Mike Browning

Tag: Christian Reflection

  • You’d Think I’d Know Better By Now

    You’d Think I’d Know Better By Now

    And I do, except when it comes to the action part.

    You’ve probably read this in a hundred places: It’s good to learn from your own mistakes. It’s better to learn from somebody else’s, because theirs are cheaper.

    Fine advice. Works pretty good on the small stuff. Watch someone touch something hot, and it’s a pretty safe bet you won’t do it yourself.

    Unless you’re me, then you’re going to touch it immediately to see if it really was as hot as the other guy acted like it was.

    Kidding. Sort of. Either way, when it comes to important things the “other guy’s experience” thing doesn’t seem to transfer at all.

    Think about the last time you got a new vehicle. Or moved into a new place. Or had a commission come in bigger than you’d figured on.

    It feels good. For a few days it feels like more than good, like things have finally settled into their right spots, and you catch yourself thinking some version of okay, now we’re fine.

    Then it wears off. Nothing dramatic about it. It just quietly stops being new, and you’re the same man you were before it showed up, sitting in a better truck.

    I’ve run that cycle more times than I care to write down.

    I have gotten better at one part of it. Now I generally know going in that it isn’t going to work. I can see the whole thing coming, before I ever start.

    And I do it anyway.

    Because maybe this time is going to be the one where it all works.

    But if you’re going to borrow a man’s experience on this particular question, you may as well borrow from the one with the best data in history.

    Solomon had more money than anybody. Scripture says he made silver as common in Jerusalem as stones. Wisest man alive on top of it, people traveled in from other countries just to hear him talk. Built the temple. Built himself a house that took thirteen years. Planted vineyards, made gardens and pools, bought herds and servants, hired people to sing to him. Says plainly that he refused himself nothing his eyes wanted.

    Never been a better example to study, and never will be.

    His answer was vapor. Chasing after the wind.

    He wasn’t guessing and he wasn’t broke when he said it. A man who never had “eff you money” saying money won’t satisfy is easy enough to wave off. Solomon had every bit of it and filed the same report.

    And here’s the part that makes it worse. Solomon didn’t have any better luck acting on what he knew than the rest of us do.

    He walked away from God anyway. Wisest man who ever lived, God appeared to him in person twice, and he still finished up with his heart somewhere else.

    Knowing better wasn’t his problem either. Doing better was.

    That’s worth thinking about when we tell ourselves we’ll make the right decision later.

    Wednesday night the Powerball ran up over a billion dollars.

    A billion. With every bit of what I’ve just written sitting right there in my head, did I buy a ticket?

    You bet I did.

    Somebody won it. Wasn’t me. Which is probably a mercy, though I’d have liked the chance to confirm it for myself.

    It was never a shortage of evidence.

    Solomon had the evidence too.

    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.

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  • Not Even Close

    Not Even Close

    When we start trying to explain God’s plan, we are really explaining our wishes.

    Job was a good man. Loved God, kept his ways, and he was rich on top of it. Everyone around him looked at his life and saw a man who was clearly blessed.

    Then he lost it all in about four verses. Kids, livestock, servants, health. Gone, fast.

    His friends show up and spend most of the book explaining why. Different speeches, same theory underneath all of it. God is just, suffering is punishment, so the suffering must mean Job sinned somewhere and isn’t admitting it.

    Job won’t agree. He hasn’t done what they’re accusing him of, and he says so. They don’t believe him, because they need him guilty. Look at why for a second and it makes sense. If suffering is always earned, then being righteous keeps you safe, and they get to keep believing they’re in control of what happens to them. Easier to accuse Job than to give that up.

    We like that idea too. Be good enough, do it right enough, and God will help you. Except look at it for ten seconds and you’ll notice you don’t actually want a universe that runs on that rule. It means everyone who’s ever suffered did something to deserve it. And we’ve all done something to deserve it.

    If you’re honest, you know that even when you do something that’s technically right a large part of the time you’re not doing it for the right reasons.

    Job’s friends go through chapter after chapter of explaining why things happened like they did. Kind of like how we act like we can discern God’s plan for us. Here’s what actually happened: God let Satan destroy a man’s life over a bet Job had no say in. A righteous man, no less. Read that straight and it’s offensive. But once you sit with it, the friends’ explanations are the part that’s almost funny, how far off they were chasing a reason that didn’t exist.

    When God finally answers Job, He doesn’t explain the wager. He asks where Job was when the earth was made, whether he can command the morning. Shows him the size of what he isn’t equipped to know, not the reason behind it.

    We’d do well to spend less time hunting down the reason for things. Job’s friends never could have worked out what was actually happening, no matter how hard they tried. Job probably never found out either, this side of being back with God.

    We like to make it sound like it’s easy to trust. But it’s not. At least not all the time. Not when it’s impossible for us to know the why. That’s why we fail repeatedly. And why God made provision for us.

    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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  • Nothing To Add

    Nothing To Add

    It is finished.

    If you’re here looking for some different angle of reflection, you’re not going to find it today. I’m not sure anyone ever does.

    If you haven’t already and it’s still early enough, get to church and celebrate the resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

    Or spend time with your family and sit with the fact that what you couldn’t do yourself has been done for you.

    Nothing to add to it.

    You accept it.

    He is risen.

    He is risen indeed.

    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.

  • Almost Is a Dangerous Word

    Almost Is a Dangerous Word

    Once you’re convinced, you have to go all the way.

    In Acts 26, Paul is defending himself before King Agrippa.

    He tells the whole story. What he believed. What changed. What he saw. What it cost him.

    And Agrippa answers:

    “In a short time would you persuade me to be a Christian?”

    Depending on the translation, it sounds sarcastic. Curious. Half-serious.

    Almost.

    That word should bother you.

    Agrippa heard it straight.
    He wasn’t ignorant.
    He wasn’t hostile.
    He wasn’t confused.

    He was close.

    And close is not the same thing as in.

    I suspect Paul did convince him. Agrippa knew Paul wasn’t crazy. He knew there was weight there.

    But following that line all the way through would have blown up his life. Position. Alliances. Reputation. Everything shifts if that’s true.

    That’s usually where people stall.

    We think the danger is open rejection.

    It isn’t.

    The bigger danger is endless consideration.

    Interested.
    Thinking about it.
    Respectful.
    Open-minded.
    Almost persuaded.

    Almost obedient.
    Almost serious.
    Almost surrendered.

    Almost doesn’t move anything.

    There’s no credit for being near the line.

    You cross it or you don’t.

    And most people living in “almost” feel fine about it, because they aren’t far away.

    But one inch short and a thousand miles short are the same result.

    So the question this Sunday isn’t whether you’re hostile.

    It’s whether you’re decisive.

    Where are you almost?

    Because almost is comfortable.

    And comfortable is where decisions quietly die.

    P.S. I usually offer a MBR Land Reality Check to landowners here.

    But I also run another site called HisWordTogether.com.

    It’s simple. It helps people read through the Bible in a year. Every year.

    No commentary. No spin. No one telling you what to think. Just the readings, posted weekly every Sunday.

    You can sign up to get them by email, or just check the site when you want.

    There’s no need to wait until January. Start where we are and keep going.

    If you want to take a look:

    HisWordTogether.com

  • You Might As Well Come Clean

    You Might As Well Come Clean

    Don’t avoid talking to God about your problems. He already knows.

    I recently overheard one of my daughters explaining to someone how they could talk to God about their problems.

    She told them that God would help them see what to do, and that He wouldn’t judge them.

    That stuck with me.

    One of the reasons people don’t talk about their failures or struggles is fear. We’re afraid other people will look down on us. And if we’re honest, a lot of us are even more afraid that if God really knew what we were thinking or doing, we’d be in serious trouble.

    But here’s the thing.

    God already knows.

    He knows everything you think. Everything you do. What you want. What you don’t want. What you want to do that you shouldn’t. What you don’t do that you should.

    He knows all of it.

    And He loves you anyway.

    That’s the whole point of Jesus. God sent Him to die for your sins so that when God looks at you, He sees the righteousness of Jesus, not your record.

    My daughter was exactly right. She has a habit of being right about things like that.

    And it’s a good reminder.

    You can talk to God. You don’t need special language. You don’t need rules. You don’t need to clean anything up first.

    You can talk to Him the same way you’d talk to a close friend. Or a counselor. Or someone who actually listens.

    Just tell Him.

    He understands. And He’ll help point you in the right direction.

    Get more here!

    PS — One other thing my daughter will tell people, and she’s right about this too, is that it’s a good idea to actually read the Bible.

    A lot of people say that. Or talk like they do it. Or sort of pretend they do it.

    Most people don’t. Not straight through.

    I’ve been reading it cover to cover once a year for several years now. You don’t wake up the next morning as a different person, and it’s not some dramatic overnight transformation.

    But it does change things over time. Subtly. Quietly. For the better.

    If you want help getting started, I put together a simple site called His Word Together. It breaks the Bible into manageable weekly readings and sends them to you by email.

    It’s free. No catch.

    You can take a look here: HisWordTogether.com

    Or, if you want the weekly readings in your inbox, you can sign up here:

    Sign Up Here

  • Compared to What?

    Compared to What?

    You can’t be behind in your own race.

    2 Corinthians 10:12 says:

    “We do not dare to classify or compare ourselves with some who commend themselves.
    When they measure themselves by themselves and compare themselves with themselves, they are not wise.”

    We live in a world that practically runs on comparison.

    Your phone will show you in seconds how somebody else looks, what they earn, what they drive, where they go on vacation.

    Intellectually you know you’re comparing your everyday situation to someone else’s highlight reel. And you also know that what people let you see is often embellished, if not totally made up.

    But it still makes you feel less than a lot of the time.

    Paul’s words to the Corinthians cut right through that.

    He’s basically saying: if you want to use other people as your measuring stick, don’t expect it to lead to wisdom.

    It’s not that comparison is always wrong — we can learn from good examples.

    But most of the time, it turns into something else: either pride because you think you’re doing better, or discouragement because you think you’re behind.

    Both are distortions.

    God doesn’t hand out a single, uniform blueprint for everyone’s life.

    The gifts He gives, the doors He opens, the seasons He brings us through — they aren’t identical.

    Paul himself planted churches in one place while others planted somewhere else.

    Peter’s path didn’t look like Paul’s. Neither needed to live up to the other’s assignment.

    When we keep score against each other, we start asking the wrong questions.

    “Why don’t I have what they have?”
    “Am I as successful as they are?”
    “Am I falling behind?”

    But the real question is: am I being faithful with what I’ve been given, right where I am?

    One of the subtle dangers of comparison is that it shifts your attention away from what God has actually put in your hands.

    It can keep you from noticing the good you could do today.

    Or from starting at all — because you feel as if your small start can’t measure up to someone else’s finish.

    Paul’s alternative is simple but demanding: let God set the standard.

    Measure yourself against His calling for you — not against someone else’s results.

    If you do that, you’ll find both humility and courage. Humility, because the standard isn’t other people’s applause. Courage, because you realize you don’t have to run somebody else’s race.

    The world keeps telling us we’re behind.

    Scripture says otherwise.

    You can’t be behind in a race that God set out specifically for you.

    So the next time you feel that tug to size yourself up against someone else, remember Paul’s words: it’s not wise.

    Better to look at your own work before God — and keep going.

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    ***I’ve said the last few weeks it’s wise to keep a physical copy of the Bible.

    Reading or listening electronically is great—until the power or the connection goes out.

    Will that happen? Maybe not. Could it? Sure.

    It’s a risk you can remove easily and cheaply.

    You can buy one here.

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