Mike Browning

Tag: Christian Faith

  • Same (Unfair) Deal

    Same (Unfair) Deal

    It was unfair when we were on the receiving end too.

    Last week I wrote about how we tend to read ourselves into Bible stories as the good guy. Job, not the friends. The son who stayed, not the one who left. It’s a habit, and mostly it’s a wrong one. We’re usually standing closer to the other side than we’d like to admit.

    There’s a parable that puts this on full display, and it’s an uncomfortable one if you think about it.

    A landowner goes out at dawn and hires workers for his vineyard, agreeing on a day’s wage. He goes back out at nine, noon, three, even five, an hour before quitting time, and hires more, telling them he’ll pay what’s right. End of the day, he pays the five o’clock crew a full day’s wage. Then the nine o’clock crew. Then the ones who’d been out there since sunrise, sweating through the whole thing. Same amount. Every one of them.

    The all-day workers are furious. Not because they got paid less than promised, they got exactly what they agreed to. They’re furious because somebody else got the same deal for less work. The landowner’s answer is basically, it’s my money, I can be generous with it if I want, and what’s that to you?

    If you’ve already accepted Christ’s offer of forgiveness, it’s easy to look at someone who hasn’t yet and feel a little something when they finally do. Some version of, must be nice, they get everything after they were out there living however they wanted until an hour ago.

    But not too long ago, that was you. Doesn’t feel that way now, but it was.

    It’s not wrong to notice they didn’t earn what they got. Because they didn’t.

    But neither did you. You still don’t deserve it.

    That was the whole point of the deal in the first place. Christ is free to hand out grace to whoever He wants, on whatever timeline He wants, and none of us are in a position to file a complaint about the terms.

    If you’ve already accepted, congratulations. Now maybe quit keeping score on who got a better deal than you, and spend the energy instead trying, and mostly failing, to live like someone who’s actually been given what you now have.

    And if you haven’t accepted yet? It’s free for the asking. You don’t have to clean anything up first. Nothing you’ve done disqualifies you. And once you have it, nobody can take it back.

    And if you get the side eye treatment from some of us, don’t worry about it. You’ll probably be doing the same soon.

    It’s never too late.

    Until it is.

    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.

  • We’d Never Do Something That Bad (Part 2)

    We’d Never Do Something That Bad (Part 2)

    If God used Paul as his vessel, He probably has a job waiting for you too.

    A couple weeks ago I wrote about Peter’s denial, and how we read it like something we’d never stoop to. But the truth is it was a pretty garden variety move, the kind of go-along-to-get-along thing we all do more than we’d like to admit. God still used him anyway.

    Paul’s a different case. Most of us, hopefully, never go anywhere close to the lengths he did. And God still used him too. In a big way.

    I guess in Paul’s defense he thought he was doing good at the time. Which also sounds familiar to a lot of us if we are honest.

    When word got around that Saul of Tarsus had a change of heart, nobody believed it. Why would they?

    This wasn’t a guy who’d quietly disagreed with Christians. He’d built a reputation hunting them down. Stephen was stoned to death while Paul watched and held coats for the men doing the throwing. Another time he says “I cast my vote against them,” talking about believers being put to death. Not one incident. A pattern, with him positioned right in the middle of it.

    Later Saul obtains letters of authority to go after believers outside Jerusalem too. He was a man on a mission, and it wasn’t a mission for Jesus.

    Then the road to Damascus. Blinded, knocked down, told to go into the city and wait. A believer named Ananias gets sent to heal him and clearly does not want the job but he does it anyway. No word on whether he acted like Jonah later.

    Saul’s sight comes back. And he becomes Paul, who will be used by God to spread the Gospel.

    Obviously the disciples weren’t thrilled to see him at first. And it wasn’t easy. But Paul did what he was told and trusted God, and ended up writing most of what comes after Acts. Romans, Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, Thessalonians, the letters to Timothy and Titus.

    Most of the New Testament, written by the man who used to hold the coats of those killing believers.

    Here’s something you’re probably starting to notice a pattern about: God didn’t wait for Paul to clean up before using him.

    He went from a terrible oppressor to the greatest evangelist ever known in the blink of an eye. All because that’s what God wanted him to do and Paul trusted God.

    When you think you’re too damaged or have done too much for God to be able to use you, remember Peter, Paul and others. And just trust God and listen. And when you hear, act.

    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.

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  • We’d Never Do Something That Bad

    We’d Never Do Something That Bad

    Except we do, all the time.

    The story of Peter’s denial is one of the catastrophic failures in the whole Bible. Foretold by Jesus Himself the night before, like the whole thing was written in advance. It sounds like a uniquely terrible collapse of faith.

    It was terrible. That part’s not in question. He shot his mouth off about how he’d die before disowning his Lord. A few hours later he denied knowing Christ, in public, three separate times, to people who weren’t even pressing him that hard.

    A servant girl in the high priest’s courtyard looked at Peter and asked him directly, something close to, weren’t you with him too. Not a vague vibe in the room he had to read. A direct question. And three times, Peter answered it. No. Don’t know the guy. Never met him. Swore for effect on the third.

    So yes it was terrible. But it wasn’t unique.

    We do the same thing, regularly, and don’t call it that.

    We don’t usually deny Christ outright, because most of us never get asked that bluntly. What we get instead are smaller, more specific versions of the same question. Someone asks straight out what we actually think about something, and we know what the honest answer costs, so we give the rounded-off version instead. Technically not a lie. Worded carefully enough to stay out of trouble either way. We call that being diplomatic, or not making it a thing, or just being easy to deal with.

    Going along to get along. That’s the polite name for it. It’s also the exact move Peter made by the fire. He just didn’t have a softer phrase available to hide behind. He was asked, and he answered the wrong thing on purpose.

    Our version doesn’t get preached about on a Sunday. Nobody wrote it down with a rooster crowing at the end for effect. So it doesn’t feel like denial. It feels like being reasonable. Being easy to get along with. Not making things awkward.

    Call it what it actually is, though, and it’s the same transaction Peter made at the fire. Get asked directly, and trade a small piece of honesty about whose side you’re on for a small amount of comfort. He did it under torchlight with witnesses. We do it at dinner, at work, online, and walk away feeling like nothing happened.

    That wasn’t the end for him, though, and what happened after matters more than the failure itself. Peter wept over it. Didn’t try to explain it away. And later, after the resurrection, Jesus finds him on a beach and asks him one question three times. Do you love me. Once for every denial. Doesn’t make him relive the scene at the fire. Just asks, lets Peter answer, and tells him to go feed the sheep.

    That’s the man who ends up preaching at Pentecost, the one the whole early church gets built around.

    We definitely don’t have anything to be proud of, but despair isn’t called for either. It’s the opposite. If God still handed Peter the church after that, mid-failure, no cleanup required first, He’s not waiting on a clean record from the rest of us either.

    Your denial is real. So is what He’s still willing to do with you in spite of it.

    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.

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  • Don’t Assume God Wouldn’t Use You

    Don’t Assume God Wouldn’t Use You

    He’s used flawed people since the beginning. He has no choice.

    Even among professing Christians, many people’s exposure to the Bible mostly consists of whatever passage their pastor teaches from on Sunday, or from devotionals they read during the week.

    There’s nothing wrong with any of that. But it can leave you with a strange idea of what the Bible is actually like when read straight through.

    You mostly hear the stories where somebody trusted God, did the right thing, and things worked out in the end. It gets in your head that the people in scripture were kind of superheroes of faith. More disciplined. More obedient. More spiritually stable than regular people are.

    At least that’s how it felt to me.

    Then I actually read the whole thing straight through.

    Surprising to say the least. A huge percentage of the Bible is people screwing things up.

    Moses kills a man and runs away.

    David impregnates one of his loyal soldiers’ wives, tries to cover it up, then arranges for the man to die in battle.

    The sons of Eli the priest were corrupt and openly abusing their position.

    The disciples themselves constantly misunderstand Jesus, even while following Him directly.

    And this kind of thing keeps happening over and over.

    At first it’s confusing because you expect the “heroes” of the Bible to act differently. But most of them were not spiritual superheroes. They were regular people. Flawed people.

    In some cases, people who did things most of us have never done and hopefully never will.

    Yet God kept working through them anyway.

    That does not mean their sins were unimportant. Scripture is very clear that actions have consequences. But it also means failure was never automatically the end of the story.

    People sometimes disqualify themselves because of things they’ve done wrong. Or because they assume God only uses unusually gifted, disciplined, impressive people.

    The Bible really doesn’t support that idea very well.

    God uses regular people.

    It’s the only kind He has.

    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.

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  • You’re Not Going To Break It

    You’re Not Going To Break It

    God’s plan was designed to account for the fact we are human.

    A lot of people are waiting to understand perfectly before they move.

    It may sound wise, but it’s really just fear with religious language wrapped around it.

    We all tend to want certainty. To know exactly what God is doing, exactly what the outcome will be, exactly how things are supposed to unfold before they take a step.

    But if you actually read the Bible, that’s not really how it works.

    Abraham is told to go somewhere without being told where.

    The disciples follow Jesus while constantly misunderstanding Him. Even near the end they still don’t fully grasp what’s happening.

    Peter gets corrected repeatedly.

    Moses loses his temper.

    David wrecks things more than once.

    Solomon is the wisest man who ever lived, but also screwed things up on an order we can’t really fathom.

    Notice a pattern?

    God keeps working through people who do not fully understand what they are doing while they are doing it. And they screw up repeatedly, yet God keeps working through them anyway.

    That does not mean mistakes don’t matter, because they do. Sometimes painfully. Moses still didn’t enter the Promised Land. David still suffered consequences for what he did. Actions matter, and scripture never pretends otherwise.

    But there’s another mistake people make.

    They act like one honest error can somehow derail God’s entire plan for their life.

    As if the outcome ultimately depends on them executing everything flawlessly.

    It doesn’t.

    Romans says all things work together for good for those who love God and are called according to His purpose. Most people apply that only to external suffering, and things that don’t look like our fault.

    But it also applies to our mistakes.

    You are going to misunderstand things sometimes and make decisions that later look immature. You’ll move too slowly in some situations and too quickly in others.

    That’s being human. God has already accounted for it.

    A baby doesn’t learn to walk by studying for years. They just start moving, wobble around a bit, and learn through the movement itself.

    Faith works similarly.

    A lot of people are frozen because they are waiting for a level of certainty that they will never see.

    Meanwhile the people throughout scripture were often moving forward with partial understanding at best.

    The outcome was never resting entirely on them getting everything right. And it is not resting entirely on you either.

    God already knew imperfect people were going to be involved.

    Our mistakes don’t surprise Him.

    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.

    PPS- if you’d like these in your inbox simply enter your info below:

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  • You Understand This When Dealing With Your Own Kids, But Forget When God’s Dealing With You

    You Understand This When Dealing With Your Own Kids, But Forget When God’s Dealing With You

    You don’t need more detail, just do what you’re asked.

    In the Old Testament story of Samson, before he was born an angel came to his mother with some simple instructions:

    Don’t drink wine, don’t eat anything unclean, don’t shave his head. And your son will begin to deliver the Israelites from the Philistines.

    She told her husband Manoah about it, and he wanted to meet with the angel himself.

    That makes perfect sense to most people.

    If you’re told you’re going to raise a child set apart for something important, you probably want more than a few lines of instruction. So he asks for it, and God sends the angel back.

    And nothing new is added.

    Same instructions. Same limits. No extra detail. No roadmap. Not even a name.

    They got a second chance to ask, and still didn’t get what they were looking for.

    People ask for clarity when what they really want is control. They want to understand the outcome before they commit, to make sure it makes sense first.

    That’s not what they were given.

    They were told what to do, and that was it. No explanation of how Samson’s life would unfold. No outline of how this would deliver Israel. No reassurance that it would go smoothly.

    Just do this.

    Then Manoah asks for the name. Most of us probably would. If something significant is happening, you want to know who you’re dealing with.

    The answer he gets is basically, “Why do you need to know that?”

    In other words, you don’t.

    We think more information will make us more faithful. Usually it just makes us more selective.

    If we know the outcome, we can decide if it’s worth it. If we understand the plan, we can adjust it. If we know the why, we can negotiate the how.

    That’s not obedience, it’s management. But we aren’t the manager. God is.

    Look at your own life.

    You feel like you should do something. Call someone, stop something, start something. It doesn’t seem efficient. It doesn’t seem important.

    So you wait. Or you tweak it into something that makes more sense to you. Or you ask for more confirmation.

    I’ve done that. Most people have.

    It sounds responsible and thoughtful, but usually it’s hesitation. Sometimes it’s just disobedience dressed up as wisdom.

    Much later, Jesus tells Peter something about how his life will end. Peter immediately points at someone else and asks, “What about him?”

    And the answer he gets is, what is that to you?

    Follow me.

    Same idea.

    You don’t need to know his path to walk yours. You don’t need the full picture to take the next step.

    You don’t need better instructions.

    You already have enough.

    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.

  • In Defense of Doubting Thomas

    In Defense of Doubting Thomas

    He wasn’t the only one.

    Thomas gets singled out.

    That’s how the story is usually told. Everyone else believed, Thomas didn’t, and he needed proof.

    But that’s not really what happened.

    The other disciples didn’t believe at first either. When the women came back and told them the tomb was empty, they didn’t take it at face value. Luke says it sounded like nonsense to them. Peter ran to check for himself.

    And later, two of them walked with Jesus for miles on the road to Emmaus. He explained things to them in a way only He could, and they still didn’t recognize Him until afterward.

    And this wasn’t coming out of nowhere. Jesus had told them ahead of time what was going to happen. More than once. They had heard it and still had a hard time putting it together when it actually happened.

    That’s the part that gets skipped.

    These weren’t outsiders. These were the same men who had been with Him, and even they didn’t immediately understand what they were seeing.

    Thomas just wasn’t there the first time Jesus appeared to the group.

    So when they told him, he responded the same way they had, just more directly. Unless I see it, I’m not going to believe it.

    He said it out loud. That’s the difference.

    Then comes the line people remember.

    “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

    It’s often used like a quiet rebuke of Thomas, but that doesn’t really fit either.

    It wasn’t describing the other disciples. They had already seen.

    It was pointing forward, to everyone else who wouldn’t get that moment. No room, no wounds to touch, no direct proof in front of them.

    That’s today.

    Not in the room. Not seeing it directly. Hearing about it and deciding what to do with it.

    And it’s not an easy thing to believe.

    The people closest to it struggled with it, even after being told in advance. Now it’s often treated like a simple statement. Something people say without stopping on what it actually means.

    A man was executed in a brutal way, buried, and then came back to life.

    We say we believe that.

    But sometimes it sounds more like we’ve gotten used to saying it than actually thinking through it.

    Thomas asked to see.

    He wasn’t the only one.

    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.

  • We Are Never Going to Be Good Enough

    We Are Never Going to Be Good Enough

    Not on our own anyway.

    We are never going to be good enough.

    Anyone who acts like they are is lying, deluded, or both.

    The Bible does not flatter us.

    In the book of Numbers, it talks about unintentional sin and the sacrifices required to atone for it. That alone should tell you something. We are so bent that we sin without even realizing it, and even those sins carried weight.

    You can see it in other people easily.
    You rarely see it in yourself.

    Jesus raised the standard even higher.

    He said if you look at a woman with lust, you have already committed adultery in your heart.

    If you are angry with someone, you are in danger of judgment as if you had committed murder.

    That eliminates most of us pretty quick.

    Paul writes in Romans that there is none righteous, not even one.

    Not one.

    Jesus told the rich young ruler, “No one is good except God alone.”

    There is no honest way to read that and conclude that we can fix ourselves.

    Left to ourselves, we have no hope.

    But that is not where the story ends.

    In Revelation, Jesus says, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me.”

    He says, “Let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who desires take the water of life without price.”

    He does not say, “Clean yourself up and then come.”

    He does not say, “I’ll give you one more chance. Don’t mess it up.”

    If that were the deal, we would fail again before we ever finished trying.

    Fortunately for us, the work was already done.

    Once for all.

    So come.

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

    Nothing fancy. Just steady time in the Word.

    Check it Out Here