Sterling Griggs

I-40 from Wilmington to Winston-Salem has been a regular companion of mine the past several months. Road trips can be awesome, but I honestly don't enjoy the driving part. I am still trying to figure out how to invent the "Get There Button" that can magically transport me to wherever I want to go with the push of a button. So far, I got nothing. On my recent travels, I have noticed an odd traffic phenomenon that I simply have no explanation for: As soon as I pass into Wake County going west bound, traffic suddenly slows down for a few miles to about 40 mph. There is not a wreck ahead, no traffic cones signaling caution, no speed traps that are making drivers paranoid. Traffic simply slows with no explanation. And this happens any time of day that I hit that same section - it can be morning, afternoon, or late at night. It's the craziest thing and it's especially irritating if I am caught up in it. This got me thinking: Who or what started these kinds of patte...

This summer has been a bit of a whirlwind for me and my family. As soon as school let out in June I took my son to soccer camp for a week. When we returned, I had two days to prepare to preach my last sermons at the church I was serving before we packed up all of our belongings and moved to Wilmington, NC. Almost immediately we had family in town all the while trying to adjust to a new environment. From there it was youth camps, another soccer camp, registering our children for their new schools, enrolling our youngest in a new gymnastics program, celebrating a sweet sixteen birthday and then going to get her license, and then serving as the speaker at a week-long high school camp. Somewhere in the midst of all of that my wife and I carved out regular time for each other so that we wouldn't be tempted to wake up one day and ask each other, " Who are you? " Time itself is such a funny thing - we can't actually create any more than we are given in a 24-hour day but ...

There are a couple of preset buttons on the radio in my car that I never push. These radio stations have been pre-progammed by my kids and, if I were to push one of these buttons, I would be inundated with "today's hits," which would result in me vomiting violently and quite possibly totaling my car. As one who grew up in the 1970's, survived the 1980's, and rejoiced over the musical revolution of the 1990's, I simply cannot stomach much of what passes for new music today. I had the pleasure of growing up in a time when music was made with real instruments being played by real people, not some digitized alt-recorded track that relies on computers to produce it. Yeah, I know, the electronic sounds of the 1980's want to refute my claim, but I don't count that as music. My first two real concerts were The Police and Bruce Springsteen, both of whom I saw when I was in middle school. My R.E.M. cassette tapes serenaded me to and from high school and I rem...

For several years now I've been able to go as an adult leader to the Passion Conferences in Atlanta. Having returned today, my mind is swirling with all sorts of thoughts, images, and mental tiredness that affects old guys like me when they go non-stop for almost three days. I realize that I am probably getting too old to keep doing this but I simply can't help myself. If you have never experienced something like the Passion Conferences, then a brief blog post like this is probably not going to amount to the much more than the first few pieces of a 1,000 piece jigsaw puzzle. But it's just too difficult to not make at least a meager attempt to recap some of the more memorable moments for me. Imagine yourself sitting in a room surrounded by around 60,000 other adults young and old who want one thing - to know God in a more intimate way. And I'm not just talking about experiencing warm and fuzzy "Yes, Jesus loves me" kind of tingles; I'm talking about a ...

The Christmas season is fully upon us and everywhere you look there is magic - and gaudy decorations - in the air. Black Friday shopping still exists, but the internet has now cornered the market for savings and Amazon has this whole one-click shopping thing mastered. If you consider yourself a Christian or even just a slightly religious person, then you understand that Christmas is more than just being in the spirit of giving or a holiday that gets the kids out of school for a couple of weeks. Christmas is about Jesus, because it is that time of year when we recognize His birth, His coming into the world as the Messiah to save us from our sins and to bring the hope of eternal life. Now more than ever we realize that a large portion of our culture does not celebrate Christmas for those reasons. Honestly, I have no problem with that at all because no matter how the rest of the world chooses to acknowledge what Christmas is about, I know that it is about Jesus and I get the chance t...

He looked at me in all seriousness and said, "I honestly believe it was God's will for me to leave my wife and kids to be with her . She makes me happy, happier than I've ever been in my life. When I'm with her, I feel fulfilled, as if the missing pieces of my life have suddenly been put into place. God wants me to be happy, right?" Pretty cringe-worthy statements there, huh? Maybe you're thinking that there is no way in the world God's will is for someone to get a divorce because he's in love with another woman, and I am right there with you. But the problem we all face at some point is that we struggle to know what God's will is in the first place. Truth be told, the foundation of our desire to know God's will isn't too far off this guy's desire to "upgrade" his choice in wives - we want God's will to benefit us. In other words, we know what we want and we hope and pray that God will rubber stamp it for us, hence maki...

By now you've all seen or at least heard what happened. Cam Newton, the Carolina Panther's MVP quarterback and emotional leader, sitting sullen before a bank of hungry reporters. His answers are brief, his mood dark. Having just lost the biggest game of his career barely half an hour before, he's still trying to process it all while the world is demanding that he give a polished thesis of the results. Finally, after only a few minutes and within earshot of an uber loud opponent's comments, Newton abruptly stands and walks away from the interview, leaving the media with all sorts of ways to spin what they had just witnessed. Yes, Newton could have responded better and most talking heads and Monday morning quarterbacks have been very critical of him for that. But of course, that's easy for us to say. When the team that I cheer for loses, I usually am not gung ho about it. In fact, I can get a little bit sullen myself and I didn't even get close to sniffing th...

The other week, right before Easter, a long-time friend shared an article with me about the death of Jesus. The author of the article asked the question, "Why did Jesus die?", and the reason he gave wasn't quite the one I was expecting. He said that Jesus died primarily to show us what love looks like. Now I don't disagree that dying for someone is a supreme act of love, but in the case of Jesus it was more than just one shining moment that put Him on that cross. When Jesus went to the cross, He went as a sacrifice for our sins. In other words, if Jesus didn't die on the cross and then rise from the grave, we don't have forgiveness of sins. Did love compel Him to die? Yes! But His blood actually purchased something for you and me. The cross stands as more than just an example of affection. As I mulled these things over in my mind, I began to wonder about what the word sacrifice really means. Sometimes we say that we are going to make sacrifices in our li...

"Everything is permissible for me," but not everything is helpful. "Everything is permissible for me," but I will not be brought under the control of anything... Do you not know that your bodies are the members of Christ?...  Do you not know that your body is a sanctuary of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought at a price; therefore, glorify God in your body. (1 Corinthians 6:12, 15, 19-20) Do you have a few minutes for me to list for you all of the things that you should not be taking into your body as a Christian? Let's start with pornography. No one that I know would doubt that pornography is incredibly harmful and that it has no benefit at all to the human heart or mind. I know of not one marriage that has benefited from pornography. Oddly enough, I don't hear these words very often from pulpits across America. Instead, we prefer to pick and choose which sexual sins offend us the mo...