Dear Friends,

Probably many of you have participated in a Crown Financial Ministries small group study at some point in your stewardship journey. I have always appreciated the way that that study begins with a Quit Claim Deed, a mock up of a legal document that allows you to list all of the things that are “yours,” recognizing God’s true ownership of all of them. The physical act of listing what we think of as ours and then signing it over to God is a powerful faith step.

For those ...

Dear Friends:

We recently concluded another Coaching Meeting with our Kingdom Advisors Coaching group. At that meeting, Dr. Ken Boa gave one of the talks on the topic of Holistic Spirituality. Some of what he said in that lecture relates so well to this issue of praying that we are not led into temptation.

Specifically, Dr. Boa reminded the group that evil is a parasite that distorts good. He shared how Satan has never created a new pleasure; rather, he spends his time distorting God’s good pleasure.

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Dear Friends:

The Old Testament makes up a good majority of the Bible. Several times I’ve read through the Bible, cover to cover, in one year. Every time I do this, I am struck by how much space God devotes in Scripture to telling the story of his people and their struggle with worship in the Old Testament. Over and over and over again God tells the devastating impact of their worship of false gods.

In our Western world, we don’t think about “gods.” We think about “God” sometimes, ...

Dear Friends,

Many of you attended the Kingdom Advisors Annual Conference last month. Our worship leader, Marty Goetz, sang a song that puts one of my favorite verses to music. The verse is, “So teach us to number our days, that we may present to You a heart of wisdom.” (Psalm 90:12, NASB)

I love this verse because it reminds me of the gift of and importance of today. Only the Lord knows the number of my days in their entirety, but I can recognize and act on the specific ...

Dear Friends:

There is an old song by the late Rich Mullins which says, “there’s a wideness in God’s mercy I cannot find in my own, and it keeps its fire burning to melt this heart of stone – keeps me aching, with a yearning - keeps me glad to have been caught in the reckless raging fury that they call the love of God.” 

Sometimes the love of God in our lives feels reckless and raging. We encounter relationships or circumstances that offend our sense of justice, and we look ...

Dear Friends,

I always spend a lot of time in reflection at the beginning of the year. It’s helpful for me to review the past year and to set my focus on intentionally growing in certain areas in the coming year. Reflection for its own sake can breed selfishness or pride or self-pity. Instead, God asks us to reflect with Christ in mind. In Philippians 2:5, Paul exhorts the Christ-follower to consider Jesus’ example of humility and obedience as we fashion and fix our own attitude toward the relationships and responsibilities in the coming ...

Dear Friends,

Today I am grateful for my Savior. The world is a hurried, painful, and sometimes confusing place. It is so good to know that He humbled Himself and made a way for me to enter into to the rest, health, and clarity of a relationship with my Creator and Father. As I write to you and ponder John 14:6 again today, I thought it would be an encouragement to you to consider a few verses that speak more fully to Jesus being the way, the truth, and the life.

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Dear Friends:

It is the season of Advent. Two weeks ago, on Sunday, we lit the first Advent candle, which stands for hope. As I think about the quote by Oswald Chambers, “God does not give us overcoming life, but life as we overcome,” I am struck by the need for hope in our overcoming.

Hope, which is synonymous with desire, expectation, and belief, indicates that we are actively holding onto something that we neither see nor possess in the moment. Hope, in our Christian walk, joins faith and ...

Dear Friends:

The world is very small. When I turn on the news or load CNN.com on my computer, I see images from every continent…all of them fresh within the last week…each of them portraying ugly truths that are frequently hard to embrace.

We live in occupied territory. Paul said in Ephesians 6:12, “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”

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Dear Friends,

I pray you are well. Over the last few weeks as my wife, Judy, and I have walked through a season of physical challenge (she had surgery for a badly broken arm), I have had more and more honest prayer before the Lord…prayer that He would help me to walk each day as Jesus walked and love those around me as Jesus loved. It is humbling to encounter our own frailty when we are faced with challenges.

Often, though, our frailty brings us back to God’s perspective ...