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Fear of the Unknown Some years ago after a routine doctor’s visit my wife got the call you never want to receive. Something had shown up and more tests were required. I was gripped by fear – afraid of the unknown. All of our children were living at home at the time, and my mind went into overdrive, imagining every possible scenario – most of them “worst case.” I was afraid that God would fail me. I was afraid that God would abandon me. I was afraid that God wouldn’t do what I wanted Him to do. There I was, pursuing ministry and telling people about trusting Jesus with every aspect of their lives, and God tested ME. He called on me to step up to the plate and meet him, head on, in the midst of some of the deepest fear I’d ever experienced. Ultimately, this particular situation turned out ok. We were blessed to learn that Theresa’s tests came back just fine, but the experience had a profound impact on us. It seems like the “unknowns” people face on a day-to-day ... |
Experiencing God’s Dream for your Marriage Why do our dreams about marriage so often end up in nightmares? Marriage research reveals …
As Frances Schaeffer said “Sometimes the greatest deterrent to a very good marriage is the belief that you ought to have a perfect one.” The very idea that the perfect marriage exists and that there’s a “perfect person” somewhere out there for you is a lie straight from the pit of hell. We all have dreams about marriage that represent our “ultimate” vision of what marriage will be like; so rarely does the real thing measure ... |
Help Us Meet the Match this Summer This is not your average blog post! It was exactly three years ago that I made the biggest ministry decision of my life. I left a secure job with good pay and a global ministry platform to pursue my “God-ordained passion” of teaching and discipleship. We launched with no money, no backers, and no plan B! But I was convinced that helping Christians live like Christians was, “THIS ONE THING I MUST DO.” In response to that step of faith …
God brought people, a place & provision. We have experienced three years of life change, grassroots momentum, supernatural growth, and international expansion, enabling us to:
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Model Home Shortage Over the last few decades, people’s idea of family has changed pretty dramatically. As broken homes increase at exponential rates, our culture has normalized this trend, now recognizing it as the standard instead of the exception. In fact, in recent years the divorce rate in Christian homes has superseded non-Christian homes. As the children of second, third and even fourth generation broken homes set about shaping their own families, the gaps they need to close grow painfully wider. Family dysfunction is on the rise as family values are eroding. Countless parents and children have emerged from painful environments battle-weary and completely lacking any context of what a healthy, balanced family dynamic looks like. What hasn’t changed, though, is the longing that each of us has for deep connections with those we love. Who among us doesn’t desire unconditional love able to withstand the toughest storms of life? Rich, genuine relationships that ... |
God’s Dream for Your Kids What if God’s dream for your children isn’t about their happiness? Now, that’s not to say that God doesn’t care about their happiness; He does. But what if their happiness is only a gracious by-product of His primary agenda for their lives? What if we, as parents, are unconsciously working against God’s best plan for our kids? That would mean that we need a completely different parenting paradigm to raise effective kids in this defective, hostile world. Bringing up confident, Christ-centered kids in a culture that is at odds with scriptural priorities is no easy task. As parents, we often act based on cultural cues and pressures we don’t even recognize. There are many parenting myths that run rampant in our culture. God says that my goal as a parent is not to make my kids happy; but to make my kids holy—set apart for God. Our culture’s focus on making our kids happy is dangerously shortsighted. The ... |
[Retro] Active Faith Do you remember your very first moment of spiritual awareness as a child? I’m talking about the first time that you sensed the presence of God and realized there was something bigger than yourself. For me, I was eight or nine years old. I was an altar boy, and I would carry this cross up the center aisle of our A-frame church with the pastor following me. I sat to the side of the altar, and this one particular morning the sun was just pouring through the floor-to-ceiling stained glass windows and hit the base of the cross. Now at that point I had no theological training, obviously. I wasn’t in a church where the Bible was taught, but in spite of that I had this amazing sense that God was real. I had all kinds of thoughts cascading through my mind that I’d never had before: “I wonder what God’s like? I wonder why I’m here. If God made everything, I wonder why he made me? What am I supposed to do with my life?” Then I had ... |
Discover, Develop and Deploy your Spiritual Gifts When the topic of Spiritual Gifts comes up in church, I’ve observed that it typically evokes two responses in people – one of great passion or one of casual indifference. Now this is a topic that I’m personally very passionate about, but that wasn’t always the case. To explain what I mean by that, let me give you some background about my own journey that you may be able to relate to. When I look back over my life so far, I see several distinct eras. The first is what I think of as the “Era of Ignorance.” It’s pretty much just like it sounds: I was clueless. I didn’t grow up as a Christian nor did I open a Bible until I was about eighteen years old. I wouldn’t have recognized a spiritual gift if it jumped out and bit me, much less have known what to do with it. The next era of my journey is what I call the “Era of Confusion.” During this time I was only a few years old in the Lord, and whenever I heard people ... |
Are You Good and Mad? Most people would agree that times have been pretty tough over the last few years. As our country has spiraled downward into recession, people find themselves in crisis. A lot of their pain begins with financial or career crisis as entire industries that were once cornerstones of our economy are crumbling. Unemployment is at an all-time high, average incomes are down and consumer confidence is faltering across the board. The bottom line is that people are angry. They’re angry about a lot of things: losing their livelihoods, losing their homes, health care reform – you name it. Here’s where it gets tricky – before long, that anger begins to seep into other areas of our life that often have nothing to do with the root cause. This ripple effect is especially evident in communities that have taken the biggest hits during the recession. Incidents of suicide, workplace and domestic violence, divorce and substance abuse all begin to climb at alarming rates in ... |
The Power of Your Words I’ll never forget the first day of my Sociology 101 class. I was eighteen years old, and I had never even opened a Bible until six months earlier when I became a Christian. I was excited about all that I was learning and my faith was new and growing. I was a zealous Christian. And then I went to my sociology class. Anything that any of us had learned or believed about anything – politics, education, religion, culture – my teacher had a book to refute it. Every week he challenged every single thing I believed, and over the course of that semester he attempted to decimate the Christian faith. Now, I was a new Christian and didn’t know the Bible very well. It wasn’t long before he raised some doubts in my heart and confusion in my soul. Then I began to feel inadequate and stupid when I couldn’t respond to all of his questions. I felt knocked down. It took all the wind out of my sails. All of the joy I was experiencing was gone, and I spent ... |
How Personal is your Knowledge of Jesus? The biggest issue in the religious world today can be summarized in three words: Who is Jesus? In the past few years several best-selling books have radically challenged what people believe about Jesus. From that, another 35 or 40 books were spawned, all either affirming or refuting the basic premise of who Christ really is. Among Christians and non-Christians alike, there’s been quite a stir recently, and I believe that’s rooted in something deeper than just the 45 million copies sold on the subject. There’s a movement going on that raises the question “Who is Jesus, really?” In the Gospel of Mark, Mark is addressing a Roman audience. Chapter eight is the apex of the book, and in Mark 8:27-29, while walking with his disciples and Jesus asks his disciples two important questions. He says, “Who do people say that I am?” Then he asked, “Who do YOU say that I am?” Before examining their response, it’s ... |
