Pull Your Ship In – Part 1
If you see your life as being in God’s hands, and submit to him, that’s a great start. Yet if you just wait on him to do wonderful things in your life, you may find more disappointment than you expected. It may seem biblical and spiritual to simply wait on God to do the things he promises in his word. That’s faith, right? But look at the biblical record: God made Abraham leave his home and truck across the known world of that time. He made Noah build an ark, which some scholars calculate would have taken fifty years to…
The Inspiring Legacy of Pat Robertson
Pat Robertson, the pioneer and icon of American Christian television has died at 93.Regardless of what any one of us may think of him or his views, or of his politics, he was a significant figure in American Christianity—especially the breakthroughs he made. He was a visionary, a pioneer, a risk-taker, and a breaker of barriers who created far-reaching changes for American Christianity’s interface with the world and much more. He left a huge legacy.__________ He started the Christian Broadcasting Network with a mere $3 in its new bank account. It now reaches 150 nations in more than a hundred languages. He started…
Hardship Can Be the Best Friend of Our Souls
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was a Russian soldier who criticized Stalin and was sent to Soviet prison camps. He survived and he wrote books. Eventually he became a Nobel Prize laureate. In one of his books, he famously wrote, “Bless you prison, bless you for being in my life. For there, lying upon the rotting prison straw, I came to realize that the object of life is not prosperity as we are made to believe, but the maturity of the human soul.” Reread that and think about it.Imagine if the majority of people in the world thought this way. It would certainly…
Resurrection Is More than Easter Eggs
As we’ve celebrated Easter, or Resurrection Sunday, we sometimes glide past the full meaning of what happened. Eggs and rabbits are entirely the realm of the ancient Teutonic goddess of spring and fertility, Eostre (or Eoster), and you can see how we get the term Easter. Not to be bothered because the ancient church was simply trying in good faith to replace the pagan festival with a celebration of Jesus’ resurrection—the same thing they did with Christmas replacing the Roman party festival of winter solstice, Saturnalia. And All-Hallows-Evening (Halloween) replacing the Druid death festival of Samhain. It seems the ancient…
Pulling Part of Yourself from the Closet
I recently returned from twelve days in Belize, which is on the Caribbean coast of the Yucatan Peninsula. I felt natural there with the diverse people, culture, standards of living, and lifestyles of this developing nation. I didn’t experience any flash of inspiration or calling of God. For a while I felt nothing. But then a subtle sense slowly grew in me that this may be an answer to the foreign mission field I’ve been away from for so long. As if that part of my heart and calling finally found it’s place after many years since Kim and I…
