Blog
In the Church, many are experiencing a drift away from the absolutes of Scripture. Some of this has taken place because we sent our future leaders off to compromised seminaries and colleges. They came home to occupy our pulpits with an education that has either...
This week I met a friend for coffee. At one point in our conversation, the subject of flying came up. For ten years, I was a flight instructor and charter pilot in a part-time capacity and racked up a bit of flight time. As our conversation took an aeronautical...
Gaza is where Samson’s final moment of life occurred. After Delilah tricked Samson into telling her the secret of his unusual strength, he became weak. He was put in forced labor to work grinding grain. During this time, his hair began to grow back as well as his...
Unexpected greetings from the past will arrive to build your faith and reconnect you to old relationships you had long forgotten. God has a purpose in these reconnections and that purpose will be revealed in the coming season of your life. A few minutes ago, I reached...
One of the things that will come and visit my life from time-to-time are the memories of my youth. The young Garris will come and talk with the older me. Some of these experiences are a blend of the bitter and the sweet. One such visit took place this morning when I...
The power of God’s presence is underestimated. The presence of God alone has the power to challenge and dismantle entrenched darkness. This is illustrated in Scripture regarding the false god Dagon. Dagon was the god of fertility worshiped by the Philistines, a people...
As a young pastor, I supplemented our family income by working as a pilot. Most of my flight time was instructing new students, but there were times when I would have a charter flight. On one such charter, I was flying back to our home base in Kalispell, Montana solo...
This morning the following blessing appeared in my email in-box from my wife, Jan. It is a blessing she is writing for her third book of blessings. Jan inserted my name as a personal encouragement to me. The original will have the words, “your spirit”. There is...
I was awakened in the middle of the night hearing the 1964 blues song written by Tommy Tucker titled, Hi-Heel Sneakers. The opening lyrics are, “Put on your red dress, baby, cause we goin’ out tonight.” As the song played on, instead of the words, “Put on your...
In a time of great personal crisis or in the moment of approaching death, it is not our opinion about a particular strain of theology or a narrow worldview that people will reach for to find hope. In those moments people are reaching for the hand of God. Before these...
There have been a few times when I listened to people share their concept of God that I come away from those conversations seeing an image of a god who is so damaged that I want to hand the person a bottle of anti-depressant pills to help medicate their stressed out...
I remember the painful day when I accidently threw away all of Jan’s childhood family photos. We were pastoring our first church and our kids were in grade school. Jan’s mom and dad were downsizing so they wanted to make sure all the old family photos pertinent to...
The Lord revealed a picture of your life. Behind a doorway and standing in line are answers to forgotten prayers, unexpected blessings, new relationships, and fresh opportunities. As I continued to watch the developing image, all of these deliveries of God's goodness...
A wide variety of ideas about how someone gets “saved” are floating across our computer screens and working their way into our conversations. I have never felt comfortable with a definition of personal salvation that did not include the exercise of personal...
This morning, a story buried deep within my memory surfaced. It took place almost 40 years ago when I worked as a police detective. I was handed the lead on a homicide investigation. Attached to the investigation was a reporter from the Eugene-Register Guard newspaper...