This is the first part of the Kairos talk, A CHRISTIAN: I call it “How to Quit Struggling and Start Walking the Walk and Talking the Talk.” Luke 9:23-24, says, “If anyone would be My disciple, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me.” Just so you’ll know; the word disciple means follower. So if you want to be a follower of Jesus, what do you have to do? Three things: 1] Deny yourself, 2] Take up your cross daily, and 3] Follow Jesus. Continue reading
‘Obstacles’ is the next to the last talk on the Kairos Weekend Program in the prisons. “We’ve been talking all weekend about God’s plan for our lives. Let me tell you what His plan is for us; to surrender ourselves to Him. To do whatever He wants us to on a minute by minute basis. To accept the gift of His grace and share it with others. Pretty simple; but it’s not easy.
What is Grace? It is unmerited favor. That means God being nice to us when we didn’t deserve it. Grace is a lot like mercy, Mercy is God being nice to us when we deserved to be punished. Continue reading
This is from a Kairos talk called “Friendship with God”. I want to start by telling you a Bible verse. It’s Proverbs 3:5-6. “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not to your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him and He will direct your path.” That’s my verse. That’s the verse I live by every day. Trusting in God is the focus of my life. The part about not leaning on your own understanding is harder, since I’m always trying to figure out why stuff happens; and a lot of times, God doesn’t tell me the why. So I just have to trust. Remember, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, . . . and He will direct your path.”
What is a friend? Is it somebody who agrees with me all the time and takes my side on every issue? Not necessarily. In fact they may disagree, if they see me doing or saying something which might hurt me. Friendship is about trust. Trust is progressive. It grows through experience. When you find someone you can trust, you want to spend time with them; to figure out ways to agree with them most of the time; to do what they suggest, sometimes even when it seems crazy. When you really get to trusting them, you really don’t lean on your own understanding. You sorta accept them and what they say at face value, without really thinking about it. Continue reading
The introductory talk in the Kairos program for the brothers in white in the prison is called ‘Choices’. The person chosen to make this talk (in fact all talks in Kairos) is given certain points to make during the talk, but there are two basic guidelines for every talk. 1] Write it and give it in your own words, and 2] give a personal testimony that relates to the subject matter. While in Kairos we are primarily concerned with talking to the participants about God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit, in the ‘Choices’ talk, we are specifically directed NOT to say anything about God or religion or the Bible in this talk. We just want to get them to think, to think about themselves and their past, to think about how their past choices have affected their lives. It’s like parents raising their children. In order for the child to grow up to be a responsible, productive citizen, on a natural level, they need to understand the principle of cause and effect. “If you do this, this will happen; if you do that, that will happen.” If we do good things, good things will result. If we do bad things, bad things will result. Continue reading
[The following are excerpts from a Kairos talk called “Walking in God’s Grace”.] 
I wish I could tell you that living the Christian life, after you really commit to God, is going to be easy, that you’re going to feel God’s presence every day, more and more; that you’re going to be obedient, that you’re not going to do anything stupid, that you’re going to trust God all the time, that you’re going to love everybody and they’re going to love you; that there’s going to be a steady shining light in your life all the time and no more darkness. Sorry, it’s just not going to be all sweetness and light, because we’re all still a bunch of sinners.
Let’s say that because of this Kairos weekend, everybody here has made a commitment to Jesus. We’ve had good food and good fellowship; we’ve felt God’s unconditional love through the brothers, both those from inside and those from outside the prison; and we’re excited about the prospect of going back out in the world to share Jesus with other people out there in the dark. How are we going to do that? We can’t. Why can’t we? We’re heard the message; we’ve accepted it; we’ve made a commitment to Jesus; and He’s definitely made a commitment to us (to each one of us). So what is holding us back? Continue reading
In the Kairos program we focus a lot of attention on forgiveness. We do it for two reasons: 1] because in the Bible Jesus devotes a lot of attention to it; and 2] because in the prisons, there are a lot of people who really need it.
To bring this subject into focus: in Matthew 6:9-15, the Lord’s Prayer, forgiveness is a major point of the whole prayer. In verse 12, it says, “Forgive us our trespasses (sins, debts) as we forgive those who trespass against us.” And we usually think the prayer ends with verse 13, “And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from the evil one. For Yours is the kingdom . .”
But that’s not really the end, because immediately, without taking a breath, Jesus adds, “If you forgive others their trespasses, then God will forgive you; but if you don’t forgive others, then He won’t forgive you.’ (Isn’t it interesting that He doesn’t make any comments about any other verses in the prayer, only about forgiveness.) Continue reading
In Luke 4:16-20, is the story of when, shortly after Jesus returned from His temptation wilderness, He first appeared in the synagogue at Nazareth to announce His ministry. It goes like this: ‘And He was handed the book of the prophet Isaiah. And when He had opened the book, He found the place where it was written: 18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, Because He has anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, To proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, To set at liberty those who are oppressed; 19 To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.”
In a number of places in the New Testament, Jesus says that those who believe (trust) in Him will receive the Holy Spirit (That’s Jesus’ Spirit), like John 7:39; John 20:22; and Acts 1:8; I take these verses to mean that because you and I trust Jesus, His Spirit lives in us too, and the passage in Luke quoted above applies to us, just as it applied (applies) to Jesus. We too are to proclaim deliverance to the prisoners. Continue reading
In Matthew 10:24-25, Jesus said, “A student is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his master. It is enough that the student be like his teacher, and a servant be like his master.” Like it says in Philippians 2:5, “Let this mind (this attitude) be in you that was also in Christ Jesus.” (That’s humble and willing to serve) I pray these verses for you and me. I pray we can BE LIKE JESUS. That will definitely change our lives.
In 1 Samuel 16:7, God says to Samuel, “The Lord does not see as man sees; for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”
When I was a little kid in the 50’s, television just came to our town, there were two stations, Channel 11 and Channel 13. Channel 11’s slogan was, “Hey Bud, Whatcha’ Lookin’ At? Channel 11, Good Lookin’!” In those days just having a program on at all was a fascinating prospect. At first the TV didn’t even come on til about 5:00 PM, and stayed on only til after the 10:00 news. How much things have changed. It was a much simpler time, not nearly so complicated. They had a show called “Father Knows Best” which was a family style sit-com; and in those days a lot of people thought father really did know best. We’ve all had to make a lot of adjustments since then, just to try to keep up. Continue reading
Matthew 7:15-16 says, “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are vicious/ferocious wolves. You will know them by what they do.” This is Jesus talking, in the Sermon on the Mount. He goes on to say that good trees bear good fruit, bad trees bear bad fruit, and people are the same way. Beware means “be warned”. Watch Out! Continue reading
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