In our present day, many people are discouraged.  Watch the news for an hour and your mood will tank.  Numerous marriages are hanging on by a thread.  Some teens wrestle with identity issues.  Families struggle to make their budgets work.  Almost all of us could use a little encouragement.  I think of the apostle Paul who wrote to a church struggling with persecution and said, “Therefore enc...  Read More

      Recently, I spent a week and a half laying on our couch more sick than I have been in over a decade.  I had a nasty flu (not COVID).  It was miserable, but in the midst of it I tried to stay grateful.  The Scripture tells us “to give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. (1 Thessalonians 5;18).  How do we walk out such a seemingly impossible command?  A...  Read More

      Today is my wedding anniversary.  At age 51 I have been married more years than life without Dellie!  She is not only my wife; she is also a counselor.  While I grew up in a solid home and got to watch a good marriage for my entire childhood, I still had a lot to learn when we married.  I think each of us who marry learn a great deal from our spouse, I thought I would share some of the lesso...  Read More

     Arnold Glasow sums up hospitality:  “Hospitality is making others feel at home.  Some folks make you feel at home.  Others make you wish you were.”  All kidding aside, hospitality is serious business.  So many wonder, do I belong?  Am I welcome here?  Many people struggle to believe that God cares about them at all.  Our hospitality is one way God says “Yes, I care about you.”     For many of...  Read More

     We live in a culture of distrust.  What is true?  I chuckled the other day when I read in my Facebook feed a quote; “Not everything you read on the internet is true”--Abraham  Lincoln.  Where can we stand?  Just as a building needs a good foundation.  We need truth on which to build our world view.  My suggestion to you is the Bible.      This ancient collection of books has stood the test of...  Read More

     What is God’s dream for your life?  The answer is your vision of God’s calling on your life, your specific, unique calling.  This calling includes your career but is more than that.  The Apostle Paul wrote “For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (Ephesians 2:10 NIV).  The word “handiwork” means creation or masterpiece....  Read More

      As the 4th of July approaches my mind is drawn to our country and how to best help it.  Like many of you, I am an American by birth and a Christian by grace.  How does a Christian, a citizen of a heavenly, eternal kingdom bless the temporal kingdom or nation where he has earthly citizenship?  I think of a man in my church named Rod.  He is a citizen of Peru by birth and a citizen of the U.S....  Read More

      In 1 Kings 18 is one of my favorite stories in the Hebrew Scriptures.  There years previous, the great prophet Elijah had told evil King Ahab that God was going to cause a drought because of the wickedness of the nation of Israel.  In his anger King Ahab pursued Elijah and killed and persecuted other followers of Yahweh, the God of the Bible.  God told Elijah to come out of hiding and confro...  Read More

     In the book Mending The Soul  , the author Steven R. Tracy  paints a picture of how widespread the problem of child sexual abuse is.  He says that there are approximately 50,000 names on the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, DC.  Mr. Tracy says that if we were to make a memorial to children in our society who have been sexually abused, it would need to be more than 1,300 times the size of t...  Read More

      We live in a culture where many struggle with commitment.  Marriage rates are down; cohabitation rates are up.  It reminds me of a little girl who liked one of our sons when he was in first grade.  She told him that she was going to marry him.  When he told her no, he was going to marry someone else, she paused and said, “Well, WHEN you get a divorce, then you’ll marry me.”  We see this tend...  Read More

     As Mother’s Day approaches, I paused and thought about what I learned from my mother. Honestly, to answer that question completely would require a book or two, but here are some of my most important lessons.       FOLLOW JESUS.  Mom is a Christian and believes that the purpose of parenthood is to point her children to Jesus Christ.  Obviously, the Christian faith must be embraced by each indi...  Read More

     Almost every person experiences loneliness at one time or another.  Loneliness is the “state of sadness that comes from feeling alone, isolated, or cut off from others” (Loneliness, June Hunt, 11).  The faces of loneliness are varied, from the widow reaching out in the night for a partner that is no longer there to a kid on the playground rejected by his peers.   We even occasionally hear sto...  Read More