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...
If you are not familiar with the term “stolen valor” a quick YouTube search will reveal in vivid detail what it means. Stolen valor takes place when someone who never served in the military dons a uniform and medals and tries to impersonate a veteran. There is always...
One of the greatest gifts you can leave behind is to be, as far as it is possible with you, at peace with all people. “As far as possible” means we walk as far forward in the process of reconciliation as the will of the other person will allow. We can walk up...
Recently, I spoke at a gathering of social reformers and cultural influencers. My assignment was to unpack the teaching gift from within the five equipping gifts Paul mentioned in Ephesians 4. In my presentation, I shared there are three expressions of a teaching gift...
When I was a kid, I grew up in the Silicon Valley of California before the high tech companies arrived. Our valley was a continuous expanse of fruit orchards. My first real job was at age 9 picking prunes. The ease of picking prunes would depend on how the...
A few decades ago, a local church that believed in the supernatural works of God self-described itself as Full Gospel. The term noted an on-going belief in the supernatural works of God including the function of all the gifts of the Spirit. They did not believe in a...
When John the Baptist was crying out in the wilderness the people of Jerusalem and the surrounding region ventured out to hear his message. In that advancing crowd were people from all spheres of cultural influence. It would not be the innovators of a new product or...
We write and speak a lot about open doors of opportunity. What we don't talk about is the need to pause on the threshold of those open doors to inquire of the Lord to determine if He was the one who opened the door. A life that demands continual forward motion is a...
The soul and the spirit need to remain separate in the formation of our worldview and theology. Only the Word of God can make the separating cut revealing the distinction between these two components of our life. Theologies and doctrines formed by human logic in the...
The older I become and the closer to eternity I get, I have come to a conclusion. Amidst all our opinions about God, His Word and how the Church should function, in the end, God’s mercy will have the final say. His mercy gives me great peace about what will take place...
New is not better. New is different. We have the tendency to think that our turn at the helm navigated the ship of our ministry into its most unique ports. While that sounds good, it is a limited view of God and the future. Something about God is new each morning, and...
When the average citizen of Jerusalem walked by Jesus and the two criminals hanging beside Him on crosses it was nothing unusual. Crucifixions were a normal occurrence at that time in history. No one seeing the crucifixion could ever imagine the salvation of all...
In the classic western, Tombstone, Wyatt Earp played by actor Kurt Russell, walks into a bar that used to have more business and a gentrified clientele to see it virtually empty and barely surviving. Customers had been chased off by a bully who sat each day at a card...