Timothy's Thoughts

E ven though the wise men didn’t show up for a couple of years later, I find them a fascinating part of the Christmas story. Here these guys were watching the night sky in the east and something unusual happened, a star appeared. Somehow, they knew that meant something important had happened and they set off after it. That seems to indicate that this wasn’t the kind of star we see in the sky, but it was a bright light close to the earth. They follow it to Israel, like one might seek the end of a rainbow, but then they catch it. Only it doesn’t show them anything, so they ask the ruler. After some research, they discover that the child was to be born in Bethlehem, but not just any Bethlehem. There were actually two Bethlehems. Their research revealed which one. It wasn’t like today. They couldn’t Google, “odd star in the sky” and find out what it meant. They had to pull out the books to find that information. So, when they started looking in the book, they were looking for prophecies a...

I saw a video online that I’m sure was put together by an atheist. A cartoon atheist was hit by a city bus (ironic considering what the atheists paid for in Fort Worth this month) and he stood before God. I won’t go into all the discussion between the two, but the atheist as the question, “if all that’s required to get into heaven is that a person believe in you, why can’t I just start believing in you now?” It’s a question that many people, even Christians, have asked and I think it is worth our consideration today. The basic question seems to be, if God is good, why does he allow people to go to hell? Before we answer this question, I think it’s important that we avoid the temptation to assume certain characteristics of God and then question why such a person would do what the Bible says he will do. For example, we might assume that since God wants to give us all that’s good, he would never send us to hell. We should instead approach it from the other way. Given what the Bible tell...

F ollowing the big announcement about the “Good Without God” campaign here in Fort Worth, I stumbled across an atheist site. The folks there were talking about DART not approving the ads on the side of their buses because they reject all faith-based ads. One of the things I’ve observed about atheists is that they don’t see atheism as a matter of faith. The assumption that many of them make is that all matters of faith deal with our understanding of God. Since, atheists don’t believe that God exists, they don’t see their beliefs as being a matter of faith. I think it’s great that Christianity is so influential that even atheist think that any mention of faith-based things is probably Christian in nature, but it is a result of a misunderstanding of what faith is. Faith, in its most general form, is the belief that something someone has told you is true. Some children believe in Santa Claus. They’ve never seen Santa, but they have faith. Their faith is based on what their parents, books ...

A mazon.com now has Mother Not Wanted available for sale. It is listed at $11.99, which is $3.00 off of the cover price. I don't know if you'll be able to get them in time for Christmas, since it is so close upon us, but I do hope you will purchase one for yourself.

T here seems to be a new trend in the publishing world. At first, I didn’t think it was much of a trend, but now I’m beginning to wonder. If Michael Hyatt does it, I’ll know for sure. I first noticed it when Chip MacGregor did it. Of course, Rachelle Gardner has talked about doing it, but never has. But then Brandilyn Collins announced that she is doing it. Suddenly I feel like I’m in The Neverending Story fighting The Nothing. Could this be the forerunner of the end? If I were to do it, few people would notice. I have a few people who follow my blog. I would hope they would notice—especially if I announced it, but the thing about blogs is that people only notice what you’re doing if you tell them about it. No, even my most faithful readers wouldn’t notice if I did it. That is sad, but true. Maybe that is why they have decided to do it. Their decisions to do it gives us all reason to question whether we should do it. And I’m not sure I can give a good answer for why we shouldn’t. T...

T he other day I took some heat from a reader of this blog when I said that Christians ought to tithe. Obviously, I wouldn’t try to tell Christians they ought to tithe if Christians were giving more than 10% of their income. If a person gives 11%, what do we care if that person gave a tithe and added an offering on top of that or if he thinks of the whole thing as an offering. But I heard a statistic the other day. What I heard is that the average Christian gives 1.67% of his income. That’s not a question of whether a Christian should be tithing or not, that’s just wrong! Think about this, if the average person makes $50,000 a year, 1.67% is a whopping $835 per person. Now consider that if you and your spouse dine out once a week and spend $25, you are spending $465 more on dining out each year than what the average Christian gives to God. I’m not saying that you have to quit dining out so you can give to God, but the fact is that that $835 isn’t very much. But what if a Christian i...

S urely, I’m not the only one who does this, but when someone comments on a blog and mentions they have a book, I have a tendency to go looking for their book. I may not buy the book, but I may look for it to see what it’s about. Sadly, it is often harder than you might think. If I go directly to Amazon.com and type in the author’s name, I have pretty good luck most of the time, but sometimes that comes up with nothing. Sometimes I can follow the link back to the person’s blog or website, but you’d be surprised how many authors don’t provide links to their books on their websites. I sometimes resort to Google and even that yields results that are less than desirable. It’s no wonder they aren’t selling books, no one can find their books. While it won’t guarantee book sales, one thing that we need to do is to make sure that people have easy access to our books. The more times people to click before reaching the product page for a book, the fewer people who will click through to the pro...