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I had a conversation with a guy a while back, who had a defeatist mentality. His life wasn’t really that bad. He grew up in a stable family, had a good wife and a couple of happy kids. He had a decent job, drove a newer car, and lived in a nicer house than I had ever lived in, and he was healthy. But to him, everything was wrong. His parents were nags, his wife wasn’t perfect, his kids misbehaved, his job was stressful, his car used too much gas, his house needed repairs, and

A dating couple rented a bicycle built for two and went out for a ride. After a few miles, they came to a long steep hill. It took a great deal of struggle for the the two of them to complete what proved to be a very stiff climb. When they got to the top the guy in front turned to his girlfriend and said, “Man, that was a hard climb.” The young girl in back innocently replied, “Yes it was! I was so afraid we’d roll back down that I kept the brakes on all the way up!”     Are

One of my favorite verses in the Bible is Micah 6:8 – “He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”      I could make a number of observations from the verse, but would like to focus on the last phrase, “to walk humbly with your God.” What does it mean to walk with God? In the Old Testament, the phrase is normally worded as “walking before God” (Ge 17:1 1Ki 2:4 2Ki 20:3

Next week is Memorial weekend and summer is here. What do you have planned?     In previous cultures, summertime was a time of hard work and production. Schools break for summer even today because in the old days, families needed their kids at home when farm chores were especially work intensive (that and the hot days with no air conditioning made school unpleasant). But as we have become less and less dependent on the family farm for our economic well-being, summers have shi

If you’re reading my blog, you don’t want to do that. You wouldn’t be on this page if you didn’t have some interest in church things. Even people who do not go to church are usually happy when their kids do. Church people...church people say they want more than anything for their kids to know and love God, and to be a part of a good church. But the trouble is, too many church people are turning their kids away. How?
 By attending when it is convenient. Kids can be fooled for

Laptops, iPads & Android tablets, smartphones and GPS navigators, what would we do without them? You’d think with all these time saving devices, life would slow down. But I’ve never seen so many restless and hurried people. If our technology delivered what it promised, and did what we purchased these gadgets to do (at least the excuses we used when we bought them), we’d have the time to spend on the things we say matter.     But I’m afraid all we’ve done is added speed and no

It’s been two and a half weeks since Easter (at this writing). With all the prayer time and energy invested in the weeks leading up to our “Christian Super Bowl,” it’s too easy for me to fail in giving time to enjoy the victories in the aftermath. But maybe it’s time to revel in what God did.     I can’t help but recall my earliest conversations with John Knautz five years ago, who was then the chairman of the search committee charged with finding and recommending the next le

The other evening I lit a small campfire in our backyard fire pit. I enjoy looking into the flames and studying the way fire consumes the wood, transforming it into smoke and ashes. I said to my wife, "Watch this," and I used the poker to pull a red hot coal from the midst of the flame, out to the edge of the pit, away from the other embers. In a matter of a couple of minutes, the glowing remnant of wood went from bright orange, to dark red, and then black. Away from the othe

There is no success without sacrifice. Every major accomplishment is preceded by someone’s sacrifice. Any success you have enjoyed took sacrifice to make it happen. It might not have been yours, but someone sacrificed for you to enjoy success. Seeing our radical objective come to fruition will take sacrifice. Are you willing? Is this objective from Jesus important enough to you to sacrifice for?     We’ve already talked about the necessity of prayer, and most of us are prayin

Is it really a radical objective to take seriously Jesus’ Great Commission? It probably shouldn’t be, but for too many Christians, it is. Too many Christians have little desire to see the family of God grow. Some are even critical of growth in the church. Sadly, they want to keep the church all to themselves. But Jesus made it clear, and the example we have in the Book of Acts is that God wants His church to grow. He wants more churches, and he wants all of them to grow. I th

Jesus said that where two or three are gathered together in his name, he would be in the midst of them. He also told his followers to go out into the highways and hedges and compel people to come in. In Acts we read Luke proclaim with rejoicing that 3,000 were saved and added to the church on her first day, and then 5,000 more were added a few weeks later. Over a dozen times in the first fifteen chapters of the book, we read Luke rejoicing over the many numbers of people who

When the type on his printer began to grow faint, Bob called a local repair shop where a friendly clerk informed him the printer probably needed only to be cleaned. Because the store charged $50 for such cleanings, he told Bob he might be better off reading the printer's manual and trying the job himself.     Pleasantly surprised by his candor, Bob asked, "Does your boss know that you discourage business?"     "Actually, it's my boss' idea," the employee replied sheepishly. "