Highlands Blog

Blogs

Here you will find posts by the Highlands staff and friends of the ministry. This includes posts on Christian living from people we think will be helpful to you. We will also introduce you to new resources and special offers.

Is Salvation Enough?

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Here you are, born-again. Your sins are forgiven and you have peace with God through Jesus Christ. But are you satisfied? Are you experiencing a full life? Or are you living with an obvious, yet hard to figure out, deficit that makes Christian living more of a duty and nowhere near what could be considered a pleasure? What if I told you that even Jesus, who was sinless, always at peace with God, and who lived a perfect life, needed more as well?! What if I proved my point in such a way that you not only didn’t think I. . .
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Filed under Uncategorized

Fulfilling the Great Commission

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“I want to do something great for the kingdom of God,” we often hear. Spoken by singles who have no idea how to go about it but who have a few hours each week and are eager to make use of it. The gap between what a Christian can do between work and bedtime on a Tuesday and what a parent does over the course of twenty years is staggering and the tragedy is that too few American Christians realize that the real work exists without fanfare and back-patting and it’s not accomplished in a few hours each week. Yes,. . .
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Filed under Parenting, The Kingdom

Son, Saint, Sinner

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As I pass through this life as a Christian I do so with a perspective that was first, not my own, but now that I own it, it makes all the difference. For instance, I am a sinner. I know that. This means that I am in constant need of God’s grace and mercy and strength. I didn’t have to figure this out. All I had to do was read the Bible and the Word revealed why I struggle, fail, and am weak and that is good, good for me. It reminds me of a scene from one of those. . .
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Letting Me Handle the Reins

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It is interesting how just a little taste of something can awaken an appetite that you didn’t know you had. And obviously, that taste doesn’t have to be food. It can be an experience, a relationship, a word of encouragement, or an opportunity to use a latent gift. In 1990, I was a recently married salesman for an industrial gas company. We had just begun attending Briarwood Presbyterian Church in Birmingham, Alabama, which was pastored at the time by Frank Barker, one of the finest, most humble and effective pastors I have ever known. Frank led a men’s Bible study. . .
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Filed under Preaching, Work

Beachhead

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I noticed a young woman reading her Bible at the Panera where I was studying. After getting my coffee refilled, I stopped by her table and told her how it encouraging it was, especially these days, to see someone privately reading the Word of God in a public place. She smiled, said “Thanks” and then gave me a wave later when she left. I see this godly activity a lot in places where coffee is served and people meet.That anonymous young lady represents everything gospel going on in our country. Hope is alive, tastefully dressed, and drinking a vanilla latte.. . .
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Filed under Culture

Transformed by Ink and Paper

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Recently I had the occasion to evaluate every book I own. Because our church moved offices, I packed up my entire library and relocated it to our new place. The process of efficiently packing books is a challenge for me. I find it impossible to simply shove them in boxes without flipping through the pages, glancing at my marginalia and underlines. When I glance across the titles on my shelves I see a timeline of my theological journey. Several volumes stand out to me as having been particularly influential at key points in my life. When I think back to. . .
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Filed under Education

And There Shall be No More Death

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Dear _______, I just heard about your boy’s death and I mourn deeply with you and your family. I’ve prayed often that I would outlive my children as the prospect of living without any one of them seems too hard. On reflection, it’s quite possible, in God’s perfect plan, that even as your boy lives eternally with his Savior, his early death means that he’ll live in your hearts in a more powerful way than he would have otherwise. Not a day will pass when you don’t reflect upon him, his smile, his character, his laugh. Perhaps accompanied by a. . .
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Filed under Suffering & Grief

Friends

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When determining how wealthy we are in friends, there is only one question that must be asked? What is a friend? The Bible gives us some direction here: A friend is wise, reliable, willing to rebuke us, loves us at all times and is closer than a brother. Presumably, a friend is also someone we like, someone we have things in common with and someone around whom we can be ourselves. On Facebook, some of us have thousands of “friends,” other sad folks have only a few hundred. Imagine if you truly had a thousand friends who were “closer than. . .
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Competing Storylines

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Jingle Bells, Batman smells, Robin laid an egg. The Batmobile lost a wheel, and the Joker got away. These childish lyrics start innocently enough with a recognition of the season. Bells are prevalent and wonderful, they ring from church towers, they are played by choirs, they are a significant part of the festive decor adorning doorways and trees. But then, without warning, and surely for its iconoclastic shock-value, bell gives way to smell. The Caped Crusader is said to be malodorous! This is surely an adolescent attack on all that is True, Good, and Beautiful. The listener recoils realizing that. . .
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Filed under Uncategorized

The Faith of our Fathers

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The American political landscape is divided into two principal camps. We have official names for them, Democrat and Republican and nicknames like liberal and conservative or wackos and Nazis. It can mostly be boiled down to two opposing and fundamental opinions, either we believe our fathers had it right or we believe they had it wrong. Where we fall on the political spectrum is how strongly we feel about the job they did. “Our fathers were mostly right” makes you a conservative. “They never erred” makes you a right-wing nut job. It’s the same for the left side. If nothing. . .
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Filed under Church, Politics

Possessed

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Possessed. Now that is a selective word. We reserve such an evaluation when we want to describe unnatural or bizarre behavior. “They acted like they were possessed,” is what we say when reporting. “They were scary” or even, “They acted crazy” fails to convey our experience. And yet every person is possessed by some drive or emotion or desire everyday. We are all living under the influence of someone or something. That is why we dress the way we do and talk the way we do, to name just two everyday habits. You say, “I don’t care.” I ask, then,. . .
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Selling Jesus

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We’ve all been there, either at the giving or receiving end of a sales pitch. Giving it, we’re convinced the prey will never buy and on the receiving end, we’re convinced that the hunter will never leave us alone. No one wants to be sold something they don’t want. And if perchance we purchase, we’ll forever somewhat resent that person who “convinced” us we needed that product or service. And yet we love to buy things. Put a soft red sweater on display on a long wooden table with rock music playing overhead and we’ll gladly pass you six crisp. . .
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Christian Chicken Culture

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It wasn’t a restaurant that was high on my list. First, there were none around me for many years and secondly, how excited can you get about a chicken sandwich? And then I got married and had kids and took trips and that’s when I really discovered Chick-fil-A. Stopping to eat with five little kids can be daunting enough for Dad to be tempted to tell everyone, “We’ll eat when we get to Grandma’s!” Even if that promised meal is 200 miles away. But my good wife and Georgian Lindsay knew about a place that wouldn’t be so horrible. So. . .
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Filed under Culture

How should we deal with high profile accusations of sexual misconduct?

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First, we must ask the question: “Is it true?” Unfortunately, the all-important truth is often impossible to determine. If the alleged crime happened long ago, and the accused man vehemently denies wrongdoing, we do not know the truth. We may have an opinion, but to claim to know the truth is to lie. We do know that the accusation has some political motivation. If it was only about justice, she had 40 years to bring it up (privately or publicly) and choosing an opportune political time shows some political motivation…at least a little. Now, the timing of an accusation does. . .
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Filed under Justice

Choose Life

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I was adopted at birth by Mike and DeEtte. God truly blessed me with a wonderful family and it’s a God story from start to finish, but that isn’t the story I am here to tell. This story is about a woman named “Maria,” my birth mother. She found herself in a miserable situation, she was pregnant, the father of the baby was married and was a friend of the family. She was terrified of what her family would do to her if they found out. So, she took her three-year-old son, got in her car and left. She lived. . .
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A Great Offense is a Good Defense

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  Do you understand the temptation of good things? As we walk through our Christian life, most of us agree that we are often tempted. As a “mom of many,” I struggle with the temptation to be angry and not patient and kind. I struggle with a temptation to be lazy in discipline, selfish, and critical. We agree that these sins are all wrong, bad for ourselves, our husband, and our children. But the greatest temptation I face day-in and day-out is the temptation to do good things. If I may point out a personal strength, I am a fairly. . .
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Is Our God Cruel?

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You may be like me and eager to see God’s hand in our daily lives. Knowing that there are no accidents in His kingdom, I give real gravity to things that others may not pay much heed to. But like a well-directed movie, nothing is happening on screen except what the Director wants us to see. And so we live our lives as best we can, pursuing good things like children, job opportunities, spouses, promotions, prizes, and the like. And if we’re paying close attention, there are lots of signals. If we’re pessimistic, we read them one way, if optimistic,. . .
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