A Prophet Without Honor

When Jesus had finished these parables, he moved on from there. Coming to his hometown, he began teaching the people in their synagogue, and they were amazed.
“Where did this man get this wisdom and these miraculous powers?” they asked. “Isn’t this the carpenter’s son? Isn’t his mother’s name Mary, and aren’t his brothers James, [...]

The Race

The runners are at the starting blocks.  The race is about to begin.
The starting gun fires!  The runners leap into action!
But something’s wrong.  Instead of speeding around the track, they clunk; they lumber; they stumble and fall.  These runners didn’t come prepared to race.  They are all bogged down with heavy clothes and boots, backpacks, [...]

When You Reap

“When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen. Leave them for the poor and the alien. I am the LORD your [...]

Earn vs. Return – Part 2

In a previous post, I shared that we shouldn’t do good works to earn God’s love (we already have it!); we should do good works to return His love (out of gratitude).
This is key, because so many of us are trying to earn something that we already have.  God takes pleasure in us because of [...]

20, er….21

I just realized that I hit my 20 21-year sobriety date a few months ago.  21 years!  It’s hard to believe.  My counselor, Jeff, would have even a harder time believing it.  He told me at my one-year anniversary that he didn’t think i would ever make it to one year.
I got into drugs during [...]

Earn vs. Return – Part 1

Much of the world throughout history has been trying to earn its way into heaven (or nirvana, Shangri-La,  Moksha, Elysium, Jannah, Fiddler’s Green, Utopia, Valhalla, Goloka…), but it’s just not possible.  We can’t ever be good enough to earn our own way.
All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous [...]

Trust Walk

At summer camp each year, we end our week with the kids with an activity called a “Trust Walk,” where we blindfold them and lead them by the hand around the camp, providing an example of how Jesus leads us through life when we put our trust in Him. My first year, I led [...]

Performance-Based Poison

One of the supreme struggles of my life is weaning myself off performance-based poison. It’s the compulsion to evaluate myself and others based on what we do, and it’s based on the fallacy that our performance is the best way to judge a person’s worth. Truth is, only God can make that kind of judgment, [...]

Epic Battle

My oldest son and I went to see an action movie the other day. In one of the early scenes, a group of half-dressed women get off a bus. It was a sexually provocative scene, and I wondered whether or not it was registering on my fourteen-year-old’s mind.

After the movie, we were doing our regular [...]