Blog
Death is a personality not a vague and widespread expression of the presence of evil. We cannot fight against Death without being specific regarding the existence of his personality and mission. The Book of Revelation assigns a capital letter to denote Death as an...
The staff of authority you carry is not something you want to hold onto because you realize the challenges it will create as you exercise its authority. Realizing those challenges, you have tried to throw the staff down and move on, but you can’t. The Lord has...
Traps have been set in our lives to take us back into a place of bondage. They are designed with specificity to capture our attention and then lead us into a place of deeper temptation. As Moses was instructing the Israelites about how to live in the lands they...
It was on this day, January 1, 1962, that one of the most meaningful days of my life took place. For Christmas week, our family was visiting my uncle’s ranch in McArthur, California. I loved driving to the end of Lewis Road and seeing the ranch each summer for hay...
Some of you feel like a satellite that has been faithfully orbiting a marriage, a business vision or a ministry calling, but you have lost communication with those who sent you on the mission. You feel lost in space. Some of you have given up hope because it has been...
For some of us who use blogs to store and transmit what we write, it is always interesting to see the audience source for our writing. One of the tools used to track readership are the graphs provided that track the number of reads that take place in a given day. Just...
I experienced two significant events 36 years apart that were strangely similar. In 1981, I turned in my badge as a police officer to step into the new role of pastor, a calling to which I had no understanding. Jan and I were rookie church planters traveling to a new...
Each morning, I sit down and ask God if there is something He wants me to write. It is never a challenge to find something to write. What is the challenge is finding something He wants me to write. This morning, I asked that familiar question once again. Immediately,...
Jan and I have experienced 43 Christmas mornings together. After the birth of our two children, we created a Christmas morning family routine that has become a tradition. Jan and I get up early for coffee and Jan’s homemade cinnamon roles, a recipe given to her...
I wonder what the meeting would have been like if Eve, the mother of all humanity, could have met pregnant Mary, the mother of Jesus. I can only imagine the flood of emotion that would overwhelm Eve as she remembered tasting the flavor of forbidden fruit and receiving...
I always thought it was strange how I see the year’s calendar in my mind. It resembles a roller coaster. This time of year is that part of the ride when the roller coaster car is slowly ticking its way up through the last few days of December to the apex of the...
As a kid growing up in church, I heard the following words repeated over the years, “The finished work of the Cross”. I often wondered what those words meant. I have now come to understand their meaning. Jesus went as far as possible in His obedience as the Second...
Each year between Thanksgiving and Christmas my father’s rifle, shotgun and binoculars would mysteriously disappear. I wasn’t aware of this annual disappearance until one day when I asked to use my dad’s binoculars. I was told, “There not here just yet.” I was a...
Whenever a spiritual crash takes place a debris field is left behind containing the evidence of what went wrong. When the crash of an airliner occurs, the NTSB arrives at the scene to collect evidence and find the black box hidden in the wreckage. Pieces of the...
Don’t require other people to be courageous if you are not willing to live in the same place of courage you are requiring of them. Step into your place of courage without demanding that others do the same. Once there live in such a way that your life becomes an...