Archive for the ‘Biblical Thoughts’ Category

“The Philistines had mustered for battle at Lehi, where there was a field full of lentils. Israel fled before the Philistines, but Shammah took his stand at the center of the field, successfully defended it, and routed the Philistines. Another great victory for God!” (2 Samuel 23:11-12 The Message) I used […]

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If you came to our church for very long, you would know we often say goodbye to people. One of the reasons we exist is to equip leaders for the Kingdom and then help them find places of service that are quite often not in our little family. And that […]

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Last week I took my family to see the movie Toy Story 3. The kids (9, 7 and 3) loved it! My wife loved it, and it made her cry. I loved it and was grateful for the long credit sequence after the movie which gave me time to pull […]

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I led worship this week on Sunday morning for the first time in years. Though my technical skills are a little rusty, I really enjoyed it. Worshipping (and leading worship) is one of the things that tap into my passion. While I was leading (and destroying) some of the songs, […]

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Multi-campus churches seem to be the hot thing right now among exploding churches, and among churches that want to be exploding. I have no criticism about the strategic value of this practice—I’m sure it makes sense for some, and out of necessity we even embraced a second location during the […]

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The other day I had an honest conversation with a dear friend of mine. It was good—I was challenged in just the right places to think through some of my assumptions. I left without taking any offence whatsoever; if anything, I was encouraged to grow to be a better leader. […]

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The story found in the first few chapters of 1 Samuel both encourages me and makes me ill every time I read it. I’m encouraged because what happens to young Samuel has many parallels to my hopes and prayers for my own kids: I pray that my children would “grow […]

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You are about to cross over and take possession of that good land. Be careful not to forget the covenant of the Lord your God that he made with you; do not make for yourselves an idol… (Deuteronomy 4:22-23) In much of Deuteronomy, Moses is telling the Israelites about their […]

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About 10 years ago I was struggling with staying in a pattern of daily time with Jesus and, though I loved His Word, staying in it habitually had become a bit of a challenge for me. That’s when someone introduced me to the Life Journal. Pastor Wayne Corderio assembled a tool […]

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Psalm 13—For the director of music: A Psalm of David How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and every day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph […]

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“…And so Moses finished the Work. Then the cloud covered the Tent of Meeting and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. Moses could not enter the Tent of Meeting because the cloud had settled upon it, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle.” (Exodus 40:33-35) When […]

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As a pastor I’ve always loved Exodus 18 and Acts 6 because of the wise and practical action that the leaders took to distribute the work of the ministry. I just think it makes good organizational and strategic sense to do this, and I’ve regularly revisited these passages to rethink […]

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When I was in 4th grade a group of friends and I were talking about our vision; we had just gotten our eyes tested. One member of the group had thick glasses and shared that he had 20/100 vision.  That meant what he could see clearly at not more than […]

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Continued from part 2… If God is a creative God and humans were created to reflect that image, then all-God/all-man Jesus paints a picture of what a fully creative human being might look like. In the first chapters of Mark, we discover a few things about creative, out of the […]

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Every once in a while, I post some devotional observations. I have a pattern of daily digging into the Word through a  devotional reading plan that our church works through together. Here are some things that I meditated on from Matthew 14-16 yesterday: 1. Jesus withdrew—a lot! He got away […]

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