Jerry Lout ⚬ Writer ⚬ Speaker ⚬ Mobilizer

October 2, 2025

Starting Point

My friend Mark is a poster boy to the power of love. Abused, then abandoned by his drug-dependent parents, Mark was found years later, languishing on city streets and in alleyways – dysfunctional and angry. A kind-hearted gentleman named Paul discovered him. Paul – just the father-figure Mark needed – took him under his wing. The journey had its setbacks, but authentic father love comes as a tenacious force.

Fast forward. Fifteen years in Mark himself routinely comes alongside men that are barely surviving at the fringes – every bit as broken as he had once been. Mark, like the rest of us, is far from perfect. A yielded Christ-follower, he’s a work in progress. Bearing God’s love.

The beckoning of Jesus to live the great commandment (love God fully, love others as myself) is not only called for, it is doable in a fuller measure than one might imagine.

It can be argued (and often is) that loving fully – i.e. for the most part with all of one’s being – is the mark of a person becoming fully human. God wishes this for us and, since his hopes are for our betterment, he himself enters the fray, lends aid. What aid it is!

But if a person would align himself with this venture (becoming one wholly given to love) they must want it and want it strongly. The hard truth is, few of us start out with that kind of “want to”. The process of being formed to Christlikeness starts (thank God), not with ourselves, but with him, with God.

God is Love.

Who among us would not want to be a loving human being? What person would look at authentic love and react with a ho-hum, “I’m not interested, thank you.”?

So, even though we do not start out all fueled and fired with an appetite to love God in the great commandment way, Christ himself tenderly invites us. He knows that we must begin where we are, not where we aren’t.

I want to want.

Some of us reach a place of saying, “I want to want what I presently do not want, and I want to not want what I presently do want”*.

This kind of simple honesty brings us to the needed “readiness of soul”. Since we cannot experience life transformation by ‘willing’ ourselves into readiness for it.

We begin where we are, not where we aren’t.

September 25, 2025September 24, 2025

One Driving Force

I imagine myself trying to distill to a single phrase the one driving force meant to mark the life of every Christian believer. While surveying this, I picture a gathering of people. I am present and Jesus is speaking to us all. He is giving his own answer to the very question (what most marks the disciples’ motivation, his drive, in living life?).

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. . . .and you shall love your neighbor as yourself”

Love.

God Is Love, the sacred text reads.

The earliest followers of Jesus were utterly taken by the love of God, witnessed nonstop through the sheer volume of words and actions issuing from his Son. They saw it in him. . . saw it demonstrated through him. . . love, at every turn.

When he pardoned and blessed the woman that was dragged into the public square, shamed and condemned by her accusers. And the other instances.

Stretching out a hand, bringing healing to a leper (the untouchables, the shunned of their day). Conferring dignity and high worth on little kids (the unsophisticated and marginally noticed). Assigning honor, even friendship, to a diminutive, tree-scaling government scoundrel.

Small wonder that the Westminster Shorter Catechism answers as it does the question, “What is the chief end of man?”

Man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever.

I quiz myself. Have I ever met such a person who carries out that pair of assignments well – consistently, virtuously? Other than the itinerant Nazarene preacher, human embodiment of the divine?

As with Jesus, so with us. Agape alone supplies fuel for knowing God and for extolling him as beautiful and transcendent Being of the cosmos and beyond. Day in and glorious day out.

Little surprise the tentmaking apostle’s analysis. . . the greatest of all that remains is love. Surely, indeed – given the savior’s gasping prayer over his executioners,

“Father, forgive.”

September 18, 2025

Best Thing Ever

The artificial intelligence gurus are the first to confess in these early stages that A.I. is not always the ideal source of garnering accurate information. That said, in curiosity we floated a phrase to the Web, wondering if A.I. had it in her to crank out an “intelligent” response. The phrase submitted is:

Life in Jesus, the great treasure.

A.I. shot back:

“The idea is that a life centered on Jesus brings a deeper sense of joy, purpose, and fulfillment than any temporary earthly pleasure.” (how does one high-five a mechanism that mimics the human brain!?)

In one publication John Piper asks, “What is Christ to us if he is not our all-satisfying treasure?” His article continues,

“The primary point (in Jesus’ parable) is that Christ, in his kingly greatness, is supremely valuable. The secondary point is that the way to have Christ as our treasure is to experience such a joy in his value that he is more to be desired than all our other possessions put together. Receiving Jesus as our treasure really does imply joyfully treasuring him.”

The statement rings true. Yet, as we know, coming to joyfully treasure another person does not usually happen overnight. Typically, we grow to value the special person more and more as we give time getting to know them. We learn who they are, their character, their personality and values.

Ann and I will, by year’s end celebrate the 58^th time circling the sun together as husband and wife. While it was certainly love that found us pledging our vows before the minister those years ago, we have, along the way grown deeper in our relationship. We treasure more fully this marital union, and this spouse (continuing to stand alongside) “for better or for worse”.

In a similar but even richer way, the disciple of Jesus comes to know their Lord more intimately over time. The apprentice comes to joyfully value and treasure the person of Jesus.

The follower of Christ happily echoes a line made famous by gospel singer James Cleveland,

“Jesus is the best thing that ever happened to me”.

September 11, 2025September 9, 2025

Assured Gains

When twenty-seven-year-old Jim Elliott and his friends set out to reach a remote people group of the Amazon Basin, none of the missionaries envisioned the cost that lay before them.

It was a few months after my tenth birthday when Life Magazine broke the news story. The five young men had died at the hands of Waorani tribesmen as they tried making contact with them deep in the rain forest. The men’s hope had been to, over time, share the love of God and message of Christ among the Waorani. I still recall learning the heart-rending news of their deaths.

He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep, to gain what he cannot lose.

The spread of the statement that Jim Elliott had penned in his personal journal served to awaken missionary passions across a fresh generation of young men and women. A new wave of ‘Great Commission Jesus-followers’ to serve in cross-cultural mission work was born.

Jim Elliott’s “he is no fool” phrase came to challenge prevailing worldviews of many across the landscape of conventional Christianity. His statement leaving a question to ponder at a deeper level. . . What sort of things in life do matter most?

Indeed, what did Jim and his four friends (Nate, Pete, Ed, Roger) actually ‘gain’ in the yielding up of their hearts, talents, treasures, and very lives?

And, when the fellows in Jesus’ provocative parables opts without hesitation to let go of all they have in order to obtain the “gain”, just what is that gain?

The New Testament pharisee-turned-apostle sings, The treasure is Jesus! With an ever-growing nearness and loving obedience to him.

“For me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain.”*

September 4, 2025September 4, 2025

Value Assessment

For most of us the thought of dying every day does not generate fond images. At least, at first.

I was young when the term “fool’s gold” entered my vocabulary. While playing outside one day I came upon a chunk of rock that grabbed my attention. It was the glitter that beamed from it as I turned it in my hand under direct sunlight. Learning that the alluring item had an unflattering nickname brought disappointment. Insult was added to injury. . . who likes being labeled “fool”?

Addressing a crowd of people one day Jesus launched into a parable The short story, given to provide some instructive insight, was followed by another. Then yet another. The rabi was on a roll.

Two of his stories – paired closely as if to emphasize his point – carried a single theme. Both stories – Parable # 5 and Parable # 6 – must have struck a chord with his listeners. Each narrative focused direct attention on the unexpected discovery of some extraordinary treasure – (no “fool’s gold” here.) Either one of these stumbled-upon prizes would have qualified as any treasure hunter’s dream find.

Seeing the items – one a rare treasure, the other an exquisite pearl – the discoverers went breathless with excitement. Each knew that acquiring such riches would require a trade-off. Of some kind. In order to gain the treasure, something of their own current possession would be let go. Yet, whatever the price, nothing they would offer could match the worth of this! Neither man balked.

Making such a discovery, each man – likely at breakneck speed – darted off to gather up whatever belongings he called his own. And liquidated all of it without a blink. You could say he was “dead” to everything except his new find. The single thing that mattered was the thing of priceless value – the treasure, the pearl.

“He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep, to gain what he cannot lose.” **

August 28, 2025August 27, 2025

Dying To Live

Give me liberty or give me death!

Patrick Henry’s declaration – heralded in his impassioned speech of March 23^rd, 1775 – fanned sufficient flame among a gathering of oppressed colonists to help launch a war for independence. Since the days of Henry’s speech, cries for the preservation of America’s freedoms have repeatedly rung out strong. From sea to shining sea.

Long centuries before Patrick Henry of the Virginia House, and long before the Continent of North America became a “thing”, the voice of an advocate for another kind of freedom was catching the attention of many.

The villages and towns where Jesus preached in the small patch of territory of the Middle East were held in the grip of Rome’s mighty empire. While the rabi’s message of emancipation did not specifically place Ceasar in its crosshairs (as Patrick Henry’s message did for Britain’s King George III) Jesus did – like Henry – employ straightforward language to do with sacrificial dying.

Jesus indeed did go to the grave (before rising from it). Yet the triumph that he secured by the freedom-revolution he led – and still leads – keeps the act of dying as a centerpiece within the communities of all who would know him as their liberating king.

The route taken by the follower of Jesus, bringing them to ever-unfolding life in his kingdom, is ever the path of dying.

Scripture’s words can sometimes rattle a soul. “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”

The persecutor-turned-apostle reminded his Corinthian friends, “I die daily”, attesting that a practicing disciple is one who lets go of his own identity, and grows increasingly in union with Jesus. Paul brings home the paradox – dying leads to living – as he graphically personalizes the revolutionary truth,

“I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.”

August 21, 2025August 21, 2025

Wantings

Is the particular condition (common to all humans) that we call desire, a good thing or a bad thing? We might go with a, “Well, it depends. . .”

We haven’t needed to experience much time on the planet to be able to confess – most of us with plenty of regret – that we have made some stinky messes along the way. By casually or carelessly giving in to desire (feelings). As John Piper puts it, “We should not be surprised or thrown off balance when we meet in ourselves, some really excessive and distorted bodily desires.”*

Piper went on to reference several disordered behaviors. . . gluttony, fornication, homosexual practices. To that list we can readily add gossip, lying, contemptuous speech (think political rhetoric either side of the aisle). The parade of missteps is longer than we would like to think. Help!

The good news is that help does come, to those earnestly looking for it. Seek and you will find, promises the Carpenter-turned-Rabi.

Part of the good news is that not all desires are bad. Indeed, most all the enslaving appetites that pollute and wreck human lives are actually “hijacked”, then distorted, versions of the real thing. Our best selves as humans bearing the marvelous image of God is what we are actually to grow into.

I really like food.

Foods and beverages come to us in all their wondrous forms and flavors. I indulge them largely out of a stirred-up appetite. Nasal sensors catch an aroma. Taste buds come alive to the mere thought of a delicacy. The stomach might be heard to growl. Maybe your own salivary glands are bearing witness to the phenomenon now! Into this scene at an inconvenient juncture, someone then inserts a useful, though uncomfortable question,

“Do we eat to live, or do we live to eat?”

Certainly, the lovely assortment of our most fundamental desires has made its way to our interior selves due to a very good design at the hand of a very good God. The measure that we are attentive and “lean into” our maker’s wisdom – drawing on his goodness, power and favor – may determine for us the difference between having a good, or a not-so-good (even tragic) pilgrimage here.

August 14, 2025August 13, 2025

A Greater Story

There is an interesting thing about vision. Once a person catches sight of a forward-looking hope or dream, they usually move toward it with only a tiny glimpse of additional things to follow. What they hold is a sketchy outline at best. No neatly printed, detailed contract is laid out before them – not to mention fine print!

The life-change adventure begins when we start realizing that “our vision is not our vision alone”. Indeed, when the presence of the Divine makes himself known somewhere along the way, it is then that we may start catching the wonder that his vision overlaps mine and mine converges with his. A new story is now taking shape. God’s story becoming mine as the two streams of narrative (his/mine) merge into one – much like the blending of threads forming a tapestry – eventually fused to make history, i.e. HiStory.

In not having a contract neatly incorporating fine print detail, we discover a priceless insight – usually well into our pilgrimages. We have been spared much of what we were not ready for at any given crossroad on our long and beautiful and hard and precious trek.

Learn from the past, look to the future. . live in the present.*

Now is the favorable time**

Parting from a world of rain-starved earth and barren cotton fields (Dust Bowl territory), Clyde and Thelma lived in the present. In time “the present” became their past. What a surprise it would have been to either of them had they discovered beforehand that they would one day come to joyous faith in a loving Savior for whom their hearts longed. And how distressing, that the life of their young son would be snatched from them by the swift waters of a Phoenix irrigation canal.

It was in the “present moment” of grief that my mother and father’s story merged with a greater story, a forever story.

August 7, 2025August 6, 2025

Leaning In

Thelma had lugged her suitcase onto a cross-country bus. Clyde had leapt aboard the moving box car of a west-bound train. Their vision for a new life together was matched by Intention. Without purposeful action any vision – noble as it may be – will plateau, then die.

Mom and dad’s dream of a more hopeful future was matched by their “on-purpose” action. The only remaining element had been the means. Enter Greyhound Lines and the Santa Fe railways. Any vision that is brought to a place of fruition calls for actionable intention and for “vehicles” (useful, practical means) to see the vision through.

My wife’s high school clarinet served as her means, on which she practiced long hours (intention) to achieve her aspiration. Her vision of performing as a top-level musician in Billings, Montana’s West High band.

The V.I.M. (Vision – Intention – Means) principle holds just as true for the disciple of Jesus Christ in their spiritual-life formation. A disciple, in other words, is a Jesus-follower who has set out on a lifelong journey, daily incorporating all three of those needed elements.

Practice Makes Complete

Most of us are acquainted with the well-worn “practice makes perfect” adage. While walking with God for sure calls us to an ongoing progress in our growing-up-lives in the faith, we are urged to aim for something different than perfection. At least in the way we often think of that word.

When the New Testament writer states, “whoever says he abides in him (Jesus) ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.”*, he is not suggesting that a Christ-follower lives a life of flawless perfection. That measure of excellence would be – as the saying goes – “above our pay grade.”

What the disciple is called to leaves the devotee amazed. Inside the heart of the Christ-follower a vision is birthed. But the “visionary” is not left to muddle through on his own steam. A living, all-present person, with shoulder-aplenty to lean into, has come alongside. **The Holy Spirit of God inspires and enables as the apprentice proceeds forward, haltingly at times for sure, still employing the indispensable components – intention and means. Being called to,

“Grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. . “***

July 31, 2025July 30, 2025

Visionaries

What sensibly-thinking (unskilled) laborer surrenders his ditch-digger shovel to chase after and secure an even lesser-paying job?

It seems a reasonable question.

When he spotted the simple flier announcing, “Plumber’s Helper Wanted”, Clyde wasted little time pondering its meaning. Shedding his less-than-promising vocation as dirt-shoveler along open trenches in the nearby neighborhood, he soon found himself loading and unloading lengths of galvanized pipe, odd-looking pipe-threading devices, and a sewage-clearing apparatus nicknamed “the snake”.

A companion question follows the earlier one. What kind of mindset would propel a poor young woman hailing from a dusty Oklahoma village to set out by bus and travel mile upon mile across several states to arrive at a “foreign” destination with scant understanding of what may lie ahead?

By the time the paths of Clyde Baxter and his bride-to-be Thelma Christine finally (after their months of separation) reconverged near a sprawling body of water called San Francisco Bay, they had each unwittingly entered the world of VIM.

Several decades were to crawl by before a Philosophy Professor – Dr. Dallas Willard of another Golden State setting (U.S.C.) – would introduce the VIM acronym.

Vision – Intention – Means

Clyde’s mind and heart had given birth to a vision. To one day marry his sweetheart, Thelma.

Clyde’s vision, however, called for significant risk and extraordinary courage. If his dream of gaining this pretty country girl as his life-long companion were to become reality, both he and Thelma must leave behind the dust-laden, increasingly barren, cotton fields of their beloved Sooner State.

It was a daring, costly venture the couple had struck out on, from the moment Clyde had leapt aboard his first freight train departing Oklahoma. And now, clarity of focus had – across the Greyhound miles – settled more deeply in his fiancé’s soul. There would be no going back. Thelma, too, owned the Vision.