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 ...

Dear Friends,

Today, I want to share with you a few excellent “remember” and “forget” scriptures, as an encouragement to you in your walk with the Lord.

REMEMBER:

“But you shall remember that you were a slave in Egypt, and that the Lord your God redeemed you from there; therefore I am commanding you to do this thing. When you reap your harvest in your field and have forgotten a sheaf in the field, you shall not go back to get it; it shall be for ...

Dear Friends,

Have you ever stopped to observe tiny creatures for a period of time? A spider spinning her web? An ant carrying his food on his back? A hummingbird drinking his fill from a red plastic feeder? When observing such things, it is easy to be amazed at the intricate nature of life, even among the smallest creatures. On the other hand, it is also very easy for us (as humans) to chuckle at how the particular creature we are watching is oblivious to the wider world. The spider does not know that ...

Dear Friends,

I have just finished reading Ken Follett’s most recent book, Fall of Giants. It chronicles the origins and the outcome of World War I by tracing several different families – American, German, Russian, British, and Welsh. The book enumerates on the vast wealth of upper class European and American families in contrast with the grinding poverty of the working class poor during the early part of the 20th century. In true Follett style, there are several key reversals of fortune, and by the end of the novel, a few of the characters ...

Dear Friends:

It is so easy to forget that we live on a battleground. As I have watched the battle for Lybia unfold over the past weeks, I’ve been reminded what a high price one must pay for victory when the enemy is an evil dictator.

Satan is indeed an evil dictator. He unleashes destruction, deception, and despair at every turn. One of his greatest schemes is his scheme to deceive – his scheme to perpetuate darkness. He tempts us to believe that we can construct our world in ...

Dear Friends:

One of my good friends in ministry, Dr. Kenneth Boa, has devoted his life to scholarship of God’s Word as it relates to how we live our daily life in relationship to Him. He is a brilliant man, and his discussion on the value of meditating on (and praying) Scripture is worth reading, in light of the video you just heard from my own experience. This article was taken from Ken’s website, www.kenboa.org.

It is impossible to think about ...

Dear Friends,

The tenants of God’s goodness and God’s sovereignty and God’s holiness as they relate to God’s people are magnificent to consider.

If you have never read through the Old Testament, I would encourage you to do so! Seeing the cord of His goodness, holiness, and sovereignty evidenced in the story of the nation of Israel will likely cause your heart to bow in new ways before Him.

I love the first question of the Westminster Catechism. It says, “What is the chief end of ...