Blog
As people become awakened to the reality of an unseen spiritual war taking place for the hearts and minds of individuals and nations, a phrase has come to light in recent decades - The Deep State. The Deep State is defined as a body of people, influential members of...
As a young pastor, I listened to how wise and experienced leaders would respond to their critics. The leaders who impacted me the most were those able to address their critics with a blend of both wisdom and grace. Unless a person lives as a hermit in an isolated...
When I was a little boy, my father chased away my childhood monsters. He helped me fall asleep when I was afraid of what was under my bed. He walked with me on the uncertain streets of life while I was enveloped by his confident presence and love. I remember in his...
The Church has not been called, as its first priority, to save nations. The Church has been called to advance God’s Kingdom. In the advancement of God’s Kingdom, nations will eventually be saved. When we reverse this order and mount campaigns of national...
I am sensing this is a time for the Church to discover, and for some to rediscover, the significance of where we are currently positioned in heaven, in Christ, at the right hand of the Father. In order to navigate what is before us we must first grasp this truth and...
Many believers are waiting for the “next big thing” God wants to do. The more I think about these “next big thing” mindsets, the more I have come to realize they are illusions. The next big thing God wants to do is witihin my heart and yours. He wants us to obey His...
I love to read people who understand history and the development of language. A couple of years ago I was struck by a paragraph within an article written by my Fulbright Scholar and Master of Fine Arts educated daughter: “When I taught literature to high school...
In the late 1970’s, I was a student at Ministries Institute at Faith Center in Eugene, Oregon. I had the privilege of listening to profound teachers each week. Names like Roy Hicks, Jr., Ron Mehl, Jack Hayford and Jerry Cook graced our pulpit. It was...
A couple of years ago, Jerry Cook came and spoke at our church. Jerry is one of my ministry heroes. For the last 30-plus years he has been a mentoring presence in my life through his writing and teaching. He has also functioned in this mentoring role to...
Each family will go through seasons of challenge and suffering in the course of a lifetime. As a family, we recently experienced one of those times. In the end, God showed up and pointed the situation in a new direction, but at the start we felt...
I will never forget the impact our eighth grade graduation speaker had on my young and developing life. The impact was not positive. I only remember the beginning words of his opening sentence. To his credit, he may have said more, but I shut down...
Twenty years ago, I sat in a large convention center with several thousand pastors. We were attending a denominational conference. One of the scheduled speakers had to cancel at the last moment and Roger Whitlow, a pastor of a large and impacting church in...
A television interview yesterday on The Dove TV about prayer, revival, leadership and God-Whispers.http://var/web/site/public_html.youtube.com/watch?v=GjFFt0tWdXI
I was afraid to go into Junior High School. Horror stories filled my young head about the “big kids” who really didn’t like little guys like me. We heard stories about getting our pants pulled down in front of girls. Much of what I lived in fear of never took place. ...
As a kid growing up we had one of those large, rubber-walled above ground swimming pools in our back yard. The pool stood three feet tall and was about twenty feet across. My brother and I would spend hours each summer swimming and playing in the water under the...