Blog
My wife, Jan, inherited the DNA of her father. He was a missionary who built churches and seminaries in Central America. Jan is a very feminine woman – a woman who caught my eye and captured my heart over 50 years ago. There are some Christmases when Jan would prefer...
Yesterday, I was preaching in Portland, Oregon – a city that has been in the national news of late. Early in the morning, my sermon was ready, so I spent time in prayer about the service. It was during that time of prayer that the Lord gave me a prophetic word to...
It’s interesting how far our personal history extends into the past, and how far into the future it will be revealed. Yesterday, Jan and I were driving on I-5 in Oregon when we stopped at a rest stop north of Woodburn, Oregon. When I got out of our truck, I parked in...
Increasingly, Jan and I are turning off TV shows we began to watch on Netflix or Amazon in hopes of enjoying some simple entertainment. Some of these shows began to reveal content that left us feeling slimed. If we didn't make a choice to stop watching it would soil...
An increasing number of Christians have dismissed the Old Testament as irrelevant. Some in their dismissal have said it represents a cruel God, not the God of compassion. Those dismissals are very dangerous assumptions. As Scripture tells us our God does not change,...
There is a great deal taking place in our world that has people asking the question, “How did we get here?” The answer to the question cannot be spelled out at the moment the question is asked. We must trace backward to reverse engineer an outcome, perception, or...
Whenever God calls us to rebuild an individual life or a nation, that rebuilding process will be met with opposition. When the Israelites were instructed by the Lord to rebuild the Temple they started with the altar – a place of worship. The book of Ezra details the...
Have you ever found yourself asking, “What’s next?” We can ask that question about a whole host of life issues. What I am referring to is the next major event from a national or global perspective. I am asking about the impact that will come when that next...
The spirit of pride that caused Lucifer to fall from Heaven is the same kind of pride that will bring down earthly representations of the same spirit. Along with his blinding pride, Lucifer was accused specifically of a representation of his original sin, “You who...
Once, when I was pastoring, a woman I knew in our church made an appointment to see me. On the day of our appointment, my secretary led her back to my office. She didn’t say anything as she walked through the door and sat down. The woman looked directly at me and...
On a walk last week, I saw a group of turkeys sitting on a fence. It got me thinking about how we can become so afraid of offending someone that we shy away from expressing the truth, especially about hot-button social issues. To a passerby who wants to see a...
As summer winds down, I’m thinking of the summer of 1973. It was a special time. On Mother’s Day, I proposed to Jan, and we set the date of our marriage three months later. That summer was carefree and filled with expectations of a new life and a new future...
Where I live in southern Oregon, our valley is filled with smoke from massive forest fires. For days we have endured deteriorating air quality now defined as hazardous. Because the sun has been reduced to an apocalyptic orange glow, it caused me to ponder the words of...
New mandates are being proposed. While choices were made the first time the mandates were instituted, choices based on the available evidence we had at the time, this time around will be different. Local congregations, business owners, and their customers have become...
My wife, Jan, has said on several occasions, "A boomerang of evil is returning." What has been sent out into our world of delusion and deception demanding we agree and comply with its message will return and strike the architects of its message. We are entering a...