The people of God will follow the pastor who feeds them the Wordof God. That isn’t to say that they won’t balk once in a while. They can makethe pastor’s life a living hell. But week in and week out, year in and yearout, Christians will not cut themselves off from the one who sets theirspiritual table. Even the delinquent son has an uncanny sense of when dinner’son, and he knows he will not be refused. While the people of God want desperately to flock to thespiritual food of the Word of God, pastors flock to seminars on how to...

When I catch myself comparing myself to others or thinking, I could be happy if only I had what they have, then I know i need to withdraw for a while and listen for another voice. Away from the winds, earthquakes, and fires of human recognition, I can again hear the still, small voice, posing the question it always asks of self-absorbed ministers: What are you doing here? I reply by whining about some of my Ahabs and Jezebels, And the voice gently reminds me, as it has reminded thousands of Elijahs before me, that I am only a small...

I think that there are people who enjoy Bible study the same way that other people enjoy filling out crossword puzzles. Get all the parts and get the thing completed – they find satisfaction. I think there are people that study the Bible that way. They can see how it relates to its context and how its details work to get across the concept. But if it never gets into your life, if it never really touches your experience, I doubt seriously that you can call it a study of biblical truth, because I think God’s truth is always designed...

The modern obsession with "user-friendly" ministry has stoked the fear of preaching into a pervasive phobia. Seminaries these days train men to be storytellers, entertainers, and motivational speakers - and discourage them from dealing with profound of difficult theological concepts from the pulpit. Suddenly "too much Scripture" is deemed a greater homiletical faux pas than a whole sermon with no reference to Scripture whatsoever! Seriously, in some circles it is perfectly acceptable to give a motivational lecture of comedy routine practically devoid of any biblical content, but a verse-by-verse exposition of Scripture would automatically be deemed too weighty and (this...

The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important that the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, that, successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company... a church... a home.The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past... we cannot change the fact that people will act...

Why? Why do we do what we do? What is our ultimate goal? Why do we dress as we dress? Why do we allot time as we do in our services? Why do we preach as we preach? Why do we sing, and why do we sing it the way we do? Do we care about what the world will think of our activities? Where is God in all this? Do we seek to meet Him in His truth, begging the Spirit to use the word to reveal to us the depths of our on hearts so that we may...

The hard truth: God cares more about the holiness of a congregation than He does the size of the congregation. Using numerical benchmarks to somehow size up the blessing God pours out on a congregation or to evaluate members' ability to stay faithful to the guidelines of Scripture lacks spiritual maturity and reveals our reliance on human understanding in our vain attempts to build the kingdom of God through our own methods. -Thomas White & John M. Yeats, Franchising McChurch, p. 63 Why has the church bought into the lie that only big churches can win in the battle against...

There is an illustration from the life of Maurice, a Roman emperor, who found comfort from Psalm 119:137 in an unbelievable crisis. In the preaching moment last night, I passed right by this illustration. And by the time I recognized it, I was too far ahead to go back to get it. But I have been enriched and encouraged by this story and want to share it anyway. During the 20 years he ruled the Roman Empire, he had shown virtues, marking him out to succeed Tiberius II. But the army turned against him and in 602 he fled, wit...

Dragons, of course, are fictional beasts - monstrous reptiles with lion's claws, a serpent's tail, bat wings, and scaly skin. They exist only in the imagination.But there are dragons of a different sort, decidedly real. In most cases, thought not always, they do not intend to be sinister; in fact, they're usually quite friendly. But their charm belies their power to destroy. Within the church, they are often sincere, well-meaning saints, but they leave ulcers, strained relationships, and hard feelings in their wake. They don't consider themselves difficult people. Often they are pillars in the community - talented, strong personalities,...

"Anyone can be sentimental about the Nativity; any fool can feel like a Christian at Christmas. But Easter is the main event; if you don't believe in the resurrection, you're not a believer." - John Irving

As a Christian, I believe that we live in parallel worlds. One world consists of hills and lakes and barns and politicians and shepherds watching their flocks by night. The other consists of angels and sinister forces and somewhere out there places called heaven and hell. One night in the cold, in the dark, among the wrinkled hills of Bethlehem, those two worlds came together at a dramatic point of intersection. God, who knows no before or after, entered time and space. God, who knows no boundaries took on the shocking confines of a baby's skin, the ominous restraints of...

One morning, as I was walking in the Catskill Mountains in New York, I witnessed an unforgettable sight. I was resting, sitting on a rock by an algae-covered pool. Lazily, while mosquitoes engaged in a never-ending dance close to the surface, I watched the dragon flies dance close to the reeds. A frog sunned himself on a partially submerged rock out in the center of the pool. Suddenly, I was wide awake. Something was happening to the frog. Before my eyes, it collapsed... not falling over, but deflating like a balloon with a slow leak. It finally lay in a...