Apostle David Johndrow - Fire And Grace

Maybe you've watched ABC's Wide World of Sports a few years - sheesh - decades back like I did. I remember seeing that ski jumper take a spill at 60+ miles per hour just before hitting the end of the jump, taking out some sort of pole and clobbering a few spectators - the agony of defeat! If you have worked with, been around, watched them on TV, are related to, or own your own teenager, then the phrase, "the agony of defeat" takes on a whole new meaning. I am sure that you are able conjure up your own thoughts of teenagers - even your own teen-aged experiences - both the ones labeled victory and defeat. 19 years ago I was at Cape Cod Hospital , and I was enjoying the "thrill of victory," as my middle daughter was born. I was working alone at a Camera store in the Falmouth Mall - a Tuesday in the late afternoon. I was scheduled to close at 9. The phone rang about 6 o'clock and it was the hospital saying that my wife had been admitted and they were go...

Today the most spiritual I am going to get, is mentioning the ChristianRock.net bumper sticker on my Honda DOCH Civic Si . It is a sure sign that it's me if I cut you off. For a metropolitan area of nearly 5 million, you would think that someone around here would know how to use turn signals. I have been living and working in greater Boston for over 3 years. You've heard about us on the radio. Songs like Dirty Water (Standells) and Beantown (John Cena) and Skinhead on the MBTA (Dropkick Murphy) only begin to tell the story. We are well known for the Sox , hockey great Bobby Orr , the band Boston , launching a few of the 9/11 terrorists from Logan Airport, the 22 Billion Dollar Big Dig and TRAFFIC . Boston only rates number 8 in the Top Cities for Traffic Congestion - I am assuming that is on a scale from 1 to 5. Each day commuters vie for position on the Mass Pike. They have added another Fast Lane on my route. Even with a speed limit of 15 MPH through the elec...

Have you thought about where we are headed as a global society, what needs to change, and is there really an Armageddon? There was a pretty good discussion about who is going to Heaven a few days ago, maybe you read it. The Bible says on the great and mighty day of the Lord, we'll find out. Before that day comes, Jesus said the following would take place. Matthew 24:5 For many will come in my name, claiming, 'I am the Christ,' and will deceive many. 6 You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. 7 Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. Some of our commenters are of the mind that Christianity is hoax because Jesus never really lived. Others are fine with Jesus the man, Jesus the prophet, but not with Jesus the God - and that's OK with me. However; in the last year we've had some really devasta...

Lot's wife wanted to go back to Sodom, and she turned into a pillar of salt. The time of God's wrath is mentioned in both the old and the new testament. It is a historic event in which God starts to deal directly with the satanic forces and the evil people responsible for the destruction of the earth. How about you, do you think God's mad at you? Do you feel guilty for anything, and you can't seem to get relief? Are you certain your eventual face-to-face meeting with God Almighty is going to be worse than a bad interview at fast-food joint? A lot of people see God as a "Mad Dad." If you read the Bible and do a search for the word "Hell," there are only 14 results in the NIV. If you search for Heaven, there are 606. Think about it, Heaven is much more on God's mind than Hell. And there are 42 verses with the phrase " Eternal Life !" I am not sure why we think that God is mad all the time, or that He is sitting there trying to find us doi...

Everyone has heard about Joseph Stack and how he purposely flew his plane into an Austin IRS building, killing himself and one government employee. As usual, the commentators went crazy the past few days since his daughter called him a hero - just as crazy as they did over the Tiger Woods apology. For the record, let me say that I hate celebrity worship and publications like People Magazine. I used to like the tabloids because the they had outrageous headlines like: Elvis Returns from the Afterlife to Date Jenna Bush , and Aliens Abduct Obama, Biden Now President - Aliens Return Obama Upon Finding Out! As a kid I did have a few sports heroes, and wanted to be like some of my favorite music legends. But that is what kids do, not adults! I took down my Jimmy Page and Bobby Orr posters when I got married - I think my wife took the Mark Spitz one. I don't really care where Tiger Woods keeps his putter. If I was his friend, I would suggest keeping it locked up - well at least when his...

Who do you think gets to go the Heaven? Tiger Woods, George Bush, Mother Theresa, Adolf Hitler, Billy Graham, President Obama, The Pope, Benny Hinn, Joseph Smith, Buddha - who? If you are like most folks, you are thinking, "that one, "nope, not that one," or "Hitler; definitely not." There are others that will say, "We just don't know, we can't be the judge. God alone is the judge." Now that's playing it safe. So, who gets to go to Heaven when they die? And more importantly, how do you get there? If you read yesterday's blog entitled, Have You Wondered Why Man Can't Fly and the Church Can't Get Along? , then you know that there are many opinions - and a lot of myths about the Christian religion. Most Christians would say the Bible is the 411 on the "Who Goes to Heaven" game. And for sure, there are other thoughts on the afterlife. Billions of folks claim to be Christians , we've discussed that before. For those th...

I have an online buddy that is becoming a great friend. We keep up online, and talk on the phone about once a week. Yesterday we had a chat about some denominational differences. It wasn't a debate, but a sincere conversation about what the Bible says, and what man has added to it. In the midst there were questions about religious practice. A denomination is simply an emphasis on certain biblical truths; often "colored" by a culture, a religious experience or a move of God. The truth is there are lots of denominations . We have many expressions of Christianity in the US , and also some cults which seem Christian on the outside but reject the central truth that Jesus taught: Jesus is God. A cult is defined as any so-called Christian organization that denies the divinity of Christ - Jesus is/was/always has been God. I am not going to try to answer the age old question regarding theology: "Who's right?" (I am writing this blog because I think I am!) Please...

This year The Good Wife has been airing on CBS. It is about a Chicago prosecutor that ended up in jail for a number of indiscretions; for which we are not entirely sure actually happened. It's an interesting show, a mix of CSI and Law & Order, with a personal story line. Each week a legal case is solved, and the struggle of the Florrick' over these said infidelities, plays out in small vignettes. The Bible has a lot to say about wives, but a well known favorite is in Proverbs 31 . "A wife of noble character who can find?" The Proverbs passage is acrostic, each verse beginning with a successive letter of the Hebrew alphabet. I also happen to think that it is about the church more than it is about an actual wife. Substitute the word "church" for the word "wife" and see if it makes sense to you. Back to the subject of wives. I have a great one that I met through Yahoo Personals. Thank God it used to free or who knows where I'd be today! She...

While Al Gore has egg on his globally warmed face, and our southern friends get a taste of Jack Frost and his band of snow-making demons, I'm thinking Summer! I survived the Blizzard of '78 and I also remember what I was doing when the lights went out ( November 9th, 1965 ). I had been hoping to play with some paper punch-out airplanes (paper dolls for boys, OK, next) that I got at the school book fair at William Douglas School. When I lived on Cape Cod, we had two blizzards and a snowstorm leaving 6' to 8' drifts in 1987. I think it's still sort of funny at the first sign of snow, my rough-and-tumble hillbilly friend - the mountain man of the Appalachians - 4-wd drivin', shotgun totin', power lifting, football star and former Marine, still runs to 7-11 for bread and milk in case a few flakes hit the ground! How much milk and bread do you need for a *cough* snowstorm? HERE is Tony C's take. There he sits, cursing the 10-day forecast, trying exercise th...

Disappointment is a common emotion. And every Christian I have ever met has been disappointed. I am sure that Jesus was disappointed at times - He did have emotions. For the record, disappointment is not found in the Bible. There were, however; many disappointing circumstances in the lives of Bible characters. Think: Joseph, Jonah and Peter. I think that as Christians we see faith as the ability to just know something will happen: place coin in machine, turn key, out comes candy. I suppose sometimes God works like that with us. We have a thought, desire, need, or want, and we ask God for it - like parking spaces or arriving at the scene of an accident. I call these the "Oh my God!" prayers. The process is a bit like a spiritual scratch ticket. I have found that my faith works like a muscle - a puny one most of the time. Some days I have a walk in the park, and other days it is a marathon for which I often feel unprepared. When we contrast faith and disappointment, there ...

Some random thoughts: Why is it that no matter how hard you try to do the right thing, you still make mistakes? Why don't alcoholics stop drinking the first time they get arrested? Why is it that kids never want help from their parents? Do you think that is how God feels - that we don't want help? Why don't people tell you they don't want your help before they start telling you their problems? How come, even with a new PC, the Internet is still just as slow with the old one? Why do you have to stay at work for lunch, if you aren't going to eat? How can it be the same temperature in FL as it is in MA, yet everyone thinks that it is warm there? Why is the braille on drive-through ATM machines? How does Stevie Wonder know the car is red? If magic tricks aren't really magic, why don't they just tell us how they do them? If life is just a vapor, then how come we still have long days? The CD that was playing in the hospital when Charlotte was born, is on now. Have...

Bob stood behind the counter smoking an unfiltered Camel, adding up a small grocery purchase on the back of a paper sack using a blue ball point pen, and talking a customer about his favorite fishing spot along the St. Lawrence River in Northern New York. Bob, passed away February 13th, 1998 at the age of 72 from brain cancer. HERE is that story. For many reasons, my dad seemed to be happiest shootin' the breeze about fishing, hunting, football and his kids if they weren't in earshot. Always more talkative after a "couple of cold ones" he was a fascinating storyteller, always exaggerating - and could have easily given Garrison Keiler a run for his money. An Army vet with two purple hearts and tours of duty in the South Pacific, Normandy and Korea, he was a bit tough, a bit shy, but well liked by just about everyone he worked with. He wasn't always easy to live with, but he loved his family to the best of his ability. He was fiercely proud of every goal scored, e...

This morning I awoke to the news that Patrick Kennedy will not be running for re-election in Rhode Island. Just weeks after he called Scott Brown's campaign a joke, the recently passed Ted Kennedy's son calls it quits. All I can say is that it's stunning. I mean the Kennedy' have been a family of politicians for 60 years! I was alive when John F. Kennedy was assassinated. I remember watching the whole thing on TV - well, there were no cartoons for a week! The babysitter sat crying, and Americans basically were in shock. It still has a haunting air about it - the conspiracy theories - and the fact that no one is particularly certain about what happened that day in Dealey Plaza . In 4th grade both Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bobby Kennedy were gunned down in cold blood in the Spring of 1968. For some silly reason we stood at the flag pole in front of school and said the Pledge of Allegiance in both English and Spanish. At the time the Kennedy' were heroes in Ameri...

If we look over church history, we see lots of heroes of the faith. Some are called saints because of their work, their influence on society, and the fact that they have preformed a couple of certified miracles. In the world there are billions that are/claim to be Christians - I know I was surprised when I looked HERE . How many are in what denominations? HERE is that info. 2.1 Billion Christian worldwide with 84% of the US claiming to be Christian - that's a lot of bread and wine every month! I find it interesting that only 1% define themselves as non-denominational or "other." That leaves a lot of folks that tow the party-line of their denomination. I am a little jaded living in New England, where we are predominately Roman Catholic; about 72%, where as the national average is only 22%. Oh yeah, and one more tidbit: only about a third of so-called Christians attend a church service every week. This blog is not about denominations, it is about Christians. Regardless of...

You just walked out the front door of your church. How do you feel? Was it a good service? Do you feel the presence of God? Are you looking forward to going back? I received some comments from folks that really like their churches. That is great to hear! More often I hear from folks that are in the fringes, or not attending at all. That's one reason I am pushing for reform. There are lots of different reasons why folks are down on church. Some do not feel significant in church, others don't feel that their church is really doing everything they should be according to thew Bible - others are just hungry for more of God and thirsty for the things of Jesus and can't seem to find it. If you can't be part of the solution, then don't complain. I like that. We all have ideas of what the perfect church should be - and many would say there isn't one. Certainly the catalyst for our church solutions should be from the Lord - His wisdom - not ours. It is often true that th...

I LOVE holidays, especially Valentines day. I think of Valentines as a mini-honeymoon. My wife and I have a fair amount of family and kid time - but not always enough alone time - well, until we start getting into the CSI and Law & Order repeats - that will free up an hour each day. Valentines Day is a good excuse to focus on being together and enjoying love. I wrote about the the real Valentine's Day three years ago HERE . The holiday seems to have a few standard requirements according to Matt . But I have my own list: I like to buy my wife flowers, and any day is a good excuse - even the dog's birthday! With three dogs the odds of hitting one of their birthdays is higher than the average - but just today is a good reason. Pre- Dave Ramsey , I used to get flowers for her more often. I stupidly agreed to a budget without flowers - but it has guitars as a line item, so I am afraid to renegotiate. I don't know why flowers work for my wife (and lots of other women), but I...

There are a lot of things that make a church tick. The more I listen - especially to those that have complaints, the more I see things have got to change. As we transition from the old religious way of doing things, to a spirit led body that is able to respond to the the commands of Jesus and the needs of a region, the church has some adjusting to do - a new wine skin if you will. I also hear talk of revival, but even passionate believers with charismatic magnetism need to have a plan; a method of working that accomplishes the deeds of Heaven. It cannot be a legalistic framework, but must be a living breathing organism that can adapt to the changing needs of the church, and the surrounding community. I talk a lot about what the church must do to jettison religious paradigms. Today I thought I would spell it out with opposites in no particular order. Knowing about God Knowing God Services Spirit Led Meetings Programs Spirit Led Teaching Pastor-centric...

Sarah Palin was the main speaker at TEA Party convention in Nashville over the weekend. No matter what you think of Sarah Palin or the TEA Party movement (personally I am mixed over both), here are the messages you don't want to overlook. Many are familiar with the saying: Neither a borrower nor a lender be, and some attribute it to the Bible, but it is a quote from Shakespeare. The Bible is clearer on the issue. "...the borrower is a slave to the lender" (Proverbs 22:7). If the Bible is true, we have become slaves to China and other foreign investors. If you don't believe that, just look at the manufacturing labels next time you are in Wal*Mart. Unbridled consumerism in the US has forced manufacturers to secure the cheapest labor they can find. The past prosperity and easy credit only fueled the competition. Had we had tariffs in place to level the economic playing field, the bubble of economic happiness would have been much smaller. Our country is trillions of dol...

Some folks are really sick of church and don't even want to go any longer. For many, it is irrelevant and life-draining. Engaging with God and his people no longer seems worth the effort. If you are not attending church regularly, how would you answer the following question? Church is _____________ and that is why I don't go. A. Boring (I'd rather watch Good Morning America or Yo MTV Raps.) B. Unfriendly and Hurtful (To hard to make meaningful friends and feel significant to leadership.) C. Too Intellectual (All Word and no Spirit) D. Doesn't Believe What I Believe (Not biblical, or too literal.) E. All of the Above Let's say you are one who has refrained from doing the Top 10 Stupidest Things Christians Do , you are pretty serious about Jesus with a strong foundation , but just can't stomach another church service for one or more of the above reasons. What do you do then? Good question. Possibly you have weathered a desert experience and you still love Jesus, d...