Happy Valentines to my Valentine.

I met my wife when I was 17 years old and she was just 15 years old.  This Valentines day will be our 17th Valentines together.  Some Valentines have been dynamite celebrations of our love.  Other Valentines have been spent cleaning up sick kids, and me bringing home Sonic Cherry Limeades.  But every Valentine’s Day for the last 17 years I have been with the one person I most want to be with.

Every. Single. Time.

Over the past 90 days my wife and I have been pouring all our energy into completely reading the Bible through.  I’m talking Genesis to Revelations in 90 days.  Cover to cover!  In actuality, we crunched the numbers and think it was more like 92 days.  So sue me!

It was quite the experience and not something I made big news of while I was actually reading it.  Didn’t want to NOT do it, then have to look stupid.  By the way, that’s wisdom right there! (If you follow me on twitter @jonathancliff then you might have seen a few cryptic “35 of 90″ tweets here and there.  Make sense, now?)

I’ve read the Bible through a few times in my life, most recently in bible school; but never in 90+ days.  Let me sum up my expereince by saying, “Whew!”

Here are my takeaways, having finished last Friday:

• I’ve never spent so much time doing a project over 90 days.  It’s exhausting to do the same 45 minutes of reading every single day for so long.  I wish I could say it’s a habit I could keep up, but it’s not.  I just don’t normally have the attention span to do this.
• Doing it with my wife was key.  I can’t tell fully explain in this paragraph how cool it was to walk this journey through the bible with Starr.  Not to mention being accountable to each other each and every day.
• I learned that my wife is a slow reader, who knew?
• I also learned that I’m hyper-competitive.  Even when reading the Bible.  I could never stand to be finished after Starr, I just had to win my daily Bible reading contest.  Even if it was only in my head.
• Reading the entire Bible through in such a short time frame is comparative to flying over a forest.  I didn’t get to spend much time looking at any one tree, instead seeing the boundaries of the entire forest in one fell swoop!
• Reading through Leviticus was hard.  Crazy hard!
• What were my favorite books to read?  Easy.  Genesis and Acts.
• When you spend 70+ days reading the Old Testament, the Gospels come as a ray of sunshine.  It helped me see the beauty of Jesus’ arrival on the scene.  He came just in time, and redeemed everything that was wrong with creation.
• The word I’ve really taken away from this experience is, “Story.”  The story of the Bible is such a powerful story of Sin.  How Sin ruined God’s original story, and the story of how Sin was defeated in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  The story is powerful.

If you ever want to do something to help gain a healthy perspective on this Story of life, I can’t more highly recommend taking the 90 day challenge.  Go find a friend, and start today!

Did you know that sometimes I write blog posts for others?  Really, I do.  Sometimes I take perfectly good stuff that could be on my blog and give it to others in exchange for Starbucks and iTunes gift cards completely free.

Head on over to Gina McClain’s blog for my recent gift to the blogging community of JabberFrog.

The Compare Game

Do you ever compare yourself to others? I do. I’ll go ahead and admit that I sometimes try and size up people in the first few minutes with one standard-bearing question: Are they better than me, or am I better than them? It’s all very subjective, I don’t literally wonder if I’m a better person than someone; but I do wonder if my house is bigger, if my salary is larger, if my church is more heavily attended, if my marriage is healthier, and any other way that I could possibly walk away with a win in this dangerous “compare game.”

Head over to Jabberfrog.com for the rest…

I’ve been in church most all of my life. (Please don’t hold that against me.) Every week I hear words and think that if I hadn’t grown up in church I would have never heard them.  Let’s go ahead and remove “true” Christian and/or Spiritual words like righteousness, holiness, sin, forgiveness, or atonement.  I’m talking about good clean fun church words; the kind of words that we’ve adopted from the King James Version and woven them into the normal church vernacular.  These are words you just NEVER hear outside of a church setting.  Get it?

Here are some I’ve come up with:

1. Appropriation
   1. I understand that this is a theological word; but I’ve been told to appropriate my faith for just about every area of life.  I’m still not totally sure how I appropriate things into my marriage…
2. Devourer
   1. This is commonly worked into offering sermons.  As a kid I always thought of the Devourer being some sort of villain that would battle Superman.  I get the principle of Malachi 3:11, I just think the word Devourer is a weird overused word.
3. Condemnation
   1. As a pastor I regularly work Romans 8:1 into counseling meetings, but I’m not sure I would hear this word outside of church.  Isn’t there a more understandable word?
4. Deliverance
   1. I dare you to suggest deliverance to the next co-worker that complains about their teenager.  Double-dog dare you!
5. Testify
   1. Anyone want to testify?
6. Anoint
   1. Usually involves cooking oil; and sometimes requests for a “double-portion.”

I have a few others in mind, but I’d love to hear some others…  If my descriptions confused you, then check out this great resource. Church-Speak 101

As I head into a 2009 filled with so many new opportunities, I’ve been dwelling on something that I think I need to have more of going forward. I’ve very clearly felt compelled to have more opinions. I know, I know, those that are acquainted with me have just shuttered in horror at any chance of me having more opinions. But I’m speaking to opinions that matter. Opinions that could possibly dictate my actions. Wikipedia defines an opinion as:

a person’s ideas and thoughts towards something which it is either impossible to verify the truth of, or the truth of which is thought unimportant to the person. It is an assertion about something especially if that something lies in the future and its truth or falsity cannot be directly established. An opinion is not a fact, because opinions are either not falsifiable, or the opinion has not been proven or verified. If it later becomes proven or verified, it is no longer an opinion, but a fact.

I love this definition. It’s something that is impossible to verify the truth of. I can have an opinion that the Dallas Cowboys have a truly terrific football team, but that is neither a fact nor is it possible to prove.

But what about the opinions that matter? I’ve been challenged to think about my opinions on the important things related to my family, relationships, and ministry. And am I ready to move these opinions in the direction of facts? Here are the opinions that I’m challenging myself to get in writing, and committing time to really think through how I can move them into the realm of facts.

• What is my opinion on the best ways to communicate love to a kid? Is it through my words, actions, or both? And what is the best way for each individual kid?
• What is my opinion on leading a child to Christ? Is there a way that is better than the other ways? Is there a way to lead a child to Christ, where their decision is truly life changing? Is it effective in a large-group environment?
• What is my opinion on dedicating a child in a church setting?
• What is my opinion on what makes a strong marriage? Is my opinion on this impossible to prove?
• What is my opinion on the best way to mentor and raise up new leaders? Is there a more effective way to do it than I’m currently doing it?