Mincey’s Musings
Year One, Week Twenty-Eight

For the past nine weeks, I have referenced Bill Hybels book Who You Are When No One’s Looking: Choosing Consistency, Resisting Compromise. In this final article on this topic, I want to focus on the greatest character in all history.

Mincey’s Musings
Year One, Week Twenty-Seven

The title of this week’s article is based on part of the lyrics to a song that was popular during my college days, “Let’s Get Physical, Physical.” The obvious reference in the song is to sensual pleasure. Such a view reflects a great portion of the world’s view of love, the satisfaction of desire without commitment.

The Fourth of July, 2018 is less than approximately twenty-six hours away as I write this article. It is fitting at this time to reflect on the sacrifices of innumerable veterans and active military that have provided me the freedom to write and you to read these words.
Servicemen and women embody a type of love, the fifth of five endangered characteristics of true character suggested by Bill Hybels in his book Who You Are When No One’s Looking: Choosing Consistency, Resisting Compromise. The previous two weeks have focused on tender and tough love in lives of compassionate and hardhearted people. This week I share with you a third type of love, sacrificial love.

Mincey’s Musings
Year One, Week Twenty-Five

Once again, we find ourselves close to an election. Our founding fathers saw it necessary to create our national system of government to have a balance of power that would prevent any one group from becoming dictatorial. That is why we have a President as head of the Executive Branch, the Senate and House of Representatives that serve as the Legislative Branch (the only branch of our national government that has its own balance of power), and the Supreme Court Justices as heads of the Judicial Branch.

Mincey’s Musings
Year One, Week Twenty-Four

It is so often easy to see faults in others, but often how difficult to recognize our own. Sometimes those of us who have done the greatest wrong are the first to pass judgement and be blind to justice.

Mincey’s Musings
Year One, Week Twenty-Three

Have you ever thought about the lives our ancestors lived? Once our forefathers boarded ship in the Old World, there was no opportunity the next day to decide, “I don’t think I want to make this trip after all.” I’ve never read of any lifeboats or rafts on the Mayflower.

Mincey’s Musings
Year One, Week 22

I have always looked at decades as milestones in life. I was too young to appreciate this when I turned ten years old, but every decade beginning with age twenty presented opportunity for a significant pause to look back to what God allowed me to accomplish and forward to what He held in store.

Mincey’s Musings
Year One, Week 21

My mind sometimes wanders back forty-five years ago to my third grade class. Florence Chesney used practically every minute of every day teaching us moral values, especially in reading class.

Remember the pictures in those old readers? They practically begged us to read the stories we were assigned. Ms. Chesney read every story aloud to us, enunciating each word and phrase exactly the way she wished us to express it when we read aloud later in the week. In other words, she taught by example.

Mincey’s Musings
Year One, Week Nineteen

In his book, Who You Are When No One’s Looking: Choosing Consistency, Resisting Compromise, Bill Hybels says that character can be determined by what we do when no one is looking. Character is sometimes confused with reputation, but reputation is what other people think of us. Character is not the same as success or achievement—character is not defined by what we have done, but who we are.

Mincey’s Musings
Year One, Week Nineteen

My pastor recently asked me to teach the adult Vacation Bible School class at our church this summer. I asked him if there was a book or specific topic he wished me to address. He said that he could get me a book or that I could choose one of my own.

I came home and examined my bookshelves. I found a book by Bill Hybels entitled Who You Are When No One’s Looking: Choosing Consistency, Resisting Compromise. What a fascinating subject, I thought.