The Reality of Our Present World

As 2020 comes to a close, the solar system has decided to grace us with a cosmic Christmas miracle that hasn't been witnessed in nearly 800 years. On Dec. 21 (aka the December solstice), Jupiter and Saturn will align so closely in the night sky that they'll almost appear to collide from our vantage point here on Earth, creating a radiant point of light often referred to as the "Star of Bethlehem" or the "Christmas Star." "Alignments…

Since the beginning of time, every age has faced unprecedented battles. Today’s Western world lives and breathes a gospel of now. Instant gratification is the way of our culture; it is the norm, the expectation. This gospel has deeply infiltrated authentic Christianity, and the desire to have it our way and to have it now is toxic to becoming restored as a man. When we turn to the gospel, the story of God and his kingdom, we find a very different reality. Doesn&rsquo…

Most days I feel like I’m watching the world from the mezzanine. Far above the happenings of each day disconnected from reality. In my 6th decade on the planet, I remember rotary phones, programming in COBOL with punch cards in Grad school, and being witness to processing speeds (since then) 100 quadrillion times faster. What just happened? Supersonic technological advancements haven’t changed the human condition one bit. We still find ourselves longing for a…

I recently experienced a "God moment" while starting a new entry in my journal.  I wrote the date at the top of the page like I always do, but this time I paused because it felt... different.  It felt significant.  Do you know that feeling when God is trying to get your attention?  I wrote the date, and I saw the blank page and rather than diving into the normal writing routine I just stopped and waited.  Here was just a page with a date…

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, 15 from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, 16 that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, 18 may have strength to comprehend with all the saints…

“Our globe is being shaken harder and harder by the forces of chaos. As it’s shaken, so are we. The more chaotic it is, the more shook-up everyone in it tends to become. It’s like trying to do everyday life in a continuous earthquake. Or in a swirling snowstorm. It’s hard to gain our bearings. To think straight. To see what’s really going on.” Allen Arnold – Chaos Can’t I remember, very clearly, a time in my life when the only…

Almost every little boy loves playing “Cowboys and Indians.” However, kids pretending to fight in the Wild West is quite different from real warfare with real weapons. Take, for example, the frontier practice of staging surprise assaults using flaming arrows. This tactical strategy caught the other side off guard. Flaming arrows would start a fire on a canvas covered wagon, disrupting military lines and causing the occupants to focus on the blaze rather than the…

John Spillane is a para-rescue jumper sent into the North Atlantic, into the worst storm of the twentieth century, the perfect storm, as the book and film called it, to rescue a fisherman lost at sea. When his helicopter goes down, he is forced to jump into pitch blackness from an unknown height, and when he hits the water, he’s going so fast it’s like hitting the pavement from eighty feet above. He is dazed and confused—just as we are when it comes to the…

So much of the church desiring to be palatable to a broken culture wants to lower standards today so that worldly people feel comfortable coming into the “body”. Allowing that to occur, Christians are then seduced into worldly morality and compromised in an effort to be relevant. It is nonsense and I’m calling it out. The church is not a democracy or permissive society, it’s a blood-bought family of Believers. The Holy Ghost fills us - not the…