People love sports. People relish the thrill of victory. Winner! People love games. Board games continue to be popular. Card games haven’t gone away. Some people love video gaming to the point of addiction. Competition! I win; you lose. You win; I lose. While competition may have its place as a play thing, it is a dangerous toy. Competition compares […]
What does it mean to “love your neighbor as yourself?” What in our love for self should shape our love for others? At least one of the ways we love ourselves is that we give ourselves a lot of slack. We put the best construction on our own actions. We easily let ourselves off the hook. We self-assess our lives […]
I read two, but only needed to read one, books by Frank Peretti. One was plenty. I mean this is a good sense. In his book, This Present Darkness, he gave a great picture of demonic oppression. He personalized how certain demons plague the people of God. The idea was clear in the first book. I do not suppose that […]
Business and organization guru Jim Collins writes about the genius of the AND instead of the tyranny of the OR. His point is that we often make false dichotomies, we can do this OR that, instead of seeing that the better position, the genius, is to do this AND that. Any of you who know me even a little know […]
Make no mistake, you are at war. Make no mistake. Don’t let the mundane activities of the moment, the din of daily news, the tedious tasks of the week fool you. You are at war. Satan and his hounds of hell hate what you are doing and the One you serve. They exert their eternal energies to discourage, disrupt and […]
Many of my pastor buddies use the phrase “think theologically.” It is a good phrase, as far as it goes. By that they mean that when we think through different issues or actions in life, we should consider them from a theological point of view. We should bring to bear theological perspectives into the situation, what does God’s word say […]
“I tell you the truth,” is a happy translation for the word “amen.” “Truly, truly,” is pretty good too. Doesn’t it always sound nice to hear Jesus start a statement by, “I tell you the truth…?” He rightly identified himself as the way, the TRUTH and the life. As you know, truth has taken a beating. People are not even […]
Money. Sex. Power. Power is the biggest temptation. Power is powerful. The Greek word for power is the word that gives us the English word “dynamite.” You know the old line, “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” What you may not know is that the misuse of power is at the base of much of the misuse of money […]
Years ago a long-time church leader encouraged me to “externalize the opinion.” By that he meant that I should seek someone from outside of our congregation to weigh in on how we were doing. For instance, instead of asking our members how friendly we were, I should have someone from outside of the congregation come, visit and report back on […]
Sex is a gift from God to be enjoyed by a husband and wife. It is indeed a powerful gift. Like all gifts Satan seeks to get us to misuse and misappropriate it. While boundaries are important in all areas of life, they are even more so in the area of intimacy. What follows may sound quaint, outmoded or unenlightened. […]