Blog
Over the last 50 years, I've had what I would call multiple Pentecost experiences. In these experiences, I received a fresh anointing of the oil of God’s Spirit, equipping me to engage a new season. My task was to maintain that anointing by daily seeking God and His...
Many Christians obsess over the quality of other believers' faith. This obsession is the root cause of many of our divisions. If all participants can establish that Jesus is the way, and the truth, and the life, all these divisions will work themselves out if we all...
From time to time, we need to be reminded of the presence and purpose of God’s angels, whose assignment is to help us navigate the perils of this life. For some, the presence of angelic activity sounds strange, even cultic. They may dismiss the present-day activity of...
In 1973, during our first year of marriage, I bought a new Ford pickup. It was an F-150 XLT fully loaded. The price was $3,732.00. I went on Ford’s website this morning and did a build for a similar truck and the price is ten times what it was in 1973. The cost of...
As a young undercover cop working in an organized crime unit, I had an assumed name and a state-issued driver’s license. My cover was really good. Even if another law enforcement officer ran me through a national computer database it would not reveal that my ID was...
The phrase “follow the money” has become popular in our cultural conversations. The statement invites us to look deeper than the surface issues to discover the recipient of money who would gain advantage from its added resource. The problem occurs when we stop at the...
For the last few months, a crippled doe has found a place of rest in our front yard. She was born with a severely deformed leg and has been limping about three-legged all of her short life. The other deer is her brother, a young spike-horned buck who always stays by...
I love wide-open spaces. An expanse of sagebrush, quaking aspen draws, and old, weathered cabins are a thing of beauty to me. Traveling along a dirt road far off the asphalt beaten path and seeing these old structures speaks to me. I can imagine a stagecoach pulling...
In many ways, the nine years I spent as a cop before becoming a pastor prepared me for the ministry. Being a cop gave me an understanding of life's gritty reality. It also helped me understand how people would sometimes respond to fear. Life has a way of becoming a...
The fires of revival never really burn out. Someone somewhere is carrying the embers of a revival from the past. It only takes a single act of faith to reignite the smoldering embers and release a wildfire of God's presence. Fire agencies have been getting calls...
As I recover from knee surgery to repair a ruptured tendon, I find myself up at all hours of the night taking pain meds and icing my knee. I write this just a bit after 1:00 am from our living room hoping to let Jan get a few more hours of sleep. I need to keep my...
Yesterday, I found myself singing the Simon and Garfunkel song “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” It is one of those songs that can have a unique and widespread application to the challenging situations of life. Our world has always had troubled waters, but of late, we...
The turning point in the story of Sodom and Gomorrah took place when a mob of men, both young and old, came and surrounded Lot’s house. They demanded that Lot bring his two angelic visitors outside so they could have sex with them. Lot stepped outside his front door...
When I think of the biblical characters of Scripture, I think of a hearty people. They were robust because the societies in which they lived required a certain level of internal fortitude just to survive in their hostile and inconvenient world. Those of us thousands...
I came across an unpleasant article about a struggle that sheepherders are having in the United Kingdom. Crows are attacking the ewes in their flock pecking out their eyes as the mother lays defenseless on her side during the birth process. After pecking out the...