As a child, I carefully kept my precious nickels and dimes in a ceramic pig. Sometimes after thinking about it for a few days, I went upstairs to my room and pulled out my piggy bank. I sat on my bed, turned the pig upside down, and pried the rubber plug loose. Shaking a nickel …
Month: January 2018
New Year’s Resolutions Reversed
On a rare evening out together a few weeks ago, Will and I took the chance to discuss some of the challenges we are facing and how to adjust our lives to better fit our calling. We made some goals for the new year, and talked about how we might go about accomplishing them. As …
Navigating Adaptive Challenges
When I first read this paragraph from God's Country: Faith, Hope, and the Future of the Rural Church by Brad Roth, my mind leaped to a scenario exactly like Roth described: a community losing its missional bearings and directing its energy into constructing a recreational building. In the church, we so often favor the concrete …
Giving Advice: Common Sense or the Holy Spirit?
For some reason, this post I wrote two years ago has been on my mind, so I’m reblogging it here.
Which do you value most: common sense or the guidance of the Holy Spirit?
As long as I can remember, I have loved reading missionary stories. Recently, I read (or re-read) three: Bruchkoby Bruce Olson, Chasing the Dragon by Jackie Pullinger, and The Word Came with Power by Joanne Shetler and Patricia Pervis.
While reading these stories, different things catch my attention and fill my ponderings for the days after, depending on what I am experiencing or thinking about at the time. This time around, I noticed something that was similar in all three of the stories I mentioned.
They all went to the mission field God called them to against the advice of people who were supposed to be their spiritual leaders. Some of the missionaries gained acceptance; but at least initially, they all went despite being told not to go. God prospered their ministries tremendously, after years of love and risk and heart-break went into the places where they were called: Bruce to the Motilone…
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A backward glance
I try not to engage in unhealthy introspection, especially when it comes to writing. A night when I read through most of the year's worth of posts at once cured me of that. I thought most everything I wrote was petty and silly. Okay, so this was very late at night when I was feeling …
arabah rejoice 