"The Lord your God ... went ahead of you on your journey, in fire by night and in a cloud by day, to search out places for you to camp and to show you the way you should go." (Deuteronomy 1:33) Continuing our series on the Holy Spirit, I’d like to discuss another aspect of [...]
Anyone who follows college basketball looks forward to the annual conference we call March Madness. The best teams from universities across the country compete to see which team will become the nation’s champion. It’s a dizzying few weeks of high octane basketball. Part of the fun is seeing underdogs take out highly ranked teams and [...]
Most of us know the correct answers when it comes to the Holy Spirit. From Scripture we’ve learned something about Him and how He works. We know He’s God, the third person of the Trinity. We know He came to live inside us when we were born again and that His role in our lives [...]
A brand new year! Spotless and full of promise at this point but also fraught with new challenges, maybe even danger. So how will we engage it? To boldly step out and face 2018 without fear won’t be easy for some of us. We’re struggling with health problems that could become serious in the months [...]
Nothing calms a sheep down better than the sudden appearance of the shepherd. Whether it’s busy butting other sheep in a power struggle, agitated by hunger or thirst, frightened by some danger (real or imagined), or is cast down, lying upside down in a helpless state with no hope of righting itself … whatever is [...]
Have you ever wondered what the end goal is for our faith? We become Christians and enter into a living relationship with the true and living God. We embrace Jesus as our Savior and Lord. Then we begin to think through all the implications of what that means. As we read Scripture we look for [...]
Prayer seems to be both a blessing and a burden for Christians. We love the idea of it – to have access to the living God at any moment -- but we struggle with how poorly we execute our privilege. And in our private moments, when we’re alone or with somebody we trust, we [...]
Have you ever run across a Bible verse that sets you back, making you wonder what on earth the writer is saying? Some of these are the result of culture. Being from the West, we just don’t understand Eastern expressions and ways of thinking. Other times, it’s more a matter of connecting the dots. One [...]
Approaching the Temple Mount in Jerusalem today holds none of the visual splendor enjoyed by the pilgrims in Jesus’ day. We stood in line at the base of a long staircase coming out of the Jewish sector of the old city, waiting to be admitted at the entry point for non-Muslims, a dingy checkpoint near [...]
In October I traveled to Israel and got to see with my own eyes the places I’ve just read about in the Bible. When I experienced for myself the barrenness of the southern desert region I could understand better how hard it must have been for the Jews to leave the relative fertility of Egypt [...]
Adventuring with God 