Timothy's Thoughts

M aybe I won’t go. While trying to plan my vacation time for the rest of the year, I pulled up the schedule for the BMA of Texas annual meeting . Since the meeting is close this year, it occurred to me that I might be able to put in a few hours at work before heading to the meeting. My big question was, when do I need to be there? I looked at the first day and what do I see? 1:00 pm – message, 2:15 pm – message, 3:15 pm – message, 8:00 pm – message. In between we have worship, question & answer, and a concert. There’s some other stuff in there that I don’t know what it is, but it looks to me like there is absolutely no business on day one. Keep in mind that the whole purpose of this meeting is to hear reports from the departments of the association and to conduct business. It isn’t until 2:00 pm on day two that we see anything that looks like business. But it looks like the plan is to cram all of the departments into an hour and thirty minutes. After that, it is more break-out...

D uring the summer before I graduated college, I worked in fire protection. One of my tasks was to college fire extinguishers from the various locations in the factory where I worked, empty them, replace any damaged parts, refill them, and place them back where they belonged. Occasionally, we would find one that was clogged up, so it wouldn’t discharge. That was the whole point of the exercise. We needed to find the ones that wouldn’t work, so that people would have access to a working extinguisher. Shortly after we began that task, we discovered one of these and one of the guys we were working for helped us with it. He removed the nozzle while it was still under pressure hurriedly positioned it so that it would dump into the container we were supposed to empty these things into. Sometime later, I was working alone and ran into the same situation. Rather than releasing the air pressure, like I should have, I tried doing what he had done. Instead of the result he had, I ended up with a ...

T hom Rainer posted an article on Four Types of Churches That Will Soon Die . He includes in that list the “ex-community church.” It reminded me of some of these farm churches that began within riding distance of four or five farms. Since families were large, it was easy for them to reach fifty in attendance from just those few families and then there may have been others who came from a little farther out. Now, communities are in towns that may be five to ten miles away from the church building and there may be ten people meeting in the building. It isn’t just that the church doesn’t look like the community, the church isn’t even in the community. But I’m a member of a church in a large city. There is no shortage of people who are living around the church building. 50,000 people are within easy walking distance. The irony is that with that many people right around the church, there is no sense of community. In a small town, you go to the grocery sto...

A s a student in high school I learned that it isn’t good to tell a teacher that she is wrong, even when you know the subject better than she does. It is better to ask a question and to shape that question in such a way that the teacher will realize her mistake while attempting to answer the question. I never formalized that method, but Gregory Koukl does in his book Tactics . But rather than addressing how not to offend someone who has the ability to influence your grade, Koukl approaches this from the standpoint of how to share your faith. These days, we encounter many people who are offended by Christian beliefs. The tactics Koukl outlines in his book can help us to reduce the conflict and help them discover the truth of what we are saying for themselves. And even if they don’t, perhaps the people listening will. The meat of the book is three questions that we can ask that will cause people to consider what they are saying. Often, people are just repeating things that other people...

D o you ever wonder if the Lord answers prayer? I’m not asking you to answer at church, where the answer is always, “Of course, the Lord answers prayer.” I’m asking you to answer from that place where the silence is deafening, where your heart is broken, where you are out of breath from a punch in the gut, where the floor is wet with your tears. In that place, do you ever wonder if the Lord answers prayer? At church, we have these prayer lists. Every once in a while, someone will mention “a praise” because someone is out of the hospital. Someone might mention “a praise” because someone found a job or found a house to buy. But those things may have happened whether we prayed or not. What I’ve noticed is that people tend to praise the Lord for answered prayer when they receive their petition in a predictable way. In other situations, people seem to pass it off as happenstance, or “I just wasted a good worry.” I wonder if we aren’t looking at answered prayer wrong. Several months ago, I s...

N ot a big fan of the words “I love you.” Words are so easily said, but that doesn’t mean they mean anything. Me being a guy, I tend to equate love and respect. One doesn’t often say, “I respect you.” If people respect you, you’ll know it without them saying it. Here’s how: 1. Their Handshake There’s more to a handshake than just clasping hands. If people respect you, their grasp will be firm. Also, they will make eye contact as they are shaking your hand. If people grasp your hand weakly and they are already looking for the next person to talk to, they don’t respect you. 2. Remember Your Name People who respect you will remember your name. They will not only know your name, but they will make every effort to call you by your preferred name. And if they aren’t calling you by name, they’ll use “Sir” or “Ma’am”. 3. Nod or Wave To nod or wave is a sign of respect. This is usually done at a distance. Also, people will nod or wave to people they don’t know as well as those they do. Even so,...

H acked! It’s not something that you want to happen, but it happened to me. It’s a little embarrassing, actually. I’m supposed to know about these things. I’m supposed to be able to prevent this. Yeah, and so is Microsoft. I’ll get over it. Once I get past the feeling of being violated, it’s actually pretty cool. I was able to look at the look at the code they inserted, and I want to talk about that, but first, I’m not exactly sure how they got a foothold. It’s possible that they managed to get my password or maybe the password of the hosting company. I’ve seen situations in which the hackers were able to add get requests to a URL that were then translated into links to other places. But in this case, the index file itself was modified and a large number of files were uploaded to the server. Needless to say, I’ve changed my password and deleted the files. I discovered the problem while working on moving my website to a new server. I haven’t been happy with the previous hosting company ...

I f you haven’t noticed, the current fad is minimalism. People are opting for small houses rather than big mansions. Some people are opting out of housing completely, and living with just what they can carry on their backs, not by necessity, but by choice. Instead of having several devices, people want just one that does what they need. Designers are embracing the concept, focusing on the basic needs and trimming out the extra. I saw an ad for a “minimalist watch” that does nothing but tell time. There’s something refreshing about the whole thing. How different this is from what I remember from years past. I used to have a watch with a calculator on it. I remember buying watches with an alarm, an hourly beep, water resistance to 200 meters, a clock, a calendar, a way to tell direction, and who knows what else. What do I need with a watch that I can dive with? What do I need with the rest of that stuff? But I wanted it because it was available. So what changed? People are, generally, ov...

W e’re well past the middle of the year and by now there are a bunch of people who have given up on their New Year’s resolutions. You’re probably looking at me funny for even mentioning New Year’s resolutions at this time of year. That’s why I don’t do resolutions. I set goals, instead. If I had written a resolution, it probably would’ve been to ride a bicycle at least 80 miles each week. That would give me 4,160 miles for the year, and I would’ve already blown it. But my goal for the year is to ride at least 4,000 miles and at 2,668 miles, I’m tracking well ahead of my goal. At this point, I could skip the cold weather completely and still reach my goal. But let’s take a look at the goals I set and see how I’m doing. Write a Book I’ve been slow to start on this one, but in the past few days I’ve written the first 35 pages of one. I’m convinced it is a book worth writing, so I expect I’ll keep at it. I even have a couple of ideas for other books that I’m looking forward to. At this poi...

C hristians often talk about being blessed. Usually, they are talking about something that is good. On Facebook, I’ve often seen people post pictures of their spouse and kids doing something fun and they caption it simply, “Blessed.” But is that what a blessing looks like? As a single guy, I’ve got to say, I hope not. I’m happy for them. Really, I am. But if a blessing looks like a wife sleeping on a couch with the kids sleeping next to her, what’s an empty couch? A curse? Someone is sure to point out that at least I have a couch, and that’s true. In fact, I’m happy I have a couch. It’s a nice couch. It is soft leather and it looks like new. I give the Lord full credit for giving me the ability to buy that couch. It really is a nice couch. But do you know what would happen if responded to the picture of a sleeping wife and kids with a picture of my very nice empty couch and captioned it “Blessed”? I’ll give you a hint. It wouldn’t be pretty. Even though people talk about being single a...