousands of dollars and comes direct from the manufacturer on rolls as big as Volkswagens.

That’s the kind of paper that was needed for the job I was working on.

And I ordered the wrong size. A special size. That could not be returned. Ever.

I found out about my mistake when the burley, brusque director of the production department marched into my office and tossed a sample of the unusable paper on my desk. “Did you order this?” he asked.

Staring down at it, I felt the blood rush to my cheeks as it dawned on me what I had done. How could I have been so stupid? I thought. Here I am the new kid on the block. Nobody in this ministry knows me yet. Nobody has any reason to believe in me and I’ve already proven I’m an idiot.

“Do you have any idea how much this will cost us in time and money?” The director’s voice was rough as a Rottweiler’s.

“Yes, sir, I do.” Tears pooled and I struggled to blink them away before I looked up at him. (Bad enough he had to deal with an incompetent little girl. Don’t make it worse by making him deal with an incompetent crying girl.) “I’m so sorry. There’s no excuse. I made a mistake. I feel so horrible about it…”

The director, impatient with my groveling, interrupted me. “Oh, stop it!” he said, his gruffness giving way to a grin. “Your mistake didn’t knock Jesus off His thone. He can handle the situation. He’ll show us how to use this paper on another job. Everything will turn out all right.” 

Sure enough, it did. Now, 26 years later, that paper is long gone. Used up in the work of the God. And everything is fine. Nobody but me even remembers my dumb mistake.

In the meantime, I’ve made more of them. Lots more. Some I knew about. Some I didn’t. But whenever the devil tries to torture me about them, I just refer him to the first phrase of James  3:2. It says, “We all make many mistakes…” Then I remind him of what Lyndon Thomson—a man who turned out to be one of the dearest I’ve ever known—told me that day in my office.

My mistakes don’t knock Jesus off His throne. He can handle them.

Last week, Lyn went home to be with the Lord. His memorial service was yesterday. I couldn’t be there but that doesn’t mean I’m not remembering him.  I am and I always will. So here’s to Lyn with love and gratitude for all he did and all he meant to so many of us. Here’s to a man who with one sentence and one act of grace forever touched my life.

It doesn’t sound like the punch line of a joke, but it is. At least, my parents thought so when I was a kid. Whenever something turned out to be waaay harder than anyone expected, they would burst out laughing and say to each other, “Ha ha ha! Simply put two drops in each ear!”

The line isn’t funny to anybody else in the world, of course. Eventually I noticed this and asked them about it. Turns out that when I was a squeaking pip of about two years old I kept coming up with ear aches. The doc prescribed some medicine to ease the pain. “It’s easy to administer,” he said to my parents, “Simply put two drops in each ear.”

Sounded good at the time.

It sounded less so, however, a few hours after they tried to do it. By then reality had set in: The reality of a recalcitrant toddler who DOESN’T WANT ANYTHING PUT IN HER EARS! The reality of wrestling said toddler into a position prone enough and still enough to get the drops in anyway. The reality of trying to convince a screaming, thrashing tot who is already panic-stricken by pain that her parents are not trying to kill her.

My parents, saints that they were, persevered through it all. When it was over, the medicine was in my ears. And on my ears. And running down my cheeks. And on the bedspread. And a half dozen other places. My parents sat exhausted and in a state of disarray patting me as, half-sobbing, I drifted off to sleep.

Mission accomplished, they glared at the instructions on the medicine bottle. Simply put two drops in each ear.

Can I tell you a bit of embarrassing truth? Sometimes I want to glare at preachers in much the same way.

After they’ve preached some fabulous message about simply walking by faith and living in victory, I want to grab them by their silk tie (or their pineapple shirt, or graphic T-shirt, or whatever) and say, “Do you have any idea how hard that is sometimes? And if you do, would you mind talking to us a little about how the dickens we’re supposed to get through it?”

A few weeks ago I was preparing to preach myself (I can talk about preachers with impunity because I are one) and the Lord did that for me. He downloaded to my heart the message I’d been needing to hear. He talked to me about just how tough the disciple’s life can be sometimes and showed me in Scripture that this “race” we’re running isn’t one where you sprint like a gazelle to the finish line.

It’s more like a combination race/wrestling match. You run a few yards; some brutish hulk throws you to the ground and pummels you; you fight him off, get back on your feet and keep running. Then you repeat the process for… like…years.

Whoa. That’s a serious kind of race. Good thing we have what it takes to win it. Good thing we’re more than conquerors in Christ Jesus. Good thing God gives us more and more grace, huh?

I shared some of what the Lord showed me in my recent message, Run to Win. (If you’re on our mailing list, you’ve probably received it already. If you aren’t and you’d like to hear it, click on Contact and let me know. We’ll send a CD of it to you right away.) There was one thing I didn’t include in the message though.

As the Lord was taking me through the Bible, reminding me of how many difficulties famous race-runners like Abraham, Isaac, Moses, Joseph, David, and Daniel faced, I asked Him a question. “Lord, what about Jesus?” I said. “He’s our example.”

Even Jesus went through hardship, He answered. He learned obedience “… by the things which He suffered (Hebrews 5:8).

“Well, right, after Gethsemane things got tough but until then He had pretty smooth sailing.”

You think so? said the Holy Spirit. Let me give you a quick recap. Jesus was wiser than all the Scribes and Pharisees at 12 years old. He knew more than any minister on the planet and felt He was ready to fulfill His call. But He had to spend 17 more years sweating in a carpentry shop, waiting for God to give Him the go-ahead. That’s hard.

When He finally did get His divine commission, He had to go into the wilderness for 40 days. Think about it. He’s spent 17 years waiting to preach and now He has to spend 40 days of His short 3-year ministry out in the middle of nowhere with nobody to talk to but the devil? That’s hard.

He finishes with the wilderness, goes back to Nazareth to launch His ministry. The folks respond to His first message by gnashing teeth and trying to hurl Him off a cliff. He waited 17 years and 40 days for this? That’s hard.

The only person from His family who didn’t think He was crazy was His cousin, John. But as soon as He actually started His ministry, John got offended. Then Herod cut off his head. That’s hard.

Everywhere Jesus went, the Jews were scheming against Him, trying to trap Him, plotting to kill Him. He wore Himself out preaching, fell asleep in the boat and the devil tried to kill Him with a storm. His disciples didn’t even have enough faith for Him to get a nap! He had to be taking care of them all the time. When He left them alone, they nearly went to fisticuffs over which one of them was the greatest. And at the very height of His ministry, when He preached the real truth about His mission, everybody except the 12 disciples turned their back on Him and left. Imagine if you had a ministry with thousands of partners and in one day all but 12 called and asked to be removed from your partner list. That’s hard.

And all that happened before the cross.

Here’s my point and here’s why all that is good news for us. Whenever things start going haywire in our lives, whenever we hit obstacles and roadblocks and some Jessie Ventura-type throws us to the mat, the devil always (always!) tells us it’s because we’re losers or we’re messing things up somehow.

But that’s a lie.

The truth is that’s all just a part of the race.

So keep running, friend. Keep fighting. When it gets hard, don’t let the devil condemn you. Just go to Jesus, get some more grace, let Him bandage up the boo-boos and go after it again.

Sounds easy when you say it, I know. (Simply put two drops in….) It’s not so easy when you’re doing it. But, easy or hard, you have what it takes to finish. And in the end, you win.

Click here and download The Power of His Call by Aaron Ingram. It will bless you.

Whoa…good stuff, Doc. Not just for NBA players but for those of us who have suited up in righteousness and are leaving it all on the court for Jesus. For us, as for Garnett and gang, trust is the key. As long as we trust Jesus—His love and commitment to us, His power working in and through us—we can play free. We can have the time of our lives and walk off the court as champions when the game is over.

Sure, we’ll miss some shots now and then. We’ll get blocked by a few 7 foot demons waving their hands in our face and end up tossing a few air balls. But so what? Our Father owns the league. As long as we keep playing and trusting, we win.

The t-shirts were printed before the foundation of the world. More Than Conquerors, they say.

So stop sweating it and start trusting. Play free. And enjoy the game.

Reaching for the car keys, she jerked them from the ignition, and gleefully sent them sailing out the window.

For a few hundred feet, the old, coke-bottle green Studebaker kept rolling down the road. Oblivious to the fact that that its keys had gone missing. Unperturbed by my dad hollering, hammering the steering wheel, and stomping on the brakes. It yawned, stretched, and coasted to a stop.

I don’t know this for sure, but I suspect my mother dozed through the hubbub. (She could sleep through the apocalypse in a moving car.) Most likely she awoke in confusion and called out to my dad as he searched the bar ditch on hands and knees getting grass stains on his khaki pants, “Honey, did we lose something?”

Good question. Well, maybe it wasn’t a good one right then…but now it seems brilliant to me. Especially for us as contemporary believers because anybody can look around and see that we’ve lost some really important things. Take contentment, for example. Where is that these days? Did we jerk it out of the ignition while motoring down the highway of prosperity and chuck it out the window? Did we decide somewhere along the way that we just don’t need it anymore?

I got to wondering about that yesterday. I was reading an article about people who live to be over 100 and what a contented bunch they are. According to a recent study, they tend to have shockingly “sunny outlooks.” Particularly when it comes to finances, they “derive a remarkable amount of happiness from the…resources available to them — even if those resources are often limited.”

Imagine it. These happy, old geezers can say just like Paul said: I have learned in whatever state I am, to be content.

Is that even possible anymore in our circles? Can we learn to navigate the road to financial blessing and, at the same time, be content with such things as we have? Can we find the grace to be happy—right now…with our current bank balance…at our current job…in the midst of our current circumstances?

The Bible makes it clear, such contentment is a vital key to increase. It’s as vital as faith. As vital as confession. Without it, our forward progress grinds to a halt.

Maybe we should spend some extra time on our knees finding our contentment again so that, like that old green Studebaker, we can get moving on down the road.

This recent post, written by fellow-blogger, Laura–and passed along to me by my faithful friend, Jason–will show you how. Click here to read.

It’s just been released and it’s a great read. One of her best books ever, in my opinion (although she has a lot of good ones). So buy it, okay? Then do what it says because there are a lot of people who love you and need you to stick around–healthy and strong–for a long, long time.

If you want to save yourself a trip to the bookstore click here now to order.

Today I learned from them that Demi’s husband, a toddler named Ashton, has reaffirmed that her youthfulness is genetic not synthetic, and that they’re planning to have a baby. As I pondered the accompanying photo (and the tag line that promised an entire slide show of them) it occurred to me that the paparazzi would really have had a heyday with Sarah.

Not Sarah as in Jessica Parker, or Palin, but Sarah as in the wife of Abraham.

Talk about a sizzling senior citizen! Sarah was still turning heads and getting pregnant at 90.

As a mercy to my husband, I’ve been working on my “Sarah faith” lately. (The head-turning part not the other part.) I don’t know how I’m doing. I’m pretty sure I’m not in any danger of being hounded by paparazzi yet. Mostly I’m just working on my ability to look in the mirror and—like Smith Wigglesworth said—not be moved by what I see.

To be honest, though, I’m not too concerned about it. One way or another, I’m going to end up looking real good. Even better than Sarah or Demi. I’m certain of it because the Bible promises that when Jesus comes back, the glory of God is going to do for me what no amount of nipping and tucking, no amount of anti-aging cream, no amount of antioxidants could ever do.

When Jesus returns, all of us who belong to Him are going to get an instant, extreme makeover.

First John 3:2 says it this way: “…we can’t even imagine what we will be like when Christ returns. But we do know that when he comes we will be like him, for we will see him as he really is.” (New Living Testament)

That idea wouldn’t be too exciting if Jesus was still an ordinary-looking person, dusty-footed and sandal-wearing, like He was when He was on earth. But that’s not what He is these days. Far from it. According to the first chapter of Revelation, He shines like the sun, has skin like burnished bronze, eyes like fire, and a voice that thunders like Niagara Falls.

I’ve decided that’s the image I’m going to keep in mind even while I’m working on my Sarah-faith. I’m going to do what Peter said and rest my hope fully upon the grace that is to be brought to me at the revelation of Jesus Christ (1 Peter 1:13). I’m going to look at myself in the mirror every day and remind myself that Jesus is coming soon and when He gets here, I’m going to be looking good!

For the truth about God is known to [all men] instinctively. God has put this knowledge in their hearts. (New Living Testament)

Who opened the eyes of the august academians to this profound spiritual truth?

A bunch of babies. (You gotta love it.)

According to a news report citing today’s Daily Mail:

…experiments conducted by the psychology department at Yale University showed that babies may already have a sense of right and wrong before it is introduced to them by their family.

One trial used puppets, where the “naughty” and unhelpful characters were rejected by the 6-month-old babies, and the “good” characters were embraced. When babies were told to take away treats from the “bad” puppets, they not only took the treats away, but smacked the puppet on the head.

“A growing body of evidence suggests that humans do have a rudimentary moral sense from the very start of life,” said professor Paul Bloom, a psychologist at Yale University in New Haven, Conn. “Some sense of good and evil seems to be bred in the bones.”

The results of the experiments showed that the infants overwhelmingly preferred the “good” and helpful characters to the villain puppets.

“This wasn’t a subtle statistical trend; just about all the babies reached for the good guy,” Bloom said.

All I can say is, “Preach it, baby! Preach it!”

(To read both the news article and the Daily Mail report, click here.)

“We’re within frightening reach of being able to grow bigger churches while failing to grow bigger people. We are increasingly tooled and trained in technology and management techniques, better resourced with music and media effects, and better housed and staged for added consumer appeal. While not attacking these outsourced resources, I’m asking about our outcomes. Amid our heavyweight enterprises at refining style, we are growing weak in substance.”

Especially if you are in church leadership, this article is worth reading.