TRANSPARENCY ALERT!    I was in a deep FUNK yesterday. All day. Disappointed and disillusioned. Pained and plaintive. Depleted and downcast. It wasn’t depression. It wasn’t a lack of being present. It was…well, a funk.    I’m not talking about the music genre that originated in African American communities in the mid-1960s and made famous later by the king of funk George...

Images from the planet’s other side show Russian tanks in a long and frightening queue thundering toward Ukraine’s capital. The cameras then cut to the city’s center where citizen soldiers, behind anguished and tortured expressions—prepare for battle.    That scene makes me wonder how many of those brave souls are pushing back on a pulsating urge to RUN AWAY. But then I realized that it...

I woke up today to another chilly February morning on America’s west coast with what seemed like an ODD QUESTION crashing the day’s opening thoughts: Is all of this REAL? My faith. My hope. My life?    I quickly realized that this question had nothing to do with me BEING genuine or living with spiritual authenticity. That’s a message for another day. I could see that my thoughts this morning...

A change of plans met me very early on this chilly February morning while I was towing a cup of Joe from the kitchen to my laptop. I intended to write a very specific message that has been rattling around in my head for weeks. But that plan was interrupted by a recent and haunting memory of Christians not listening to one another. There was no argument. In fact, nobody said a word about the lack of...

A QUICK CHALLENGE FOR YOU TODAY    Our culture tells us to endure the constant pressure of life’s uncertainty and to keep trying hard so we can eventually prevail. It’s nonsense and simply not true. Get ready, you’re about to test your uncertainty.    God says uncertainty is unacceptable, yet we still fall prey to its powerful force and a natural, human reaction to our surroundings...

Before I explain why it does not matter if you are up or down, I want to give you an update on an exciting shift we’re making for this BLOG. It’s in response to input from our global online tribe asking for a combination of THREE content deliveries: 1) Short messages; 2) Full-length blogs (like you’ve been getting here); and 3) Videos. Starting tomorrow Wednesday 2.16.22, content for this blog will...

Earlier in my faith walk, rushes of hopelessness engulfed my soul. I was depressed. Sad. Depleted. Now that I think about it, I was hopeless. It wasn’t long before I was trying frantically to “pull a rabbit out of my hat” to make the pain stop.    It was sheer nonsense, of course, but that was my approach, nonetheless. I was trying to play God using the world’s rulebook and it failed....

SPIRITUAL LONELINESS—feeling separated or distant from God–is not just the absence of joy; it’s the pain of separation from the Lord and others. On the coin’s positive flip side is how SPIRITUAL LONELINESS can push us toward a deeper and more authentic relationship with God where we can fight off feeling lonely and experience relational balance with him and others. But we must first CLOSE THE...

Early in my faith walk I did everything I could to IGNORE and cover up my weaknesses through faces and facades. Money and materialism. Power and pride. But when my spiritual maturity deepened and I drew ever closer to Christ walking with Jesus every day, something odd and wonderful happened. I became INSPIRED by my WEAKNESSES.    How could that be?    “That is why, for Christ’s...

I saw many interesting things yesterday on my drive from Yosemite National Park to Southern California. All I had to do was pay attention and look out the window. And that got me thinking about Christians driving through life missing signs that are “hidden in plain sight.” It’s what I call the PRAISE FROM PEOPLE lifestyle. Christians everywhere on planet earth “playing the part” of a believer following...