How's Your Life's Blog Coming?

     Whether you know it or not, you're blogging today.  You are writing your life's story.  Most of us don't think of it like that, but it's true.  Your blog will either be a positive or negative recounting of that story.  Think about it--the power of Story!  People are looking at you.  They see what you do, what you say and how you live your life.  We used to say, "Your life is an open book."  Perhaps now we would say, "Your blog is showing."

    I'm pretty convinced that in order to have a meaningful life there are some necessary ingredients.  As you look at those early Christians in the Book of Acts, their lives were powerful and purposeful.  The reason  for such positive meaning was the coming of the Holy Spirit into their lives on the Day of Pentecost (Acts, Chapter 2).  Far more than just a meaningful ingredient, the Holy Spirit was the all-consuming Dynamic.  He was the core of their lives and all that they did.

    They were writing their Story.  In our language today, they were blogging and it was a blog worth reading.  They were blitzing Jerusalem with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  Everywhere they went they were turning things upside down.  Healings were taking place.  Compassionate outreach was happening as offerings were taken to help others.  They were constantly testifying to people everywhere about the power of this revolutionary Jesus whose death and resurrection had brought them from darkness to light.  As a result, scores of people were being added to the church, even though there was persecution.  The story they were writing was to impact human history for all time.  

    How's your life's blog coming?  What kind of a story are you writing?  Is it a story you want the rest of the world to read?  If you are filled with the Holy Spirit, your blog will make an impact on someone's life.  Your story will be a connection point to Jesus Christ.  It will be fresh, not phony.  It will resonate authenticity and goodness.  Others will be drawn to you and to Jesus because your life will be like a beautiful flower with a winsome fragrance.  

    I'm eager to read your life's blog.  And when I do, I know it will point me in the right direction.  Happy blogging!  In the power of the Spirit.  

Boyhood Heroes

and Lessons on Faithfulness

As a boy raised in a subculture of American Evangelicalism, I had my heroes.  In many ways, we were somewhat insulated from the world at large so most of our icons came from the preachers and singers who we heard in church or campmeetings and whose LP records we listened to.  Since I loved music, my ears were tuned to the different genres of Christian music and at the top of my list was a gospel music group called The Couriers.  My buddy Leo Knapp introduced me to them and I soon started buying every record I could find.  That was long before the days of cassettes and CDs, so I brought the big vinyl records.  The album covers showed a clean cut trio of guys who began as students at Central Bible College in Springfield, Missouri.  Following college they moved to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and sang gospel music in an area where it wasn't widely known, but they became household names in the Christian community.  Their sound was distinctive and pure.  My friends and I were hooked.

Leo and I formed a quartet with friends Clair Sams and Fred Simmons.  We would huddle in Leo's college dorm room and listen to Neil Enloe, Dave Kyllonen and Duane Nicholson.  Leo could sound just like Neil and Freddie played the piano like him also.  The songs we loved were the ones that Neil wrote so we were the "little Couriers."

After college, we each married and went our separate ways into ministry and business, but the Couriers kept on singing.  They have now been singing for 57 years all over the U.S., Canada and 60 other countries around the world.  They recorded dozens of albums.  They are now grandfathers and great grandfathers.  Now each one is in his mid 70s and THEY'RE STILL SINGING.

Today, I listened as these golden musical ambassadors brought an auditorium full of people to their feet.  It was magical for me to listen to my boyhood heroes 46 years after I first listened to that unique Courier sound.  I sat there and drank it in.  Yep, I could still hear detect those unmistakable tones.  Duane's tenor was still the same.  When they sang Neil's signature hit, "Statue of Liberty" which he wrote 36 years ago, it was as though I heard it for the first time.

Greater than the music and the sentimentalism which swept over me was the fact of faithfulness.  57 years is a long time to stay together singing every night and slogging all over the world.  They're still standing together on the stage, seemingly enjoying each other's company.  Each of them has been married to his wife for over 45 years and most of all, they are still in love with Jesus.  

I walked out of the concert hall with a new appreciation for the faithfulness of God.  I love the music and I enjoyed swapping old stories with the guys.  It was fun remembering the places where we had crossed paths, but to see men growing old together, loving each other, having fun singing their songs and loving God was HUGE.  

I still want to be like The Couriers when I grow up.