Tag Archives: netflix

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My Favorite Novels of 2020 + a Bonus

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This felt like the year of books and Netflix. What else were we supposed to do with quarantine?! I didn’t read more than I normally do, but as you’ll see from my list of favorite books this year, I read different books than I normally do. I read more novels, more history, and more books about the inner life and emotional health than leadership and ministry books.

In fact, I normally make my list as one post, but because I read so many novels and history books this year, I felt like they needed their own post. Stay tuned for my list of leadership, ministry, and soul/spiritual growth books.

Here are my favorite “fun” books:

5.The spy & the traitor. I knew very little about the cold war, but this story grabbed me, and I could not stop reading this one. Macintyre is a great writer, diving into what happened in the minds of the people.

4. The Order. Daniel Silva is still my favorite novelist, and this book shows why. I love this series, and it just keeps getting better. I’m pretty sure I read this book in two nights!

3. End of Days: The Assassination of John F. Kennedy. This was a fascinating real telling of the events surrounding JFK’s death. I love how good people are getting at telling the stories of history.

2. War Lord. The Last Kingdom series has become a favorite of mine over the last couple of years. I was excited about the final book but also nervous about it would end. Because let’s face it, it is hard to end a TV show or book series. I was not disappointed with this one.

1. Devil in the White City. I also read Larson’s book The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz as well this year. Both were good, but this one was hard to put down. I know I am late to the party on this one, but wow. 

To see my list of favorite books from past years, click on the numbers: 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2018, and 2019. I loved looking back through the books I read this year as it helps me see where I’ve grown, what God has taken me, my family, and our church through. If you’re curious about the books I read this year, you can check this out.

And for those of you who read all the way to here, as a bonus, here are my favorite shows that Katie and I watched this year (in no particular order):

  • Queen’s Gambit
  • Ted Lasso
  • Tehran
  • The Crown
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Love Is… (1 Corinthians 13)

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I know that loving people is hard. It can be exhilarating and bring us so much joy, but it can also bring us heartache.

Last week Katie and I were with one of our mentors, and he said, “The people God has placed in our lives are there to activate what God wants to transform.” That is hard because everyone in my life isn’t always easy to live with. They can be messy, difficult, get in the way and get on my nerves. I can do the same to them as well. That is what relationships are like.

The people God has placed in our lives are there to activate what God wants to transform. -Rich Plass

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I want to encourage you to continue thinking through how you can bring love to your relationships, especially the most important and closest ones to you.

If you aren’t familiar with 1 Corinthians 13 on love (a very popular wedding passage), let’s remind ourselves:

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.

Love is patient. We are impatient people. We want food fast, internet fast and we get annoyed when Netflix buffers. We are also impatient relationally. This plays out by being demanding, bulldozing people and pushing too hard. It’s the worst with those closest to us, pushing them, expecting them to be what we want, to do what we want. Yet love says, “However long it takes for you to get your act together, I’ll be here.” Our culture says, “If they don’t change fast enough, if they hold you back, move on.”

Can you imagine Jesus saying, “You aren’t changing fast enough, so I’m done with you”, or, “You aren’t responding to me fast enough, so we’re done”? This is difficult, especially if you are a control freak in your life.

Love is kind. Kindness is actions, words, emotions and so much more.

In your relationships, do you use your presence and words to show kindness, or do you tear the other down? Kindness often is keeping your mouth shut when you’d love to open it. Not in a way to cover sin, but in a way to say, “That isn’t a big deal; I’ll let that go.”

Love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. Envy is a longing for something that isn’t currently ours. Boasting is puffing ourselves up, focusing on ourself and our needs over the needs of others. Arrogance is thinking we’re better than we are. Rude is controlling the agenda and everyone around us.

When we envy others, boast, are arrogant or rude, we push people away.

Often we do these things to be right, but also to protect ourselves from getting hurt. If I envy you, then I can blame you for my problems. If I boast, I can put you down to make me feel better. The same is true of being rude. If I’m arrogant, I protect myself from getting hurt. If I’m not proud, I’m willing to open up my heart to hurt, yes, but I also open up my heart to love.

All these emotions and actions do is isolate us. In this passage Paul is inviting us to let go of these desires.

Love does not insist on its own way. Many times love is self-seeking and about what we want.

Why do we insist on our way? For protection, fear, pride, anxiety, control, just to name a few. Love gives in relationships; it doesn’t take.

Love doesn’t insist on perfection. In our photoshopped, air brushed culture, we insist on perfection. We take and re-take selfies. We only post our highlights or our low lights in a way to get love. Think the next time you post something, are you posting it for affirmation? Most of us do.

But love says, “I’ll accept you. I’ll walk with you.” Love says, “I won’t have an independent spirit.” This doesn’t mean you are co-dependent, because that’s unhealthy, but do you bring an independent, “I’m going to do what I want when I want” spirit to your relationships?

At the end of the day, this is empathy and a willingness to see from the other person’s perspective in a relationship.

Love is not irritable or resentful. We all know people who are resentful and always irritated. They keep a list of wrongs in relationships, reminding people of past hurts. They also always expect the worst in relationships.

Do you know where this comes from? It comes from their family of origin, but often it comes from the picture they have of the relationship.

For me, I am often my biggest critic. Every situation I am in with anyone, I have a picture in my mind of what that interaction and time will be like. What this does is prevent me from enjoying the moment. I have to constantly battle this. Multiple times a day I have to remind myself, “This is good enough. The world won’t end.” When we let go and enjoy, we more easily let go of hurt, we more easily let go of things that didn’t go the way we wanted them to go.

Love does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. This goes with the last one.

Do you rejoice over the mistakes of those closest to you? Being able to say, “I told you it would go that way”, which puffs us up to show that we are right. We look at people who make mistakes in our lives and think, “How did you not know that would go that way?”

This also gets into the area of being historical in relationships. Do you find yourself saying, “Remember when…”, “You always…”, or “You never…”? Don’t miss this: No strong relationship is filled with the words always and never.

But what if the other person in my life is hard to love? What if my spouse is difficult? What if my child is hard to get along with? What if my parents or in-laws are always getting into our relationship?

Paul ends with what I think are the hardest parts of this passage, because they cost us the most.

Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things. This is the hardest part of love. This last verse shows us not only what God’s love towards us cost Him, but it shows us what love will cost us. It also shows us how strong love is.

Love can bear all things when we love the way God loves us. Love does not give up hope. Love is not naïve, but love is powerful. The love that Paul has been talking about in these verses is love that can bear all things, believe all things and hope all things.

But what if the other person doesn’t love like that?

Love endures all things. That’s why Paul ends with love endures all things.

You have the choice to endure all things, in love, even when things are the hardest and the darkest. Even when facing your hurt is painful, even when that person hurts you emotionally, you have the choice to love.

Will they return that love? Maybe not.

We love those around us the way we believe God loves us (1 John 4:19), whether we believe in God or not.

For example, if we believe God is indifferent towards us, this is how we approach most relationships. If we believe God is holding out on us, we will hold out on those closest to us in relationships. If we believe God has a short fuse, we will tend to have a short fuse. If we believe God doesn’t care what we do, this is how we will treat those closest to us.

1 Corinthians 13 shows us how to love each other, but also how God loves us.

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How do I know this?

1 Corinthians 13 is a picture of God’s love toward us. All of these remind us of what God’s love is like.

God is not impatient or unkind with us. He is not pushy. God does not say to us, “Do you remember when you…”, or, “You always…” Instead, we are told that when we take the step of following Jesus and confessing our sins and need for Jesus, God remembers our sin no more. It is hard when we are hurt, carry around shame and regret and guilt from past relationships to see the truth. We are so used to seeing that relationship and all relationships through the lens of pain. Yet Jesus sets us free from our shame, regret and guilt. He is the power to overcome those experiences.

But why is love so hard?

Because, “The people God has placed in our lives are there to activate what God wants to transform.” So, as you read through the list in 1 Corinthians 13, you begin to see what God wants to transform in your life through what is difficult for you to live out.

Think of one thing, one relationship, and work on that. Change and growth take time, so don’t feel like you need to fix every relationship you have. That’s not possible. Give yourself permission to take your time. God isn’t in a rush.

1 Corinthians 13 shows us how God loves us.

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How to Make Time for Your Spouse

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time

Recently in a sermon I said that every couple should have a weekly date night. I also blogged about why every couple should have a yearly getaway.

As usual, the pushback I got was expected and normal.

Things like: we don’t have time, we don’t have money, we spend time when we can (when time magically appears one guy told me), we have kids so that isn’t possible, we don’t know what to do, date nights aren’t that important, we’ll get away someday or my favorite: my marriage doesn’t need date nights.

My response: you don’t have time not to. You don’t have time to not make spending intentional time together as a couple not happen. It is that important.

Let’s take a step back to when you were dating.

You spent all kinds of time together. You would sit on the couch and just be together, you would leave notes for each other, you would take walks together, you would watch movies and eat ice cream. Now, which of those cost more than $10?

None of them.

Yet, the older we get and the longer we’re married, we make all kinds of reasons (and excuses) as to why we don’t we spend intentional time together.

That’s the key word: intentional.

If you are not intentional in your marriage, it will begin to fall apart.

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I don’t care if you call it date night, a weekly meeting or the 2 hours I spend with my spouse each week.

But if you don’t spend time building into your relationship, something or someone else will.

A common thing I hear is: who has the time for that? Between sports, bed time, work, school, hobbies, the list goes on and on. Again, it doesn’t have to be a lot, it needs to be intentional. I know a couple who walks together 30 minutes each day to build into their relationship. Katie and I used to spend an hour each night talking before bed. I would sit on a chair (we bought a chair that we put right next to the bed so I could sit up and not fall asleep, I’m not kidding) and we would talk to end our day.

The question you have to ask: what is getting my time that should be going to my spouse? All of the things you do, you don’t have to do. You waste time. Everyone does. Take some of that wasted time and spend it with your spouse. Stop binging on Netflix, don’t sleep in on Saturday and maybe you should quit your adult softball or soccer league, so you can spend time as a couple together.

Here’s a common one: I have young kids and I can’t be away from them for more than 2 hours because one of them is nursing.

Great. You have 2 hours. Use it wisely. Take a long walk. Go out somewhere for coffee. Hit up McDonalds. Do something out of the house. Take your child with you and get dressed up and intentionally go somewhere instead of getting takeout because you didn’t feel like making dinner. When you were dating, you would drive 45 minutes to see your now spouse for 5 – 10 minutes, just to see them. Do that now. Instead of wasting two hours doing nothing productive, build into your marriage.

I don’t have money is the one I hear the most often.

The reality is, great date nights don’t have to be expensive, they just have to be intentional. Plan them. Do it at home. Put the kids down, put on a special playlist on spotify (I made several for our date nights to rotate through although Katie can’t tell the difference), turn off your phones and notifications and be together. Eat some fancy dessert (cheesecake factory to go!) and be together. The rule for us on date night is no electronics so we can focus on each other.

Great date nights don’t have to be expensive, they just have to be intentional.

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I had a conversation after my sermon and a guy told me, “My marriage doesn’t need a date night.”

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard this and every time I shake my head.

Here’s what is true about every couple who has ever told me this. I mean every because I’ve heard it so many times. Ready?

They are all either divorced now or unhappy. Every couple. The ones who aren’t are putting on a front right now. Don’t believe me? Get them alone and ask them point blank how their marriage is and push hard on it.

Did this guy need date nights to get married? Yep.

What changed? Their expectations as to how great their relationship could be changed. Their desire for each other, their need for time together has not changed.

I remember reading a mom blog once and the blogger was talking about how her parents and grandparents didn’t have date nights when they were married and how they had good marriages in spite of that, so all the talk that her marriage and marriages today needed it was not necessary.

One thing to keep in mind with this, is the time. Is marriage in 2015 and parenting different than marriage in 1985? 1965? Yes and no. But before simply taking “my grandparents did this in 1955 so I can do the same thing” make sure it is apples to apples. Email, social media, netflix binging, kids school and sports, all of those things are different than in 1985.

A few years ago a woman told me the same thing after a sermon I did on marriage. She said afterward in her pushback how her marriage was great without time together. A few weeks after she told me this, I saw her and asked how she was doing. She almost started crying as she said, “My husband is so busy with work and school, we just don’t have time for each other.”

To me, that is just heartbreaking.

I don’t care what you call it, but if you aren’t intentionally building into your marriage each, someone or something else will.

But what about later in life? The couple who says, “We are pouring our lives into our kids and we’ll be together when they move out.” First, how do you know you’ll live that long? I have several friends right now, my age, with kids the same age as mine, with stage 3 or stage 4 cancer. Will that work for them?

In fact, more and more couples are getting divorced later in life because they spent all their lives pouring into their kids or their hobbies that when it is just them and their spouse, they realize they are roommates and there is no real reason to stay together because, the kids are gone.

Again, that is heartbreaking.

Don’t put off spending time with your spouse. You don’t if you’ll get that time later in life.

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I realize this is a rant and kind of my soapbox, but to me, if you are going to be married, why wouldn’t you want it to be as great as it possibly could be?

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