Most of us want to be remembered for something of significance beyond what the world defines as success. That is certainly true for me.    I don’t want to be remembered as someone who didn’t know the difference between earning a great deal of money and being truly rich in life.    I don’t want to be remembered as the successful CEO who left my kids money but forgot to leave them...

I’m trapped!    Have you ever felt like that in the midst of life’s challenges? I certainly have.    The sobering reality is that committing to God’s “Protection Promise” is extremely difficult in the midst of fear and doubt. It runs counter to our human nature.    It’s like being trapped in a flood. Even though the water may be all around us, it will eventually recede...

Our phones are definitely getting smarter, but our knowledge of God’s Word has become more like a “Dumb Phone.”    We have become biblically illiterate Christians because many of us have marginalized Scripture in favor of singing contemporary songs, attending fellowship barbeques, and taking superficial topical study classes.    We are experiencing a famine—a famine of Bible knowledge....

Instead of panic when fear and worry intrude into our lives, we should pray. That may sound simplistic, but why should it? After all, God’s truth and promises haven’t changed just because a war threat is mounting on one of life’s borders. The issue isn’t whether or not the storms will chase us—they will—but whether or not we stay on God’s road or get off. Fear and worry will trouble us, but those...

An integral part of the faith process is being strong against adversity!    Faith is moving against your fears and worries. God says, “If you falter in a time of trouble, how small is your strength!” (Proverbs 24:10). When we don’t turn our doubts over to God, we will fan those embers and they will burn emotional and physical holes through our souls. When we worry and fret so much that we...

Trying to protect ourselves from everything that might happen in life is trying to play God. It’s wrong and it lands us at a fork in the road with one way leading to fear and the other to trust in God our Protector.    Choosing to go toward God at the fork does not obviate our responsibility to be careful and prudent about how we live our lives. We don’t just roll over and play dead. We...

Even in the pain and depression phase I suffered through earlier in my life, I could sense God urging me to “jump” toward him. That is a tough move to make when one is in pain and stress, the sort of pain and stress I was experiencing at the time. Jumping toward God was the last thing on my mind. It would be like a frightened first-time parachutist who cowers in the plane’s belly and says “no way”...

God wants us to wait for his refining work and look for his perspective even while we are in the vortex of affliction. He wants us to trust the divine timing and not get discouraged while we’re in the waiting period. The best approach to stop discouragement early is to pray. But as clear and logical as that is, many believers seem to respond in exactly the opposite way. That is, the bigger the trouble,...

God’s Word is full of seemingly unending promises on the subject of worry, fear, and discouragement.    It seems hard to believe that Christians could take these words to heart and still adopt the worry mode when encountering periods of distress. But that is the norm, not the exception.    We allow our anxieties to overwhelm us to the point we neglect giving them over to God first....

As we celebrate our nation’s birthday, I want to draw attention to America’s Twin-Tower Values of Hard Work and Achievement    There is nothing wrong with hard work. Ralph Waldo Emerson was right that “without ambition one starts nothing. Without work, one finishes nothing. The prize will not be sent to you. You have to win it.” There is nothing wrong with having goals and finding happiness...