Monthly Archive

• There was a wedding last night. Weddings always bring me back to the Bride of Christ motif. I want to love the Bride of Christ and treat her with the respect the Groom does.
• Nothing reflects me (my character, my nature, my desires, hopes, dreams, and fears) better than my bride and nothing reflects Christ better His Bride – the local church.
• I loved spending the past few days with some of the best leaders of our MBC churches at our annual meeting.
• I was blown away when I got back to Brainerd on Saturday afternoon and saw with my own two eyes the ways The Journey North was working to reflect Christ to a hungry world. READ ABOUT IT HERE>>>
• Church on Sunday was amazing. It was great to be back on the platform sharing the Word of God.
• November is shaping up and I can’t wait to begin a new 3 week series called: CHARACTER (invite a friend).
• Today is “Papa Day” and Rebekah and I are off to Coco Moon and Northwinds Grill for breakfast.
• I am going to spend the afternoon splitting wood for winter.

• Happy Birthday Bethany – My daughter turned 6 today!
• Bethany and I are having Papa Time today…Rockwood Grill here we come. They have the best Rye Bread in town.
• God has been very good to us this past week.
• I watched the movie The Last Samurai again…I’ve got to get me one of those swords.
• The Journey North Staff are an amazing group of people…I am so very privileged to work with them.
• Our Leadership Team, Staff and HR Team had an incredible time on Friday night thinking through some very import future structuring issues. It is great to work on important but not urgent issues together. What a dedicated group of people.
• Special thanks to Pastor Bob Evans for his skill in helping us assess the Winning on Purpose strategies called the Accountable Leadership Structure.
• Stress and pain do weird things to your body…most of the family has come down with a cold.
• It’s breast cancer awareness month. Pay attention – mammograms are important.
• A week ago we had our annual Missions Banquet. This year it was held at Breezy Point Resort. It was awesome seeing our people get a little dressed up and make one of the most expensive dinging experiences they have this year benefit people around the world. We raised thousands and thousands of important ministry dollars and we had a blast doing it.
• This Saturday is National MAKE A DIFFERENCE DAY. This year we are going to rake the Franklin Neighborhood and we are going to bag food for the Dump in Tegucigalpa, Honduras.
• TJN is going to ship 280,000 bags of food to Honduras. That’s 10 pallets of high nutrition, vitamin packed meals that we are sending with the help of Feeding Children International …Yea God!
• The sun came out today…boy it’s been a wet fall.

Today I remember that God is the great I AM. All around me people struggle…all of us feel pain from time to time. I hardly know anyone who hasn’t experienced pain. Today the TJN staff rallied and gave me a reprieve from the pulpit. I sat as a congregant and was blown away at how God used them. YOU HAVE TO HEAR IT (posted on Mondays).

I have never met anyone who hasn’t had to navigate pain. We all walk through the difficulties in our lives that complicate things and fill it with unexpected twists and turns. I have been surprised at the way the prayers from friends around the world have sustained us and given us the courage Joshua when he said, “But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD.” And so once again, I give to God this day!

A little over a year ago, I bought this beautiful hand carved box in Honduras for my son Caleb. Today, he offered it up as a gift for the little baby that died this past week. We gathered around a very special tree where I had dug a deep whole. Scripture was recited, thoughts and prayers were shared then I knelt, stretching my arm as deeply as it would go. Holding the box from the very ends of my finger tips, I gently set it to rest in the dirt. My oldest three children shoveled dirt, and then Elizabeth placed a flower on the earth…our eyes were all filled with tears as it rained softly from heaven. No one will enjoy the beauty of that hand carved box or the child who died in its mother’s womb. The Bible says we were created from the earth and to the earth we will return…ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Genesis 3:19

As I opened my eyes this morning, thinking about the past few days, my mind turned toward the cross and to Christ’s suffering. I found myself feeling grateful that I believe in and serve a God who understood pain.

My wife and I have been blessed these past two days by the outpouring of support. The notes of encouragement and emails have been wonderful. Many of them have recounted times of similar pain…a miscarriage or loss of a child. Others have just said, “We will walk with you”.

As I turned to God this morning, I felt as if he said, “I get your pain and I will walk with you”.

“But we do see Him who has been made for a little while lower than the angels, namely, Jesus, because of the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor, that by the grace of God He might taste death for everyone. For it was fitting for Him, for whom are all things, and through whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to perfect the author of their salvation through sufferings.” —Hebrews 2:9-10, NASB

“The other gods were strong; but Thou wast weak; They rode, but Thou didst stumble to a throne; But to our wounds only God’s wounds can speak, And not a god has wounds, but Thou alone.” —Edward Shillito in the poem “Jesus of the Scars”

“Frequently it is when we are crushed and devastated that the cross speaks most powerfully to us. The wounds of Christ then become Christ’s credentials. The world mocks, but we are assured of God’s love by Christ’s Wounds.”

—D. A. Carson in “How Long, O Lord?”

“By itself suffering does no good. But when we see it as the thing between God and us, it has meaning. Wedged in the crux—the cross—suffering becomes a transaction. The cross is a place of transaction. It is the place where power happens between God and us.”

—Joni Eareckson Tada in “When God Weeps: Why Our Sufferings Matter to the Almighty”

No one has suffered more than our Father in heaven. No one has paid more dearly for the allowance of sin into the world. No one has so continuously grieved over the pain of a race gone bad. No one has suffered like the One who paid for our sin in the crucified body of His own Son. No one has suffered more than the One who, when He stretched out His arms and died, showed us how much He loved us. It is this God who, in drawing us to Himself, asks us to trust Him when we are suffering and when our own loved ones cry out in our presence (I Peter 2:21; 3:18; 4:1).

—RBC’s “Our Daily Bread”

“In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it? I have entered many Buddhist temples in different Asian countries and stood respectfully before the statue of the Buddha, his legs crossed, arms folded, eyes closed, the ghost of a smile playing round his mouth, a remote look on his face, detached from the agonies of the world. But each time, after a while I have had to look away. And in imagination I have turned instead to the lonely, twisted, tortured figure on the cross, nails through hands and feet, back lacerated, limbs wrenched, brow bleeding from thorn pricks, mouth dry and intolerably thirsty, plunged in God-forsaken darkness. That is the God for me! He laid aside His immunity to pain. He entered our world of flesh and blood, tears and death. He suffered for us. Our sufferings become more manageable in the light of His. There is still a question mark against human suffering, but over it we stamp another mark, the cross which symbolizes divine suffering.”

—John R.W. Stott in “The Cross of Christ”

The past 24 hours have been awful. Yesterday I called my personal assistant and had her clear my calendar. My wife and I went to the hospital where we learned that our worst fears were realized and that almost 10 weeks into our pregnancy our child was dead.

When we first learned we were pregnant 2 ½ months ago we were a little slow warming up to the idea of five children. As we prayed and processed we found ourselves gaining excitement and enthusiasm for the addition of this new Bjorlo baby. We had picked out names and began dreaming dreams and making plans.

Last night we decided that we would celebrate the goodness of God with our kids in the midst of our grief. It was one of the best decisions we have ever made. I grilled HUGE porterhouse steaks and we had baked potatoes with all the fixings. We sat around the table and processed how good God is in spite of our pain. It was great for the kids and really was good for us as parents.

After the children went to bed it happened…Elizabeth miscarried. It took about 90 minutes and it was harder and more uncomfortable than we had imagined it would be. We we’re also surprised by how large the baby already was.

Please keep us in prayer as we walk through this difficult time. But also join us in remembering God is good in the midst of our grief.

Ode to Pachelbel (kinda)

Ok, I confess…I’m kinda a classical music geek. And as a pastor I have heard Pachelbel’s Canon in D almost as often as 1 Corinthians 13. This is just a fun version and these dudes have mad talent.

Now - this on the other hand is just to funny (especially if you’re a pastor).

Ok…I have a bunch of kids and there are more on the horizon. Elizabeth and I are amazed the amount of stuff we have accumulated over the years of parenting. But every parent wants their children to be smart, well adjusted, considerate kids. Somehow we keep finding new toys and tools that promise a bright future if our kids just spend a few moments with their new product.

If the product is real good it also promises that I can achieve the excellence in parenting award from the comfort of my couch (and as a dad – preferably, with my eyes closed).

Well, I think I have found just the thing. You can stop the vicious cycle of spending with…the Internet. Once your child has mastered Elmo’s Potty Time (let me know how it ends if you watch it all the way through, I got a little weirded out by Earl the fruit guy), give Kindersay a whirl. It shows pictures of things or letters and an actress (Christine Ghawi, who stars as Céline Dion in the CBC Canadian show Céline) says the words. It’s free and has no advertising. If you want to add in your own family pictures to customize the show, they charge $6/month.

Plop you kid in front of the computer with these tools and you will have the smartest kids in town. I call it parenting technology at its best (designed with dads in mind).

The past few days I have been at a church planters retreat….learn more at PlantingPartners.org

John Butler Trio will be at First AvenueLive on Sunday, November 18th. This is ‘Taratata’, from France

and Ocean:

We arrived back late last night from five amazing days on the water. Paddling about 50 miles with my son and a few friends, we hopped a ride up Moose Lake, and began our journey on the famed Prairie Portage. We traveled the Voyagers highway, the thoroughfare of the trappers and adventures before us. Paddling west on Basswood Lake we hugged the US, Canadian boarder. Canoeing along the Ontario Rainy River District we found some absolutely incredible first nation pictographs just beyond the Lower Basswood Falls. Then up the Horse River we camped our third night on an incredibly beautiful campsite on Tin Can Mike Lake. Out to Jackfish Bay we portaged to Pipestone and then out. Wow what great sights we saw and great memories we made.