Blog
This morning, I prayed for the widows in my life. Each of these women had husbands who were friends of mine. They are living as women of God, each one serving the Lord in their unique way. When my father died, my mother lived another twenty years after his death. Jan...
Last week, I saw unusual photos from the city of Rancho Palos Verdes in Southern California. The landscape of the city has been moving dramatically up and down each week for the last year. Images of crumbled asphalt streets and homes tilted off their foundations were...
Most of us have lived our lives unaffected by the events of the world. There have been many personal tragedies of late, but overall, we in America have lived insulated from global wars and advancing armies. If we knew we were being surrounded by those who wanted to...
A dangerous intersection is crossed when our unresolved frustrations are linked to short-term and short-sighted solutions. This is a ploy of another Kingdom to disempower the Church. It applies to our faith, our politics, and culture. Deal with what is frustrating you...
As a boy growing up in America in the 1960s, things with wheels fascinated me. Bicycles were my first set of wheels followed by a go-kart, a mini-bike and then at about age 14, I realized the possibility of driving a car. I couldn’t legally drive alone until age 16....
There seems to be an abundance of 30-day challenges out there. Most of them are great. I want to add one with a different twist. I would like to invite you to commit to pray in the Spirit (tongues) for the next 30 days. Commit to pray this way when you first get in...
Deep water feels different than shallow water. If you have ever jumped off a boat into the middle of a deep lake or out at sea, you will know what I mean. Yes, water is water, but the unknown depths beneath your dangling feet do something to your perception. For many,...
In a dream, I saw Jesus running across a stream. He looked like all of us who have run across a narrow mountain stream landing on each available stone with the ball of our foot. It’s a delicate dance of passage. In the dream, Jesus wasn’t landing on stones. His...
In warfare, humans have always constructed their defenses at the outer limit of an enemy's range of effective fire. These defenses were set up in the mouth of caves, moats around castles, walls of a frontier fort and today, with firewalls around our technology. In the...
This week we realized one of our beautiful maple trees had finally died. It has been a slow death. We tried to help the tree, but its disease was stronger than our desire for it to live. The maple stands 65 feet and is positioned at the front of our property. Last...
Yesterday, Jan was off to meet someone for a counseling appointment, so I headed to a local market to buy some groceries for dinner. In the checkout line, I began to place items on the conveyer belt. When I picked up a bottle of Kinder BBQ sauce, my hand slipped, and...
As I read through the 14th chapter of Revelation, I came across verse 13. One part of that verse caught my attention. The text reads, “…for their good deeds follow them.” As I pondered what that phrase could mean for us today, I began to get a sense of what the...
Years ago, when I wrote my first book, Prayers from the Throne of God, a man paid me a compliment. He said my book was better than a well-known classic on prayer. When he spoke those words, I had two responses, both internal. One, I knew the man was not being...
Self-pity is a spiritual terrorist who wants to sneak aboard your life. This destructive attitude comes with a bomb strapped to its back. Detonate it in prayer—far away from innocent bystanders. The problem with self-pity is that it feels so good. Like a drug,...
If we are not careful, we can become like the ball in a pinball machine bouncing back and forth between the latest political controversy, moral offense or today’s news broadcast of someone’s wrongdoing. It is like dope. It keeps us spiritually stoned and out of touch...