The NEW YEAR is greeting us with that fresh canvas we explored in December when we took our FAITH INVENTORY. With it comes an opportunity to grow closer to God.    Let’s get started with the results from a late-2021 online survey we conducted with this ministry’s global tribe of online followers. We asked them for their top spiritual goal in 2022 and the leading response was some form of...

Early in this month we committed to take our FAITH INVENTORY in December BEFORE the new year arrived. Our goal was to discover who we will be as a Christian one year from now at the END of 2022. Why December? Because once the calendar welcomes January, we’re off to the proverbial races. At that point it’s difficult to do the reflective and introspective work needed to see where we are in our faith...

There is now no doubt that we are living in a DIGITAL AGE that has turned the world into an endless stream of screens loaded with imagery and messages cascading down from a distant and unknown cloud in the sky. The platforms are multiplying like rabbits. You know about Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn, What’sApp, Snapchat, Reddit, and Pinterest. But watch out for Twitch, Discord,...

Minimalism is WHITE HOT right now! Minimalism in homes and cars. Minimalism for the environment. Minimalism in relationships and lifestyles. And yes, minimalism in Christianity.    That’s the thought I woke up to this morning while getting ready to take another step in our year-end FAITH INVENTORY to build a ramp to 2022. I landed on this theme by thinking that believers should live a minimalistic...

There’s a whole lotta thinking going on in December during the Christmas season and especially this week during the celebrations announcing the arrival of a new year. That makes this a PERFECT time to conduct our year-end FAITH INVENTORY. To run our own thinking through God’s filter. To find out what he thinks about our thinking.    Our hearts are clearly being overstimulated with an unprecedented...

One of the most DANGEROUS THREATS to Christians committed to walking with Christ is in spotlight as we head into the home stretch of our year-end FAITH INVENTORY. Here it is:    Taming the ferocious fury of FEELINGS and MOODS that knock on our door every day with a reminder to “feel this, feel that, feel life.”    The world’s engine runs on feelings that rain down on all of us...

This just in from our global online tribe: “There are so many things to do in the Christmas season that I am wound up like the toy I just bought my son. HOW CAN I FIND COMFORT IN CHRISTMAS?”    Let’s start with the FOUNDATION of Christmas before we get to COMFORT.    Christmas is about the birth of Christ. The arrival of the prophesied Messiah. The Lord in human flesh. The promise...

I rarely, if ever, use headlines like this one. They come off sounding like “another hack” that I see so much of online today and almost always turn me off. But I’m using this approach here, one time, during our end-of-year FAITH INVENTORY as we build our ramp to 2022. That’s how strongly I feel about the power behind identifying the biggest challenges Christians face in their walk with Jesus, as...

Tired and spent, 2021 is just about to leave town and pave the way for 2022 to appear with its fresh face. That shrill siren is warning us that time for reflecting on the past 12 months is quickly vanishing like a child’s balloon escaping into the hungry sky. That’s why we’re conducting this month-long, year-end review of 2021 and taking our FAITH INVENTORY. For today, it’s another question begging...

We’re in the home stretch of our year-end FAITH INVENTORY in December and the final messages are the “tough ones.” This final stretch on the ramp to 2022 demands that we fully open our “honesty valve” and consider where we are on our faith walk with Christ. The subject today is a question:    “Do you have a ‘fighting faith’ like the Apostle Paul’s ‘good fight’ in the book of Timothy?”    “I...