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Notice how God is really into changing things? The seasons change. Eras of time reveal dramatic change in climate within a single region. Even within a single day, our bodies and our lives experience constant change. The earth turns, the birds migrate, our bodies age, our children grow, friends move away and others move in. We live with constant change.BUT NOT AT CHURCH!Yes, we are right now experiencing a big change at church. This weekend is the last page in a chapter of ou

So I said I would write this last Israel post on the plane heading home. But as I warned all of our travelers before we left, this trip was not a vacation, it was an excursion. I told them that one of my goals would be for them to get on the plane heading home, exhausted, and filled with new Biblical knowledge and an understanding of Jesus’ world. We succeeded. And I too was exhausted…and fortunately slept most of the flight home.So here’s the wrap-up, 4 days after returning.

Wow! So many things these last two days. Our excursion in Israel shifted to Jerusalem on Friday. We started the morning in the Garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus prayed the night before his betrayal, and where his friends fled from him in fear of his captors. We saw olive trees in this garden that are so old that they would have been there when Jesus prayed. It was a sobering experience. From Gethsemane, we made our way to the Garden Tomb. There are two places that are thought

These last two days in Israel were filled with a wide variety of sites and experiences. We started day 5 (Wednesday) by loading our bus and heading to Beit She-an, a major Biblical city that most are unfamiliar with. It’s often called the Pompeii of the Middle East because of the spectacularly preserved Roman ruins at the base of the ancient city mount. Not only was the old city an important place in the Old Testament, it became an important Roman city in Jesus’ day and many

Today was all about Jesus, experiencing his world and his ministry. We could not have asked for better weather. It was in the 70s and sunny. We began this morning visiting the Mount of Beatitudes, the traditional spot where Jesus preached the Sermon on the Mount. Because of clues in the text, and it being a logical place for a crowd to gather, the side of this mountain between Capernaum and Magdala is likely the place where he delivered the sermon The Bridge is in the middle

Today’s sites included a couple of very old Old Testament spots and a couple of places that hosted significant events in Jesus’ life and ministry. We started off with a beautiful sunny and much warmer morning, heading to northern Galilee. Our first stop was the ancient city of Hazor, one of the cities conquered by Joshua, and then under Israel rule for the next thousand years. Hazor had been home to ancient civilizations for over a thousand years before Joshua, and the layers

For over a year we’ve been planning it and 45 of us are now in Israel.With umbrellas in hand and ponchos draping our bodies, our journey began with amazing sights. Israel is in the middle of a drought and so the rain we brought with us is a blessing to these people. But we are also thankful that the forecast promises warmer and dryer weather for the rest of our week. Yesterday started with beautiful Caesarea, the Roman seat of government on the Mediterranean Sea. Here, Peter

17 dead, mostly high school kids. Horrible. Tragic. Terrible. Evil.There’s a lot of really bad stuff in the world. Right now it seems to be concentrated in Parkland, Florida. But not really. We had the heroic Chicago police commander who was gunned down Tuesday. So far this year, there have been 60 murders in Chicago, alone. Again, that’s just this year and it’s only mid-February. In reality, horrible things are happening every day around the world. The earth is filled with t

You read about people in the Bible praying for long periods of time and you wish you could do that, but how? Stories of prayer warriors like “Praying John Hyde" and George Muller intrigue you, but you think that kind of praying is only for the super spiritual.How does anyone ever pray for more than ten minutes at a time? I hear Christians commonly saying, “I run out of things to pray about and my mind wanders after more than ten minutes.” And for some, even ten minutes is a s

I was 17 the first time I preached. The youth group I attended had a special night for young guys who thought they might go into the ministry to preach to the youth group. There were three or four of us scheduled to speak that night and we were given 10 minutes each. I still remember the message that I gave and I hate to admit it, but it was heresy! But when I was about half-way into the message, one of our youth leaders, who happened to also be my speech teacher, leaned over

There is no such thing as a mature Christian who does not actively love in tangible ways. I’ve known older Christians who carried big Bibles who were full of knowledge, but were sour, legalistic and selfish. But they weren’t mature Christians. And the faith that they claimed to have was not real, Biblical, Jesus-pleasing kind of faith.Here’s what Paul wrote in Galatians 5:6, “For in Christ Jesus… the only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love” (NIV).Jesus-

When our kids were little, we used to have a simple phrase that reminded them of our expectation, “first time obedience.” We’d say it when they seemed to be delaying their response to us. For example, if Linda said, “Kids, turn the video off and come to the table for supper,” and they did not move, I’d say, “First time obedience,” and they’d remember that there were consequences to not listening right away.We were never proponents of the “1-2-3” method of counting while the c