Archive for the ‘Personal’ Category
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 […]
Read More...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 […]
Read More...“…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 […]
Read More...A couple of weeks ago my wife and kids and I took a vacation to visit family in Oregon. Our California kids kept asking if it would snow for Christmas; we told them the forecast didn’t look good, but they could pray. December 25th didn’t have snow, but the 28th—well […]
Read More...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 […]
Read More...Ok, it’s Christmas today! I would not be posting, except that my nine year old son Caleb got a tablet to draw on this morning and just sketched his first cartoon….I left him with a blank slate and came back 1/2 hour later to this (which he said was a […]
Read More...Here is my family’s 2009 Christmas card. I pray that you are deeply enjoying Christmas already and that you are finding time in the midst of a busy and distracting season to sit at Jesus’ feet and be amazed at the mystery and incredible gift of the incarnation: “The Word […]
Read More...This Thanksgiving day I’m very grateful for… An amazing Lord who is full of never-ending love, grace and and power. A wonderful wife who is a true best friend, ministry partner, and fellow traveler on this great adventure of life. Bright, creative kids who surprise me every day with what […]
Read More...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 […]
Read More...In Acts 12 Herrod gets a great idea to persecute the leaders of the new sect of Christ-followers. He arrested and executed James, the brother of John, close friend of Jesus, and former business partner of Peter. That won the “king” political points with the Jews, so he promptly seized […]
Read More...Luke 4 reflects the amazing journey that Jesus took from baptism to anointed ministry. I’ve read verse 32 often and thought “I want to minister with authority like Jesus did”—and that’s a healthy desire, because He calls us to serve with that same grace (John 14:12). But how do we […]
Read More...Many of us find it nearly impossible to stay still. “If you’re not moving, you are dying”; sometimes that seems like the battle cry of our culture. We feel we must maintain momentum—the big MO—in personal and organizational life at all costs. To sit still and wait is a vice; […]
Read More...This is part deux of my most recent blog post. Though I learned quite a bit about myself— including about some obsessive patterns—during my online slow-down, I am in no way suggesting we throw out the baby with the bathwater. Telling someone to stop emailing or Facebooking because they do […]
Read More...Six weeks ago, I told everyone that I would take the month of July off of blogging, twittering, and Facebooking. I also declared that I would check my email infrequently and only get on the Internet when I needed to. This was in response to a growing dependence on electronic […]
Read More...I just returned from a week of gathering with other leaders from my extended church family. This convention is something that I have tried to attend since I became a pastor 17 years ago and I have been at each of the last 12 of these assemblies. It’s not because […]
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