But the Wife and I were watching a documentary not long ago of an incredibly talented man we both admire, and one of the sound bites of him was talking about how he, now in the latter part of his career, wanted to contribute to world peace.
The Wife, always the fount of common sense, said, “How about start by learning to get along with your wife?” You see, this man, we had learned in the documentary, had been married and divorced three times.
Look, I get it. It takes two to tango, and you can’t control what your spouse does. My best friend’s wife backslid and divorced him; not much he could have done about that and he tried everything. But I don’t think this is the norm. The typical divorce is more consensual, or it is made that way through infidelity.
It’s election season again in the USA, and while anything can happen, it certainly appears it will be Trump v. Biden, round 2.
If you bump around on the internet, it’s easy to find blogs by well-meaning Christians telling Christians why they must vote, many even quoting Scripture, as if Moses came down from Mount Sinai with ballots instead of tablets.
But what do you do if you can’t stomach Donald Trump’s narcissism, name-calling, or have a general objection to your Commander in Chief bragging about grabbing women “by the p****y”? But on the other hand you cannot in good conscience vote for Joe Biden, who continues to support a woman’s right to kill her unborn baby or a man’s right to use the same restroom as your wife or daughter? What do you do?
Some people will tell you that sometimes you have to choose between the lesser of two evils. If someone tells you that, ask them for a Bible verse. I don’t know when the Bible ever says we must choose evil. In fact, the Bible says just the opposite, promising the Lord will provide you “a way out” so you do not have to choose evil. I Corinthians 10:13.
George Washington Carver was born in 1864, into slavery, but through sheer determination, amplified by the power of God, he became one of the most important scientists of the 20th century. By the time he died in 1943 he was a legend.
Carver spent most of his adult life as a professor at the Tuskegee Institute in Tuskegee, Alabama, as the head of its Agriculture Department. As the boll weevil began to infest cotton crops throughout the Southern United States, people finally began to listen to Carver, who had encouraged farmers to diversify their crops so they were not so dependent upon cotton. At Carver’s insistence, farmers began to plant and harvest the peanut.
After praying and asking the Lord for insight about the universe and about mankind, the Lord encouraged Carver to focus on something smaller. He reminded Carver of Genesis 1:29 and specifically that He had given peanuts and other plants to mankind for their use. So Carver returned to his laboratory with some peanuts in hand and began studying them, breaking them down into their constituent parts and coming up with different uses for them. Carver would eventually come up with more than 300 uses for the peanut.
Carver did not care about money or personal acclaim. He would discover and develop ideas that could be used to start profitable businesses for new products, but instead of patenting those ideas, he made them freely available for the public good. He could have chosen to be a wealthy man by worldly standards, but he chose instead to be an effective man by Kingdom standards.
What led me to study Carver, and to his authorized biography by Rackham Holt, was to understand how Carver worked inspired by the Holy Spirit. He fully attributed his discovery of the many uses of the peanut to inspiration from the Lord, and I wanted to understand how he had gone about obtaining that inspiration.
In my last blog post I explained why Christians should journal. As I explained there, Christians have reasons to journal that non-Christians do not. But that leaves the question of how should Christians journal?
Sure, you can journal to express your innermost thoughts, practice your writing skills, or for the mental health effects of reflecting on and recording one’s life. But Christians have a higher calling: (1) their own sanctification; and (2) the expansion of the kingdom of God. Matthew 6:33.
Christian journaling-let’s call it Kingdom Journaling-fulfills these twin purposes that Jesus commanded should be our primary focus. That being said, here are six things to write about in your journal.
For the last week, I’ve gone back and begun reading through my journal. I started in October of 2008, and I’m now up to October 2014. It has taken me hours, but it has been worth it. It’s reminded me of the importance of journaling.
I’m not sure why I started journaling. I suspect some Christians journal because they want somewhere to freely express their thoughts, feelings, hopes, and dreams. Others journal because they like writing, and journaling is a way to practice the discipline of writing. Still others journal because they want to record the events of their life for prosperity’s sake.
All these are valid reasons to journal, but there is a more important and more fulfilling reason to journal for Christians, and that is to record the Lord’s work in and through their lives.
