Category: Meditations

I am often overwhelmed by the tasks I see in front of me — all the materials I feel compelled to write, the webinars, blogs, and presentations, workshops to prepare for, retreats, seminars, on-line classes, various website support issues, not to mention the work that needs to be done on...

When I was 23 years old. I was faced with a daunting decision. After having completed four years in the military, I had resumed my dream of pursuing a degree in theology from Bethel college in St. Paul. My year of studying and classroom experience was very rewarding, and I was...

An Analogy of How Belief Drives Our Life Suppose you are lost in the woods. After a restless night, you get up and head South, hoping that by walking in a straight line you will eventually cross a road that will lead you back to civilization. By mid-afternoon, you...

Because of our relatively comfortable life here in the West, it is easy for us to forget that we are at war, spiritually. Our enemy has a scorched earth policy of "steal, kill, and destroy" (Jn.10:10). And virtually all of us have been run over by his war machine...

At the Knowing Christ conference last week John Ortberg offered a wonderful metaphor for the process of spiritual formation in which he tells of an experience he had sometime ago. He was at a "ropes course" where they have you do things 20 and 30 feet in the air, with...

In The Renovare Spiritual Formation Bible, there is a wonderful analogy given in the introduction to Ephesians: "Twentieth-century archaeology has uncovered several curious things about the ancient Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Among them is the random design of the southern stairs, which carried weary pilgrims from the Typropoean Valley...

What if Albert Schweitzer had gone to Africa and set up a hospital there, only to have the natives stay away and avoid what he had to offer. Instead, what if they continued to rely on their homemade remedies for sickness, their witch doctors, and their superstitions. I can only imagine...

"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, just as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not have it!" (Lk.13:34). In thinking about my journey and where I have come from, the grief of having lost so...

How am I valuable? How do I know I am worth something?  Why do so many people struggle with feelings of worthlessness? Something inside us wants to matter — to be valuable. But where do we look? All around us we see messages about who is valuable. Billionaires have now replaced...

This morning a man came to mind who I worked with many years ago in the computer industry. I never liked him, and he was not easy to like. In fact by the time we parted ways, I had grown to despise him and deeply resent his constant verbal abuse and mistreatment, which...