In the midst of COVID-19, the world right now is living in fear. Hoarding toilet paper, or anything else, is living in fear. That’s not God. However ignoring the danger, like some churches are doing and meeting in large groups anyway, is not God either. Fear, in and of itself, is not bad. Fear is […]
Janet and I were at a local restaurant recently. The waiter wasn’t complaining, but it’d been a really lousy Sunday. He was struggling with some things in his personal life, his customers had been grouchy, and he really needed the money he didn’t get it in tips that day. It was his worst shift ever. […]
I’ve been sharing my journey of discovering how to honor the Sabbath and enter into God’s rest. Not that those are both the same thing, but they are related. True rest, God’s rest, is not the absence of work. Regarding the Sabbath, Jesus told the Pharisees, “My Father is always at his work to this […]
The best analogy I’ve heard about entering God’s rest is from Graham Cooke, one of my favorite teachers. This is my (admittedly poor) paraphrase of his vision/dream. Orcs were chasing me. I ran up mountains and through forests, and was nearing total exhaustion. They would catch me soon, and my one sword would not be enough. […]
We all have them. Vulnerabilities. Weaknesses. We hide them. We ignore them. We pretend they aren’t there. We’re embarrassed by them. They remind us of our small, frail, mortality. The last thing we want to do is deal with them. But that’s exactly what we need to do. And if we do it wisely, we […]
At some point, you yourself have to stand up. We learn from godly mentors, pastors, teachers, parents, influencers that God brings into our lives. They can point us to the way of faith, the narrow road of following Jesus. But at some point, we need to decide for ourselves. Check out this story of a […]
There is one particular quality that overrides all of our other faults combined. If we just cultivate this one quality in our lives, all our other faults will take care of themselves. Really? Instead of focusing on improving my weaknesses, I can learn this one thing instead, and that’ll take care of everything else? Yep. […]
Church is the place where we come together as a people and celebrate all that God has done for us. Yes, we celebrate our salvation, but the cross was meant to be the beginning of our freedom. God has done miraculous things in all of our lives and continues to do so. Janet and I […]
Most of us live from the pain of our past. We try to medicate it with addictions. We try to bury it by being busy doing good things. We try to drown it with a constant buzz of media, entertainment, and self-gratification. But none of it works because God, in his great love and mercy […]
Are you stuck in your life? Is there something you just can’t seem to get past? So often we get swept up into the whirlwind of life that we forget ourselves. Braving the grueling commute. Playing kid-taxi all over town. Spending our energy in a job we don’t like but pays the bills. Coming home […]