The Thursday Update

AUGUST 21, 2025

Lakeshore Friends,

In less than two weeks, my wife and I will celebrate 40 years of marriage. It’s hard to believe that well over half our life ago, two young Christians pledged our love to each other for life. And by God’s grace we have had a great marriage, at least I think so. 😊

But our marriage, like all marriages, has required lots of hard work. It’s also required so much more from both Sue and me than we fully realized back on that Saturday in late August 1985. Sacrifice, apologies, surrendering, forgiving, and pride swallowing have been a part of my role as a husband. By the grace of God, we’ve done what we needed to do to keep our love alive.

So often, we get the Hollywood, fairytale narrative of romance and marriage. It goes something like this. Love at first sight. Expensive dates together every night for a year. Laughing and loving each other as we talk about life, agreeing on almost everything we discuss. Never having to argue or fight because everything is just flowing so easily. Then we get married, thinking that all our problems will now go away. We have kids, buy a house, never have financial problems, keep agreeing on everything, never arguing, and the like. Then we retire together and live to 100. It starts so easy, operates easily, and ends happily ever after with few problems to speak of.

While I wish that were true, it’s not.

Unfortunately, it's easy to glamorize marriage as the cure for all our desires for happiness, not realizing how hard it is and how much work it takes to create a great marriage. One line I have used in many wedding ceremonies that I have performed is that, “Marriage is not to be entered into unadvisedly…” How true that is. Or, as one person put it, “Love is blind, but marriage is a real eye opener!” How true.

I’m excited to talk about how to marry well from Proverbs on Sunday. I want to both explore the myths of an easy marriage and yet provide the skills needed to make sure you marry the best person you can and stay married to them for all the days of your life. That’s no easy task, but it is very possible when we apply what Proverbs says to our romantic and marital lives.

I hope you’ll be here on Sunday, no matter where you are in this incredible pursuit.

Warmly,
Vince

AUGUST 14, 2025

Lakeshore Friends,

With every year that passes, we’ve become more of what I call an “instant” world. It seems like everything we desire must be delivered right away.

Think about all the things you use each day that are instant. You wake up to instant coffee, heat your breakfast in the microwave in an instant, and get instant news on anything using your laptop or phone. You can talk to anyone for free—instantly—on that very same phone. You can order almost anything and have it delivered in a day, and sometimes it can be stolen off your front porch just as instantly. You can pay your bills online in an instant. You can also rack up really large credit card charges, too—in an instant. So much of our lives are conditioned to focus on finding “the instant” solution to whatever we can, even when it’s not the best or right solution.

In many ways, instant can be a good thing. It creates convenience and helps ease the demands that can wear us out. But in other ways, it can erode our patience for the good things in life that require time. Things like dating, friendships, family life, and our walk with God are never instant. They take time because “time” does what “instant” cannot do—build perseverance, character, and strength. That’s why we need to develop the virtue that runs counter to instant gratification.

It’s called delayed gratification.

The Bible talks about this over and over again. If we can delay our gratification in life, we’ll often find the results more satisfying. That’s what we’ll be looking at in our current series on Proverbs this Sunday.

Are you ok when God delays His blessings in your life? Are you ok when you have to wait on Him while He builds your character during seasons of delay? Do you believe that in many areas of life “good things do come to those who wait”? The more you can answer yes, the more you’ve discovered the power of delayed gratification.

Warmly,
Vince

AUGUST 7, 2025

Lakeshore Friends,

I’m excited to be back to work this week after my four-week break. Contrary to what some people may think, I actually spend two of those four weeks working from home and thinking about the “big-picture” things related to our church corporately and my life personally. I really did a lot of thinking about both this July, even more than usual. As I celebrate 64 years of life on earth this week, I realize how limited my time at Lakeshore is and how important the rest of my days on earth are. I want to make my life count for God, for you, and for others.

With that said, I realize that one of the biggest enemies of a meaningful life is procrastination.

Procrastination is, “the act of voluntarily delaying or postponing tasks or decisions, despite knowing that doing so may have negative consequences.”

It’s so tempting to put off those tasks that we don’t like and the decisions that we really dread. And even when we know that putting these things off will only cause us even more problems in the days ahead, we still choose to procrastinate. We all know people who are procrastinators. Sometimes procrastinators are just plain lazy, other times they are unsure what is involved in taking action so they refrain from doing anything, and still other times they like to wait until the last minute to get certain things done. The reasons may vary, but the results are very predictable: an unfulfilled life that falls short of all that God intended.

As I prepared for teaching on this subject on Sunday, I constantly thought of others who struggle with procrastination. Yet, I didn’t realize that most people struggle with it at some level (yes, even me to a certain degree in certain areas). While one survey showed that 75% of people are self-described procrastinators, I think all of us are procrastinators given the right (or is it “the wrong”?) set of circumstances.

That’s why I think this Sunday’s message will be a big help as we look into what the Old Testament book of Proverbs has to say about procrastination in our series, “Uncommon Sense”.

So don’t procrastinate, be at church on Sunday, and learn how to put off procrastination in your life.

I’ll look forward to seeing you all!

Warmly,
Vince