finding God in the wasteland (Isaiah 35:1)
In Joel Osteen's popular book Your Best Life Now, he details how to go about securing the best life possible for yourself, mostly through positive thinking and believing that God will give you everything you want. I thought about this "best life" while struggling through wondering if our family was truly living the life that God …
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Growing up, I was mostly very compliant with rules of any sort. I didn't just accept everything at face value--I often turned things over in my mind and tried to make sense of them--but I didn't usually challenge those things even if I thought they might be wrong. For me, keeping peace and avoiding hurt …
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 …
It's about time for another overview of some of the books I have been reading. I'm not going to list nearly all of the books I have read in the past few months, but I will name a few I can recommend. I'm part of a local library book club, which I love, but I don't always love …
From time to time, I walk alongside someone wrestling through the question of whether they should start attending a different church group. I sympathize, because I have been there myself, and know that it can be a difficult decision. Staying can be hard, and leaving can be hard. I'd like to share some thoughts from my own …
In Nik Ripken's book The Insanity of Obdedience, he describes three important elements of a mission effort: the needs of the lost (people without Jesus), worker concerns, and the sending body/agency. One of these elements will be the top focus of the mission, and the other two elements will supplement the main goal. In a worker-concerns oriented mission, the …
I cannot sleep, Dear God, I cannot sleep! I cannot sleep Because so many hands keep Beckoning me. And faces stare, And voices, piteous voices call Upon the midnight air. And God, O can it be That once upon a time, like me Thou couldst not sleep? Because of many hands Outstretched from all the …
