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It’s the last day of the year. I love this time of year. It’s time to bring some things to an end, and it’s time to dream and plan about new ventures. 2024 was a good year for our family. Mandy and I celebrated 25 years of marriage and I celebrated my 50th birthday.

Mandy is now in her fourth year as the Executive Pastor at Christ City Church. She has a lot on her plate, but she does her work with such grace, patience and precision. I love watching her lead. She also continues to serve as Executive Director for Memphis Choral Arts.

Adam began his sophomore year at UT Knoxville in August. He got his real estate license in the fall, and he’s decided to take a leave of absence this semester so he can learn the real estate business. I continue to be impressed by his work ethic and decisiveness.

Micah began his sophomore year at Crosstown High in August. He played club soccer and water polo in the fall, and this spring he’ll once again be playing soccer for his school. He also plays keys in one of the bands at school. He works hard on his studies and has a great group of friends. I love Micah’s thoughtfulness and creativity.

After having my worst year as a real estate agent in 2023, I had my third best in 2024 ($3.7 million in sales). The market has been tough, but I’m looking forward to helping my clients this year as they buy or sell a home. And as I enter 2025 I’m now managing 23 rental properties. There are days when property management is tough, but I enjoy working with my tenants and clients.

Travel is something that our family prioritizes. This year we spent a few days in March with friends in Waynesville, NC. In the summer we went to Banff National Park in Canada. Over fall break we went to Chattanooga. And in December Mandy and I got to spend 10 days in Germany and Austria celebrating our 25th anniversary!

Finally, some of my favorite things…

Favorite musical experience – Jacob Collier concert in Nashville

Favorite new music discovery – Lawrence

Top 3 books I read – How to Stay Married, by Harrison Scott Key, Die With Zero, by Bill Perkins, and The Kingdom, the Power and the Glory, by Tim Alberta.

It’s time for my last post. It’s been almost two and a half months, and in that time I’ve written 75 reflections totaling just under 35,000 words. I thought I’d share some overall reflections on what this practice has meant to me.

First, I’m glad I got through it. It was a lot of reading, and a lot of writing. Writing on this blog gave me the accountability I needed to finish, which I’m grateful for. Writing is something that I enjoy once I really get into it. When I first began this blog in 2020 I wrote a lot. There were certain things that I wanted to share. Then I stopped after the summer of 2023. This practice has reawakened some things inside of me, and I want to use this as a jump start to continue writing.

Second, even though I’ve been around the Bible for my entire life, reading the entire New Testament in a short period of time helped me to better understand the context and the overall story. I was reminded of my love for this story. As I read the story of Jesus I found myself coming back to certain themes that were emphasized in his life and teaching. Years ago I fell in love with the story of the early church. Coming back to that was a lot of fun.

Third, I was reminded over and over again that at the end of the day, our primary responsibility as children of God is to love. Love is at the center of every message and from every writer.

Finally, I was reminded why I still believe. This story of Jesus changed my life once upon a time. And that story continues to be the dominant story in my life, the one that most shapes and guides me. I’m grateful for that.

I’ll end my reflection with one last passage from John.

Stay with what you heard from the beginning, the original message. Let it sink into your life. If what you heard from the beginning lives deeply in you, you will live deeply in both Son and Father. This is exactly what Christ promised: eternal life, real life!
1 John 2:24-25, The Message

Yesterday I shared how the book of Revelation went from being the main book I wanted to study while a senior in high school to becoming something I totally neglected because I no longer lined up with the theology I had when I first came to it.

Since yesterday I’ve read the entire book of Revelation. I’ve also listened to this interview with Scot McKnight. I first came across Scot McKnight close to twenty years ago when his book (and blog of the same name) Jesus Creed came out. Since that time I’ve turned to him often. In 2023 his book Revelation for the Rest of Us came out. I have not read it, but I’ve read some reviews since yesterday’s post, and I’ve also listed to the interview referenced above.

In an excerpt from the book on McKnight’s site, he quotes from Phillip Gorski’s book American Covenant and says that when we take a speculative, dispensational approach to this book, we are reading the Bible…

1. Predictively, as an encoded message about future events that can be decoded by modern-day prophets
2. Literally, such that the mythical creatures of the text are understood as material realities
3. Premillennially, with the Second Coming of Christ understood to precede the earthly ‘millennium’ of God’s thousand-year reign on earth; and
4. Vindictively, with the punishment of the godless occurring in the most gruesome and violent forms imaginable

I SO resonate with all of this. This is how I once read the book of Revelation, and it’s now the reasons I’ve dismissed it. So after reading this I was anxious to know more of his conclusions so that I could then read the book through a different lens. Revelation for the Rest of Us is less of a commentary and more of a hermeneutic (a way of reading) of Revelation.

So here are some closing reflections…

John is writing to seven churches throughout Asia Minor. These churches are experiencing an extreme amount of persecution. He wants to both encourage and challenge them. But he also wants to tell them a story. It’s a story about how we interact with powers. Whether it was the Jews in exile in Babylon or those churches facing persecution in Rome or even us today, we are all under the authority of powers, and it’s our job to go along with things until it attempts to silence the Lamb. Then we must speak up.

This book teaches us to be dissident disciples who resist Babylon in the public sector and who resist Babylon creep into the local church.

This book also teaches us that the Lamb is the victor, but the way of victory is the cross. What this does is to flip everything upside down.

Finally, because the Lamb is the victor, justice too wins. All of the powers that work against justice will be defeated.

McKnight says that we need to be people of wisdom so that we can recognize Babylon and discern it’s presence. We need to be witnesses of Jesus who know him and tell our story. And we need to be worshipers of the Lamb. The book of Revelation continues to come back to worship. Worship is how we see Babylon for what it truly is. This is how we prevent blindness.

Finally, as much as I have ignored the book of Revelation, I have often been returned to its last two beautiful and hopeful chapters. In this last part of the story we see heaven coming down to earth. We see God wiping away every tear. We see the redemption and restoration of everything that had been lost and broken. And we see the good, loving and just King reigning over everything.

That’s a great ending to our story!

We now arrive at Revelation. One of my biggest apprehensions about taking on this project was what I was going to do once I got to this final book of the Bible. There are five days of readings in the Bible I was using. I’m down to three days because I’ve inserted a couple of other reflections. And I plan for my last reflection to an overall reflection on this practice. But still, two days of Revelation…

Let me first share my background on this book. During my senior year of high school my friend Dax and I asked my pastor, Bro. Phil, if he would do a Bible study with us one day each week after school. He agreed, and then asked what book we’d like to study. Without hesitation we said “Revelation.” Bro. Phil loved teaching the Bible, and we felt that with his help, we’d uncover all of the mysteries found in this book. And I remember loving every second of it. Those afternoons were a highlight of my senior year, and God used them to ingrain in me a love for Scripture.

A couple of years later I got into the Left Behind series, by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins. This series of novels gave a fictionalized account of what happened after the rapture.

In the years after this my beliefs changed greatly, and as a result, I didn’t have a lot of use for Revelation. During my years as a pastor I never preached from it, other than using a verse or two from chapter 2 or chapter 21.

All this to say, it’s really easy to dismiss this last book of the Bible. But one of the good things about this practice, and about the accountability of writing each day, is that I will encounter Revelation once again.

Today I wanted to share my history with this book. Now I’m am going to read it. And then tomorrow I’ll share more reflection.

Today’s reading is from the three short letters from the apostle John.

According to church history John was the only member of the 12 disciples to reach old age. He’s also the only one who died of natural causes. The rest were killed for their faith.

At some point John went to help lead the church in Ephesus. It was there that he most likely wrote these three short letters. Similar to Peter’s letters, they were not written to a single church or individual. He writes to remind all believers of the essentials of their faith. It’s about loving God and loving others. It’s about showing that you love God by obeying him. He says…

Don’t love the world’s ways. Don’t love the world’s goods. Love of the world squeezes out love for the Father. Practically everything that goes on in the world – wanting your own way, wanting everything for yourself, wanting to appear important – has nothing to do with the Father. It just isolates you from him. The world and all its wanting, wanting, wanting is on the way out – but whoever does what God wants is set for eternity.
1 John 2:15-17 (The Message)

John does a great job summarizing the message when he says…

My beloved friends, let us continue to love each other since love comes from God. Everything who loves is born of God and experiences a relationship with God. The person who refuses to love doesn’t know the first thing about God, because God IS love – so you can’t know him if you don’t love. This is how God showed his love for us: God sent his only Son into the world so we might live through him. This is the kind of love we are talking about – not that we once upon a time loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to clear away our sins and the damage they don’t to our relationship with God.
1 John 4:7-10, (The Message)

Finally, John states his purpose for writing…

My purpose in writing is simply this: that you who believe in God’s Son will know beyond the shadow of a doubt that you have eternal life, the reality and not the illusion. And how bold and free we then become in his presence, freely asking according to his will, sure that he’s listening. And if we’re confident that he’s listening, we know that what we’ve asked for is as good as ours.
1 John 5:13-15, (The Message)

As someone who had followed Jesus for many years, at the end of the day what he wanted most for his fellow followers of Jesus was that they would have confidence that they were loved by God, and that God was actively working in their lives.