Blog
We don’t fully understand what God says or does when we don’t have the full picture. Anything beyond what we have personally experienced is naturally questioned and doubted when our human reasoning kicks in. Our natural mind cannot believe or accept it. In fact, our...
On a brief trip, I bumped into someone on a city street I had not seen in many years. For a short time, she had attended one of the churches Jan and I pastored. From her appearance, it seemed the intervening years had been challenging. Immediately after our...
In His sovereignty, God chooses the timing to expose and cleanse what has become corrupted by demonic activity in His people. He will tell us to clear out anything that gives people the wrong impression of who He is and how we should represent Him. He will address the...
When I was a young boy, my brother and I walked out into the orchard that bordered our home. We found a bee’s nest. As boys will do, we shook the nest. The bees came out enraged, looking for the flesh of the intruders. We both got stung multiple times as we tried to...
There are constants across all spiritual disciplines in the Church. One constant is the need for confession and repentance. Confession is our agreement with God that what we have done is a sin. Repentance is the act of turning away from those sins and living a life...
Many reports are circulating within the Church about failed leadership. Those reports can be discouraging. If we are not careful about how we process those bad reports, they can affect us negatively, taking our eye off the most essential ball. Sadly, we are drawn to...
The trumpet of the Lord is announcing to God’s people that it’s time to move on from where we had previously camped. He is moving us beyond our current confusion about failed leaders and beyond old ways of thinking that do not reveal His glory. The Lord has a new...
Over the last few years, as Jan was writing her five volumes of blessings from the book of Isaiah, I have seen the power and importance of blessings and how they affect the one who receives them. When either Jan or I have read a blessing, we have seen the...
The Lord is clarifying the purpose of our worship. This is not about the style or location of our worship. It’s about the substance of our worship. This is not limited to a public worship service. It affects all areas of our lives – how we lead our families, how we do...
As Jan and I were walking through the historic cemetery in our small town, we passed by our grave sites. We bought those sites over 20 years ago when we first moved to town. We had the grave marker installed a couple of years ago, so our kids wouldn’t have to...
Amid all the turmoil taking place within the Church, we are being given a gift. We have entered a time where the confidence of the Church is being tested and examined. In that examination, we will see who and what we have been following. At the end of that...
All of us can pluck verses out of the surrounding context and use those verses to support our ideas. It’s in the context where a deeper understanding is revealed. Some of that revelation may be difficult for some of us to understand. It’s not just an Old Testament...
A pastor friend of mine, Ryan Rhoden, was asked to mediate between some believers in his church who were experiencing disagreement on a particular issue. . He said, "I will bring my bad theology, and you bring yours, and let’s sit down and talk.” The pastor was...
As the Lord continues to reset His Church amid all the exposures and the back-and-forth of denials, He is doing something new in the Church, not just with those who have abandoned what true prophecy is supposed to be, but with all members of the Church, no matter...
We must be careful where we place our trust. A misplaced trust will put us in a place of spiritual and emotional jeopardy where disappointment and disillusionment are sure to come. This is why some fall away from the faith. They did not continue to trust in God or His...