Salty Zebra

  A question was posed to me yesterday, but I didn’t have the chance to write about it. “In what areas of your life do you feel most tempted to prioritize worldly gains over God’s truths?” I spent a little time thinking about it and I was a little surprised by my results. The typical answer to a question like this I would think would have to do with money. Maybe it’s just because God has provided comfortably for us in this area, but this is not a big temptation for me. He taught me very early in my walk to trust Him with our finances. We were living paycheck to paycheck, putting a little on the credit card but paying it off within a few months. He challenged us to tithe. I didn’t see how we could set aside 10% of our income when we were spending all of it already, but we started small and within a year we were up to the 10% mark we had looked towards. From that point on, we not only had enough to make ends meet, we had enough to save for the future as well! God has showed up for us b

  Long, long, long ago God rescued two men from similar circumstances. Noah was a righteous man in an evil generation. Interestingly, because of the long lives at the time, he could have known his great-great-great-great-great grandfather. For whatever reason, I’m going to guess because of how God made him, Noah didn’t live in sin in the same way his contemporaries did. In fact, the world lived in such sin in his day that God decided to wipe it out completely except for Noah’s family. He had Noah build a large boat, it took him about 100 years. You’ve got to figure he took more than a little ribbing over that time, but he stuck with it. Then God sent a flood which covered the earth. We tell little kids about the story of Noah and the Ark and all the animals, but what we leave out is the horror of the family sitting on the inside hearing the pounding of the people wanting in as the waters rise and they realize that this crazy guy was actually right. Fast forward to a few years after the

  Therefore, dear friends, since you are waiting for these things, strive to be found at peace, without spot or blemish, when you come into his presence. And regard the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as also our dear brother Paul wrote to you, according to the wisdom given to him,   2 Peter 3: 14-15 Would I say I’m at peace? That’s an interesting question. I deal with a lot of pain, but I’m ok with that. Would I like it to be gone? Absolutely! Does it affect my daily life? Definitely! Just because I’m ok with it doesn't mean that it doesn't affect me. So how can I say I’m ok with it? I feel like I’ve made my peace with it. I’ve learned techniques to tolerate it, breathing through it, stretching, elevating, heat, etc. I recognize that it affects my ability to think and I’ve come to accept that. On high pain days I still play games with my family, but I expect to lose by a large margin. I set aside more time for my Bible study or meal planning than I normally would.

  The Lord is not slow concerning his promise, as some regard slowness, but is being patient toward you because he does not wish for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.   2 Peter 3: 9  We are an instant gratification society. As soon as we hear about something we want it, and we want it now. The average credit card debt per person in the US is $7,951 as of 2022. If you double that for the two adult household, that number is more like $15, 902 per family. That number was up about $1,000 per person from 2021. It seems that as the world opened up after Covid, people felt the need to get out and vacation in ways they couldn’t before, whether they could afford it or not. With an average interest rate of 14.39%, America is enslaved to debt. Debt is not what I’m writing about here though, that’s a sidebar. What I’m getting at is, we’re not good at waiting. The idea of saving up for something we’d like in the future is pretty foreign to us. So then we come to a saving knowledg

Although these false teachers promise such people freedom, they themselves are enslaved to immorality. For whatever a person's succumbs to, to that he is enslaved.   2 Peter 2: 19 This is a hard teaching. There are so many things in this world that are competing for our attention. Not all of them are bad. But if they are something that would capture our heart, something that would steal our devotion to our first love, Jesus, then they are, even if they look good. There are so many teachers out there who are telling us that we can have it all. Live the way of the world and love Jesus too. Be a Christian and do whatever our neighbor is doing. But that’s not what the Bible says, and the Bible needs to be our source of ultimate truth. Right here it tells us that whatever a person succumbs to, to that he is enslaved. I hesitate to state an example here, but the way my brain works lately I don’t process conceptually well so an example it will have to be. Let’s take wine. Wine is no

Years ago, when my youngest son was a boy scout, we learned about orienteering. We would head out into a park or the woods and follow directions based on a compass to get us from point to point. Somewhere along the way, though, I learned that the compass we were using didn’t actually point north. No, the compass wasn’t broken and it didn’t need to be recalibrated. It’s just that magnetic north keeps shifting. In fact, they say it is moving by about 30 miles per year lately. These days it’s heading towards Siberia. While that doesn’t affect us much in the lower 48, in the northern latitudes these shifts reek havoc on navigation. So how do you find your way around when North keeps moving? You use True North. True North is determined by the North Pole which is a fixed place that does not change. The North Star, Polaris, also points to this direction. The hard part is, you won’t find a compass that points to true north, at least not consistently. You’ll have to navigate using a map, and

I am having a really hard day. This is my fifth day in a row of having a migraine, and today’s migraine brought nausea along with it – a rare but not unheard of companion. I am recovering from eye surgery that I had on Friday which was supposed to correct my double vision, incurred from brain surgery last year, but as of yet has only made it worse and the recovery involves a very sore, swollen eye and the feeling of all my eyelashes pointing inward. I am still also recovering from arm surgery earlier this year where I had 17 procedures done. My right arm and hand are still swollen and sore with limited mobility. My back and neck are a mass of knots and tight muscles, the likely cause of my recent migraines. There have definitely been some bright points, but yes, today is a really hard day.  - if so, then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from their trials, and to reserve the unrighteous for punishment at the day of judgement,   2 Peter 2: 9 Today’s verses, when read in context,