Fire In My Bones

How hot is your spiritual passion when it’s 40 degrees below zero outside?

Because I grew up in Georgia’s sweltering humidity and I now live in
Florida’s year-round sunshine, I am not fond of cold weather. I’d rather go
barefoot in the sand than trudge through snow in heavy boots. To me, it’s
“cold” when I have to wear anything heavier than a T-shirt and shorts, or if I
have to cover the Sago palm in my front yard with a plastic sheet on a chilly
Florida evening.

But because I told God a long time ago I would go wherever He sends me,
I ended up in the Canadian city of Saskatoon two weeks ago. It was
minus 40 degrees F on my first night there. Snow was piled everywhere, and the Saskatchewan River was frozen solid, yet my hosts told me
this was a “mild” winter. Locals, who start their cars 10 minutes before going
anywhere to warm their engines, joke that there are four seasons in Saskatchewan:
“Almost winter,” “winter,” “still winter” and “road construction.”

The pop diva’s death should remind us of an uncomfortable reality:
People in church take drugs.

Anyone who has listened to Whitney Houston’s rendition of “I Love the Lord”—or who saw her perform with CeCe Winans
and Shirley Caesar at the 1996 Grammy Awards—knows she had an incomparable
voice best suited for gospel music. But Whitney chose a broader path: When the
doors opened for her to make a pop album in the 1980s, it became the all-time
best-selling debut album by a female artist. She became America’s diva.

But all her worldly success didn’t help her overcome her personal
demons. Her stormy marriage was marred by domestic violence. She admitted in
the 1990s that she took cocaine every day. She tried rehab three times over the
course of eight years. Her voice was so damaged by her drug habit that people
walked out of her comeback concert in London in 2010. She became a pathetic
shell of her former self.

Why did people applaud Bishop Long’s bizarre “coronation” in Atlanta?

Question of the
week: What should you do when a megachurch pastor is accused of serious
financial and/or sexual misconduct?

A.     Ask the pastor to step down so he or she can
receive ministry, and then conduct a thorough investigation.

B.     Flatly deny all allegations and wait until
the storm blows over.

C.     Use church funds to pay off the people who
made the sex abuse accusations.

D.     Ask a guest preacher to call the pastor to
the stage, wrap him in a 312-year-old Torah scroll and
ask an “expert” in Old Testament language to declare him a “king” so he can be
exonerated of all wrongdoing.

Do you want the
real power of the Holy Spirit? Then don’t pretend by pushing people to the
floor when you pray.

I love it when the Holy Spirit shows up in church
gatherings. Whenever sinners are converted, backsliders repent, bodies are
healed or self-centered believers are broken by God, we see evidence of the
Spirit’s work. But I don’t appreciate it when people fabricate spiritual
manifestations to prove God is using them.

A few years ago a popular charismatic preacher
spoke at a meeting I attended at a church in Orlando, Fla. After his message he
asked all ordained ministers to run to the platform so he could lay hands on
them. Immediately this man’s team of beefy bodyguards began grabbing people,
dragging them onto the stage and holding them in place until the evangelist
could pray for everyone.

It
is time for the church in Africa—and throughout the world—to
address abuse and injustice against women and girls.

After spending last week in the city of Masindi, Uganda, I
traveled to Uganda’s capital, Kampala, to address a women’s
conference. After my first session a woman named Florence grabbed me
and began to tell her painful story.

She had given birth to five girls during her marriage. But when
her girls were small, her husband decided to leave Florence because
she had not produced a son. He blamed her (I guess he didn’t know a
man’s sperm determines the gender of a child) and he said she had
shamed him by having only girls. He sold the family house, evicted
his wife and daughters and gave them no money for food or school
fees. Then he married again and started a new family. He got two boys
and another daughter out of the deal.

This is not a time for gloom and
doom. The church can shine its brightest in a dark hour.

When my friend Ferrell Hardison
moved to the town of Princeton, N.C., in 1990, he began pastoring a Pentecostal
church with 70 people. Founded in 1918, it was a tired, aging congregation with
a tiny budget. Ferrell was the 25th pastor to lead the church, and some of his predecessors had stayed
only a year or two. Not exactly a young pastor’s dream job!

Today,
the church has a new name—The Bridge—and it has grown to 1,250 in weekly
attendance. Last fall the vibrant congregation broke ground on a new worship
center, and they’ve planted a satellite congregation in the town of Goldsboro,
N.C., that already has 300 members. A large percentage of the church’s $2.6
million annual budget is marked for outreach, and Ferrell estimates that at
least 3,000 people have come to Christ through their ministry in recent years.

When I stepped into 2012, God
challenged me to pray big—and to expect the unexpected.

Right before Christmas my wife and I took our youngest daughter out to
dinner to celebrate her grades from her third semester in college. When we got
home I sent out a tweet about the dinner, and mentioned the name of the
restaurant. (Hint: It’s a popular national chain that serves Italian food—and
it has the best bread sticks in the world.)

I didn’t think anything about the tweet. I was just sharing personal
news about Charlotte’s accomplishments. But the next morning I got a private
message from the restaurant, thanking me for the “advertising” and informing me
that they were sending me a $100 gift card.

In 2012, Jesus is calling us to re-enroll in
the school of discipleship.

Besides being the Year of the Dragon in
China, 2012 is full of global observances. World Peace Day was Jan. 1, World
Rabies Day is Sept. 22 and the World Day for Laboratory Animals (huh?) is
April 24. There is also Global Hand-washing Day (Oct. 15), Star Wars Day (May
4), International Cat Day (March 1), and—for all Johnny Depp fans—International
Talk Like a Pirate Day (Sept. 19).

I don’t know who comes up
with these odd celebrations, but I’d like to add one more. Can we declare 2012
the Year of Discipleship?

As I have prayed about the coming year, I’ve sensed three clear
directives.

Some people are terrified of 2012. They worry
because the Mayans of ancient Mexico mysteriously ended their 5,126-year-old
calendar on Dec. 21, 2012—as if they expected the world to end that day. This
silly hypothesis became the basis for several New Age books and a goofy
disaster movie, 2012, in which actor John Cusack avoids meteors and
earthquakes just in time to get his family aboard the modern version of Noah’s
ark (built in China!) before the rest of the world is destroyed by a tsunami.

I’m not afraid of 12/21/12 because (1) Ancient
Mayans never actually said the world would end in 2012—and even if they did,
they didn’t have an inside track to God; (2) Doomsday predictions have never
been accurate; and (3) Jesus holds the future in his hands. As long as I’m in
relationship with Him, it doesn’t matter what happens on earth. I’m secure.

The
virgin birth contradicts the laws of science. But our faith rests on the
miracle of the Incarnation.

My wife and I have four girls, and I was in the hospital
room for each birth. There was a normal amount of blood, but no serious
complications. Our oldest took forever to be born. Our second was in such a
hurry that we thought she might end up on the floor of a hospital hallway. Our
third tied her umbilical cord in knots in the womb. And our youngest calmly
slipped out as if to say: “OK, I’m born. What’s next?”

I had very little to do in the delivery room. My wife
was the hero. She sweated, strained, pushed and gasped for hours. I stroked her
arm a few times—and ate some doughnuts.

“The concept of a woman giving birth to a baby without
a man’s involvement is ludicrous to unbelievers. It contradicts all the laws of
biology.”