Blog
While Scripture tells us that faith is the substance of things not seen, it can also be the substance of things we refuse to hear. It's sad to see many Christians dismiss people because they have been told to reject them or they are not willing to listen to what they...
Our greatest failures are not the end of our faith. They can be the beginning of something much deeper if our hearts remain tender and responsive to God and open to His process of restoration. The restoration of Peter had similarities to his three denials of the Lord....
Predictions are different than revelation. Revelation comes from God and can run contrary to the wide variety of human predictions of what people think will happen in the future. Many times, revelation will stand alone, enduring the mockery and dismissal of the...
We can learn a great deal about how the devil attacks and destroys the faith of a believer from observing the tactics displayed in natural warfare. Just as it was in Israel two days ago, when the rocket attack signaled the beginning of a much larger planned attack,...
A state of war has been declared in Israel on the 50th anniversary of the 1973 Yom Kippur War. The war was triggered by attacks from Hamas who began the war by firing 5,000 rockets into southern Israel. Terrorist teams have been sent over the border into Israel by...
An impacting faith requires two things – tension and traction. The tension happens when we discover the difference between good and evil. Traction occurs when we take our faith outside the sanctuary into the streets of the real world and apply it to the very practical...
A single image projected to others that captured a single moment or season of our life is not always what we want other people to use to interpret our lives. It’s like being caught in a moment of undress or a situation lacking decorum. To capture such images and...
Too many older saints have stepped off the field of play and checked out thinking age is a restriction regarding their service in God’s Kingdom. That’s just what hell wants us to think as we grow older. It removes us from a place of service where we can offer the...
This morning, I saw the image of a firing squad. Normally, that image would be depressing, depicting death. It was not about death, it was truth being fired in love into the heart of darkness. It brought life. Truth, when spoken in love, becomes a projectile of hope...
If we live long enough we will eventually be falsely accused of something. It's a shock when this happens, especially regarding people who we thought should know better. These accusations can be tossed out when a misunderstanding happens, a perceived betrayal takes...
For over 20 years, I have hiked all the trails above our town thinking I knew just about all there was to know about the trails until a recent hike. I was hiking along a trail just outside of town when I happened to look down and saw something I had missed all these...
When it’s time to do a makeover of any aspect of our lives, whether it is physical, relational, or spiritual, timing is everything. Makeovers have a window of possibility attached to them that requires a specific timing not always present when the desire for change is...
In the last few years, I've sensed a rise in cautionary words for the Church. A word of caution is not always warm and fuzzy, especially when it disrupts the status quo of our assumptions. When our lives seem stable and prospering, we don’t want to think of any kind...
One of my early memories was of my father taking me to an iconic hot dog stand in Oakland, California called Doggie Diner. At the time there were Doggie Diner franchises all over the Bay Area. I can still recall the smell and taste of the hot dogs and the steam-heated...
There is always a danger when something unusual happens and we try to create a prophetic-sounding meaning to the event. All of us can be susceptible to such an enticement. These events should not be dismissed out-of-hand because of the fear of being misunderstood,...