Power in Weakness

I am attending a discipleship school part time right now. I've been through 2 years of this program under the leadership of Tim and June Ainley, but now I'm back again. Actually, I think I am on staff, but in my case that doesn't mean more than me showing up to school each morning for about 2 or 3 hours, or until I get too tired to listen or sit up anymore. However long I stay, it is an immense blessing just to be there. We're reading through the book of Mark now in our devotional times. Like a good staff member and scout, I have been reading it through ahead of time. I love this Gospel. And I'm falling in love with Jesus Christ again...the Man, Jesus Christ. He walked around Galilee, Jerusalem, and some surrounding Gentile regions for 3 1/2 years with power resting on His frame. He taught the the Word of God, and people were amazed. His simple stories about the Kingdom were easy to hear but contained vast depths of understanding. His standards of fie...

Let us...run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Hebrews 12:1-1 A passing comment spoken tonight, one not even worth repeating, caused me to question the course my life has taken the past few years. Specifically, the way my life has gone since I have begun to really follow Jesus. I suddenly began to feel that I was very irrelevant to the world, boring amidst my friends, and even a spiritual failure in certain ways. What have I got to show for seven years of prayer, striving to live New Testament Christianity, and looking to the Word of God rather than the passions and trends of the people my age around me? Don't get me wrong, friends, I've made some pretty big mistakes the past few years, and I've done the above things poorly and inconsistently. But I know that I have giv...

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort those who are in any trouble, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. - 2 Corinthians 1:3-4 Purpose. It's important that you find it in the midst of suffering. Most of the past season of my life it has eluded me in the most frustrating way. Did God forget about me? Did the devil, or maybe just the plain wickedness of this world, slip one by Him and hit me right in the gut? Everything seemed to make sense until 6 months ago. Often I feel like I am on the sidelines of life; a broke-down car near a buzzing freeway. I watch as friends drive by in their swift convertibles, smiling at me, waving and wishing me to "get well soon." Friends falling in love, getting married, having babies. Churches growing, business deals swinging, school degrees earned and then utilized in successful job...

I feel ridiculously needy and am constantly asking for prayer and emotional support from friends. Those who understand Lyme know why that is. The frustrating thing about it is that most of the pain and imbalance occurs underneath the skin. Daily people exclaim to me with bright eyes, "My, you are looking better!" All the while, the symptoms continue and I must battle for peace and joy in the Holy Spirit each day. Medically speaking, the doctors don't know how long treatment will last. But I have promises from God that I will get totally better and go on to... Finish my Master's Degree, Play the drums with joy in the great assembly, Have a family, Write books, Teach, Prepare the next generation for the Return of Christ, Have the joy and peace of the Lord. I wait for the promises, and I daily wrestle with the darkness that seems to lurk about me at all moments of the day. I put all my Hope in God, nothing else will carry me through.

Hope. It keeps us going. It energizes us with dreams for the future, and sustains us like a strong anchor in the midst of the tumultuous storm waves of our current troubles. We were created to be creatures of hope, or if I could poetically use a phrase from the prophet Zechariah, "prisoners of hope" in the middle of a world that is often as bleak as a high security prison (Zechariah 9:12). In this respect we pilgrims are like prisoners with hope. But we are also prisoners of hope in that we are chained to the hope that we have set our minds upon. We can't help but be prisoners of hope. Our hope may be completely misplaced or utterly vain, but hope we must. The alternative is hopelessness, and no human spirit can survive long in this state. Many put their hope in a sudden turn in the economy. Good luck with this one. Others put all their eggs in the single basket of the hope for a slimmer body; other romantics encourage themselves with the thought of "the one" th...

...I wrote this and read this out loud at my birthday dinner two Saturdays ago, the 2nd. May 2, 2009 So teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom… - Psalm 90:12 I was talking to a friend over dinner the other day, and as usual, the conversation started to turn toward spiritual matters. Now, my friend has had a history with God, but because of some painful circumstances in recent years, he has since rejected the notion that Jesus is the only way to heaven. Once a member of the community of faith, he has now developed a new spirituality that does include any specific god or moral code. It was rather impossible to avoid the topic, though. We started talking about faith, Jesus, and eventually, heaven and hell. After some visible frustration at some of the things I was saying, he finally looked at me and said with pointed bluntness: “So let me guess – you believe that I am going to hell.” A little caught off guard, I slowly responded, “Well…I don’t kno...

There is an abundance of leadership books on the market these days. Politics and world leadership, studies of historical leaders, church leadership, business leadership, and often, a mixture of the above. If there is a crying need for anything in this turbulent hour of history, it is probably a capable leader. Most common in my recent sphere of observation has been the coalescence of business and Christian leadership techniques. There is certainly some good in the mergence of these two sectors of society, especially when businesses and their staff submit to Jesus Himself and the principles of the Word of God in the face of the wisdom of this world, but perhaps more often Christianity is watered down by savvy business techniques and ideas that find their root in this present evil system. The world is crying out for leaders, and the church is crying out for leaders, but few seem to be taking their cues from the greatest Leader that ever was and is: Jesus, the Son of the ...