Category: Uncategorized

Just because God can do anything doesn’t mean He would. Or should.

If you follow pro football at all, I’m sure you remember the Tim Tebow phenomenon from 10–15 years ago. Actually, even if you’re not a big NFL fan you probably remember it. It was a big cultural thing.

Tebow was an outspoken Christian, and a great college quarterback. He got drafted in the first round, but there were serious questions about whether his throwing mechanics and style of play would translate to the NFL.

Even so, he ended up finding his way into a starting role. And he started winning, and took Denver to their first division championship and playoff win in several years.

Then it was over about as quick as it started. Tebow got traded, lasted a year as a backup, tried pro baseball, attempted an NFL comeback as a tight end, none of which worked.

But while it lasted it was interesting to say the least. Many people were convinced that God was allowing Tebow to win to show the world what faith could do.

And maybe He was. He certainly could affect the outcome of a football game if He wanted to. But personally I doubt it. Or if He was, the reasoning probably wasn’t as clean as we’d like.

Aside from Tebow, there were presumably some men of God on the other teams. Bad guys on both sides too. Not to mention the fact that how much does it really matter who wins a football game?

The Bible tells us to come to God in prayer with our needs. Jesus even tells us that whatever we ask for in prayer, believing, we will receive.

But we’ve all prayed for things that didn’t happen. Does that mean we didn’t have enough faith? Or is there something more going on?

I think there’s something more going on.

Explaining God to a person has been likened to explaining the internet to an ant. Even if you can grasp it partially, you’ll never really understand well enough to see how it all fits together.

So yes, we are supposed to ask for what we think we need. But when we don’t get it, that doesn’t mean God didn’t listen. We can trust that God knows what He’s doing, even when we can’t see how it fits together. And even when the outcome isn’t the one we wanted.

I’ll leave the details out to protect others, but personally I had some things going on awhile back that I wasn’t sure how to deal with. And didn’t really know how to explain.

But I reached out to a friend and associate of mine who is a Christian, and he reminded me. God knows better than we do what is needed, even when we don’t know exactly what to ask.

So we prayed.

It’s been years, and it still hasn’t worked out in the way I’d like to see. But I trust that God knows what needs to happen, even if it’s not what I would choose.

And that’s what I need to remember.

What if we ask for something that doesn’t fit God’s plan?

We can look to the example of Jesus. In Gethsemane, He asked for the cup to pass from Him. But He also said, “Not as I will, but as You will.”

The Father heard Him. But the cup wasn’t taken away.

Lucky for us.

P.S. We may never fully understand God’s plans, but the more time we spend in His Word, the better we can understand what He’s told us.

I run another site called HisWordTogether.com that helps you stay on track reading through the Bible once a year. Every year.

No commentary. No telling you what to think. Nothing to buy. Nothing fancy.

Just steady time in the Word.

Check It Out Here

Register to Receive Posts Via Email!

Name:

Email:

By submitting, I understand I will receive marketing emails and blog posts from Mike Browning Realty and/or associated companies. Unsubscribe at any time.

And be ready when it comes.

I don’t follow quite as closely when the Rangers aren’t involved, but I enjoy watching postseason baseball. The games get managed a little differently than they do in the regular season, and every play is significant. Every at bat seems a little more important.

But if the batter goes up there trying to hit a home run, he’s in trouble. Most likely the pitcher will pick up on it and take advantage. The batter has to act like it’s just a normal game, and wait until he gets a pitch he can handle. Then when he does (assuming it happens), his focus has to be putting a good swing on the ball. Not trying to hit it over the fence.

Manage the process correctly, and the results will be better over time. You can’t guarantee the outcome of any one at bat, but you can improve your odds over a season.

Sometimes they can’t help themselves. In Reggie Jackson’s iconic three-home-run World Series game, he reportedly admitted to trying to hit a home run on the last one. It happened, but even he knew that wasn’t the smartest approach.

In rural land investing, the swing part is usually the easy one. Once you’ve found something genuinely undervalued in an area with good prospects, done your diligence, and decided to buy it, the easy part is usually waiting for time to do its work.

Finding the good pitch is the hard part. In a baseball game, it’s unlikely a batter will go through a game without seeing at least one good pitch to hit. In real estate, you might be lucky to see one screaming deal in a year.

And when it does show up, it doesn’t stay available long. Most of the time, you miss the big opportunity because it came and went while you were looking at stuff that wasn’t really a deal.

The problem isn’t knowing what to do when a good pitch comes along. It’s being in position to recognize one before it’s gone.

That’s what the Buyer’s Short List is for.

The Buyer’s Short List looks at land listings across 21 North Texas counties and flags properties that appear attractively priced. Most of the time, there’s a reason for the low price (floodplain, no road frontage, etc.), so I manually check what the screen flags and rule those out.

Every so often, one passes that second bar. That doesn’t mean it’s a deal. There’s more diligence to be done. But it’s something worth looking at more closely.

If you’re on the Short List, you get notified about these properties as they come up. No schedule, no spam.

It doesn’t cost anything today. If it helps you find one deal a year, how much is that worth?

Find out more here.

Register to Receive Posts Via Email!

Name:

Email:

By submitting, I understand I will receive marketing emails and blog posts from Mike Browning Realty and/or associated companies. Unsubscribe at any time.

Especially after they know the outcome.

A couple of weeks ago, in the Cowboys game against Baltimore, Dallas kicked a field goal to tie the game with seven seconds left.

On the ensuing kickoff, they kicked the ball out of the end zone, giving Baltimore the ball at the 35 with seven seconds remaining.

Baltimore executed perfectly. Completed a long pass, called a timeout with one second left, and kicked the winning field goal on the last play. Predictably, the media took Dallas to task for kicking the ball out of the end zone instead of forcing Baltimore to return it.

And they may have been right. Maybe the risk of a long return was worth taking in exchange for running a few seconds off the clock. That might have given Dallas a better chance of getting to overtime.

But it was pretty obvious that much of the criticism came with the benefit of hindsight. And, of course, badmouthing the Cowboys is a pretty reliable way to get clicks.

I remember thinking that if Dallas had done the opposite and given up a long return, they’d have been torched for that decision too.

Turns out I didn’t have to wait long to find out.

Yesterday, Philadelphia kicked a field goal to take the lead against Jacksonville with eight seconds left. They kicked off, Jacksonville returned the ball into field goal range, and the returner was tackled with one second remaining.

Jacksonville kicked the winning field goal.

And wouldn’t you know it, now the criticism was that Philadelphia should have kicked the ball out of the end zone instead of allowing a return.

Interesting how that works.

Now, it’s possible both teams made the wrong decision. But the fact that a decision turned out badly doesn’t necessarily mean it was a bad decision when it was made. And a good outcome doesn’t necessarily mean somebody made a smart decision either.

It’s something worth remembering anytime somebody is telling you what you should have done, or what you should do next.

A lot of the time, their real motivation is to make themselves look smart. They already know how things turned out, so they can tell you exactly what you should have done differently.

Of course, it’s even more important when the person giving you advice has a financial interest in what you decide.

Take a real estate broker, for example. Brokers get paid when transactions happen. So there’s a pretty obvious incentive to steer people toward buying or selling, whether that’s actually the best decision for them or not.

What you need is somebody willing to tell you what they think the best course of action is, even when it’s not in their own interest.

Somebody who plays the long game.

Guess what? I know somebody.

Knowing and doing aren’t the same thing.

Like many, I used to listen to the Rush Limbaugh radio show quite a bit. At one point, like many, he developed an addiction to opioids. Caused him physical, mental, and legal problems.

Like many.

He was off the air for awhile, and Rush’s detractors were having a field day. Talking about how he wanted to apply one standard to everyone else but wanted mercy for himself when he screwed up.

Then he was back, and he met it head on. I don’t remember the exact quote, but he stood by everything he said before. What he said wasn’t wrong, what he did was wrong. All his prior statements were correct, he just didn’t live up to them for awhile.

At least he managed to turn himself around.

The greatest collection of human wisdom is the book of Proverbs. Written by Solomon, generally considered the smartest human up to that time and probably ever with the exception of Jesus himself.

Solomon enjoyed the favor of God, and articulated and applied all this wisdom with spectacular results. His wealth was unmatched, Israel was unstoppable, and royalty came from far and wide to learn at his feet.

If anyone had it all, it was Solomon. But he turned away and did many of the things he knew better than to do. Scripture doesn’t tell us clearly whether he ever fully turned back.

It’s easy to read your Bible, attend church, and watch some videos and get comfortable thinking we’re set. But James 1:22 tells us, “Be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.”

We have to try to live what we’ve learned. Not because God needs our help getting things right, or because we can earn our way into Heaven by being good enough.

We can’t.

But knowing what we’re supposed to do and actually trying to do it are two different things. And it’s often in the trying, and failing, that we realize just how much we need the forgiveness of Jesus.

Solomon knew more than just about anybody. It wasn’t enough.

We need to know what God says. We need to try to live by it. And when we fall short, we need to remember that Jesus did what we couldn’t.

Knowing is important. But it’s less than half the battle.

---

P.S. I know I just spent about 350 words talking about how hearing the word doesn’t save you. But it is the beginning of knowing.

I run another site called HisWordTogether.com which helps you stay on track reading thru the Bible once a year. Every year.

No commentary. No telling you what to think. Nothing to buy. Nothing fancy.

Just steady time in the Word.

Check it out here.

Register to Receive Posts Via Email!

Name:

Email:

By submitting, I understand I will receive marketing emails and blog posts from Mike Browning Realty and/or associated companies. Unsubscribe at any time.

Maybe better (or worse) than you think.

If you’re someone who (like me) struggles a little with weight, you have probably noticed the same thing.

Mine will rise to a certain point where it starts bothering the way I feel, and I start thinking I need to do something about it.

Which invariably I put off until it’s even higher.

Then I finally start. And when I get back down to the point where I originally said it was intolerable, it feels great.

And I lose my willpower pretty quick after that.

Same weight, totally different feeling. The only thing that changed was the direction.

I got a marketing email from a mortgage broker this week basically saying people should get over higher interest rates because they’re really not that bad.

And on a technical basis, he made a pretty good point.

His argument was that rates today are below the long-term historical average and also lower in absolute terms than they were during some periods in the past.

Of course, to make that comparison you’re going back far enough that a large chunk of today’s adults were either too young to remember those rates or weren’t buying houses yet.

But still, he’s making the same point I made above from the opposite direction.

Rates seem high because they were lower in the recent past. If we had arrived at today’s rates by coming down from something much higher, people would probably feel very differently about them.

Same number. Different direction. Great analysis as far as it goes. But it leaves out the price of the house, which is at least as important.

When mortgage rates were in the 6–7% range roughly 20 years ago, home prices were much lower. Since then, home prices have risen substantially.

So telling someone that 6% or 7% isn’t historically unusual doesn’t necessarily tell you whether buying a house at today’s price and today’s rate is affordable.

Most people aren’t buying an interest rate. They’re buying a house with a monthly payment.

It’s not that the rate doesn’t matter. Of course it does. But you can’t really talk about the rate without talking about the price it’s being applied to.

Yes, it depends on how you look at it. But it helps to look at the whole picture.

P.S. How you look at things can make a big difference in how you feel about them.

A few years ago Scott Adams, the Dilbert guy, wrote a book called Reframe Your Brain that has dozens of simple reframes. It’s an easy read, and while they won’t all apply to you, it’s almost certain some will help.

Get it here.

P.P.S. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

And that’s ok.

If you’ve been reading here for any amount of time, you’ve heard me repeatedly say a couple of things.

Even if you’re not ready to sell, it’s smart to know what you own and what it might be worth.

Things change, sometimes fast. It’s better to have information and not need it than to suddenly need it and be scrambling.

And I’ve told you the Land Reality Check is a pretty thorough look at your property, not one of those automated estimates designed to get your phone number.

That last one is easy to be skeptical about.

Nobody says it, but I think most people expect a brief report followed by a string of phone calls and texts badgering them to list.

So rather than me telling you again, here’s what LRC customer KB sent me after receiving his:

Mike,

Wow!  Thank you for an incredibly thorough and detailed report. Most impressive.

I own the property jointly with my brother. Our great grandfather settled it in 1892.

Currently we use it as a weekend getaway from big city life. 

We enjoy fishing and watching the deer and wild turkey and other critters from the front porch.

We are in no rush to list it, but we’ve been talking about the future and so your report is something we’ll  keep in our back pockets.

Rest assured, when we ever do list it, YOU are the one we will call first!

Am I going to follow up with him?

Of course.

When I see properties sell that are relevant to him, I’ll make sure he knows. And I might touch base from time to time.

But he will never feel pressure from me to sell.

Obviously, I’d like to list the property someday. That’s how I make a living. But land that’s been in a family since 1892 doesn’t need to be sold because I happen to be ready for a listing.

KB and his brother should sell it when it makes sense for them.

Until then, I can be useful. And I think that’s really the goal.

I went from potential annoying pest (i.e. most Realtors) to welcome guest.

If you don’t have your Land Reality Check already, you can request one below.

No pressure to list. No obligation to sell. Just find out where you stand.

Get it here.

Especially when you’re sure to lose.

There’s a verse in Matthew 5 that gets explained sometimes like a tip on avoiding lawsuits.

Settle with your adversary quickly, while you’re on the way to court with him.

People read that and hear don’t let a disagreement get expensive, which is true enough as far as it goes, but that’s not who Jesus is talking to.

Read it again.

The guy on the way to court isn’t disputing anything. The adversary already has him. There’s no version of this where the judge hears both sides and it could go either way. He’s guilty, and everybody in the story knows it, including him.

So the instruction isn’t negotiate your way out of something you might lose. It’s deal with it now, while you’re still on the way.

Once the judge has it, the judge hands you to the officer. The officer puts you somewhere you don’t leave until it’s paid in full. No more conversation at that point.

That’s not really a story about court. It’s about all of us.

We are all sinners and we have all fallen short. We know we’re walking toward the end of our lives, and one day we’ll have to give an account.

None of us gets there with a case for our own innocence. The good news is we don’t have to.

Christ already paid the debt we couldn’t pay. We don’t have to argue our case, explain ourselves, or convince the Judge we’re really pretty good people.

We have to admit that we’re not and put our trust in the One who is.

The timing is the part we shouldn’t miss. While you’re still on the way.

As long as you’re still on the way, it’s not too late.

Until the day it is, and nobody gets a calendar invite telling them which day that’ll be.

While you’re still on the way…

---

P.S.

If you’d like to read through the Bible this year, you can join us at His Word Together.

No commentary. No telling you what to think. Nothing to buy. Nothing fancy.

Just steady time in the Word.

Check it out here.

Register to Receive Posts Via Email!

Name:

Email:

By submitting, I understand I will receive marketing emails and blog posts from Mike Browning Realty and/or associated companies. Unsubscribe at any time.