Prayer Radar

Though most of the world doesn’t know it, we are in a spiritual war. Good battles Evil every day in the unseen realm to claim the territory of men’s and women’s hearts. Angels take their orders from the Almighty General, who, despite His unlimited strength and wisdom, often waits for our prayers to determine where [...]

Every Trace

God wants us to remove every trace of sin from our lives, but sometimes we think that’s too hard. “We can’t get rid of all of it,” we rationalize. So we find excuses to go through that part of town. We procrastinate bringing up our spouse to the attractive new co-worker. We continue to watch [...]

The VIP Line

I got in line at the airport yesterday, resigned to endure the long, shuffling wait. It was an international flight, and there were several hundred people queued up waiting to check in. Most wore their boredom and/or irritation plainly on their faces, but they knew there was nothing they could do. This was how things [...]

It’s Not Gone Till God Says It’s Gone

Just finished an international dinner party with people from the U.S., Thailand and Mongolia. We were celebrating the success of a leg operation for a young boy named Zoloo.
A month ago, Zoloo’s mom had been told by his Mongolian doctors that he had cancer in the upper bone of one of his legs. [...]

King Rat

James Clavell’s gritty first novel (King Rat) was about the fight for survival in the Chiangi Prison Camp in Singapore during World War  II.  He had spent half the war there himself and had learned much about how inhumanely humans can act toward one another when they are forced to compete for scarce resources to [...]

I Hate Perfect People

Okay, that’s a little harsh, I know. I don’t actually hate them, but that’s mostly because they don’t exist. By my count, there have been only three to ever walk the face of the earth, and the first two caved under the pressure. What I actually hate is people pretending to be [...]

Spiritual Cataracts

Most of us are suffering from vision problems.  Not the physical kind - the spiritual kind.  We have spiritual cataracts.  In fact, it’s our physical eyesight that is the problem.  Because we rely so much on what we can see, we doubt the reality of what’s invisible.
We say things like, “I’ll believe it when I [...]

Guard Your Gates!

The book of Nehemiah in the Bible serves as a great metaphor for living the spiritual life. In the book, the Temple represents our heart (where God meets with us); the city of Jerusalem represents our mind; the walls of the city represent our spiritual walls and the health of our relationship with Christ, [...]

Man Down!

Not to put too fine a point on it, but the world’s a mess.  I’ve been lots of places and seen lots of terrible things.  Poverty, sickness, drugs, prostitution, broken families, broken lives…  They’re everywhere.  Affluent countries do a better job of hiding them, but there is not a place on this planet that’s free [...]