Eleanor and I were having a conversation over lunch and the topic of the church came up. I said something about the church not being my church. Well my son Johnny said, “It is your church, daddy,”
“No Johnny,” I replied, “It’s Jesus’ church. And he’s my boss.”
Without skipping a beat, Johnny responded, “He’s everyone’s boss.”
Then [...]
At our conference today, Jim Edwards has been speaking on a list of Greek words he’s selected from the New Testament in its original language. One of them is a word “proserchomai” (since I don’t have a Greek font), which is the word for people approaching God. He notes that Matthew’s gospel uses [...]
I was just holding my 6-week-old daughter in my arms. It was actually a pretty special moment. She was almost smiling as she gazed into Daddy’s eyes. But then she started to get sleepy. And she hadn’t had her pink eye drops yet. So I held little Lydia as her mother dosed her with the [...]
The Bible’s book of Revelation is a tough nut to crack. To figure out what it meant to its readers, you have to understand all kinds of allusions, several literary genres, and a ton of historical context. I will not be doing that today
Instead I’m looking at a popular interpretation of Revelation 13:16-17
“He [...]
Lately, as my kids have been getting bigger, I’ve noticed that t least one of them seems to be doing something I have an objection to almost all of the time. Johnny’s throwing a ball up to the ceiling and Joshua’s jumping off of a chair, or somebody’s pulling a pen out of the [...]
I just had a couple of weeks of vacation. Some of it was spent working on our house, but some of it was spent at my grandma’s cabin on Donner Lake.
At four-and-a-half years old, my son Johnny has reached the stage in his development where he works furiously to create indestructible sandcastles. he had a great [...]
Well, the home projects haven’t been completed yet. The concrete contractor who needs to replace three panels of our new patio hasn’t done the demo yet (I’m withholding his name for now, assuming that he’s going to make good on his promises.) I can’t finish the back sprinklers or the stucco repair until he’s done [...]
I was getting ready to blog on all the projects we have been doing this week while I have time off from my job at the church – at least that was what I planned to write about until the disaster struck.
Johnny, my four-year-old son, put into words what a lot of people believe but won’t say. The other day we were just arriving at home after an outing and Johnny just came out and said, “I think my prayers don’t work or God doesn’t hear my prayers.”
“Why do you say that, Johnny?” Eleanor, my wife, [...]
OK, that title sounds nasty, but what I mean is that every so often we find evidence that what the Bible teaches us about how we’re made is true. I just read an article that gives us another peek at how God made us. As it turns out, the need to give is wired deep [...]
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways,”
declares the LORD.
“As the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
- Isaiah 55:8-9
Our church is making an important decision about whether we should purchase a piece of property in [...]
We just had our Ash Wednesday worship service at Trinity this week.
It turns out that the traditional way to produce the ashes for the worship service is to save some of the palm fronds from the previous year’s Palm Sunday and burn them to create the ashes.
There’s something deep and true about it… Palm Sunday [...]
I had an interesting experience yesterday and it got me thinking… I took the boys to a McDonald’s with one of those “play place” areas with tubes and slides to play in. Well, as always seems to be the way, as soon as we got our food and were ready to eat, Johnny [...]
It felt like a message from God. “Don’t worry, Steve. We’ll get through this together.” I look forward to telling you how it works out.
Do you every wonder if what you do makes a difference? … As you read this, think about the “little things” that you may have done and how – taken together with the actions of others – they can change people’s lives.
Recently, Eleanor and I were discussing a deadline for a church publicity project. A message hadn’t gotten through, and we were discussing whether we were going to have to pay a late fee for the postcards we had ordered. Just then, our son Johnny heard the discussion. Feeling the emotion in the [...]
Tomorrow I’m starting a sermon series on the issues raised by The Da Vinci Code. There has been a surprising amount of controversy about this…
As least based on my morning, Jesus was right. If we seek God’s kingdom first, we’ll find the other things we need too…
Every noticed that on a given Sunday, lots of different churches use the same readings from the Bible? It’s no coincidence. But is it a good thing?
Not sure whether I would be excused from the jury or not, I spent one of the longest hours of my life going over my view of capital punishment. Was it consistent? Was it biblical? Could I defend it?