With a focus on SELF, popular songs have burnished the word LOVE into the fabric of today’s society. You know the tunes: From the Beatles’ “All You Need Is LOVE” to Elvis telling us we “Can’t Help Falling in LOVE” and, of course Foreigner proclaiming “I Want To Know What LOVE Is.”    For Christians, LOVE is the very essence of our faith walk and the word SELF is nowhere...

The most difficult thing for me to understand early in my faith walk was GOD’S UNCONDITIONAL LOVE…for ME. Yes, me. But it did NOT make sense. I was a corporate CEO at the time and living in a world of CONDITIONS. Relational conditions. Employment conditions. Behavioral conditions. There are conditions built into everything in this life on planet earth that usually take one of two forms: Go ahead,...

As the summer sun spread its sneaky-hot rays across my neck, the pastor presiding over a dear friend’s wedding reads 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 and I tried to hide my facial expression that was dangerously close to saying: “HERE WE GO AGAIN.” I’m not proud for thinking the world has made the Apostle Paul’s love verse a bit too clichéd. A bit too perky. A bit too unrealistic given the ever-declining rate...

A cornerstone of this month’s exploration of God’s LOVE is probing our heart for how THANKFUL we are for that love. Is it superficial “of course I’m thankful for God’s love!”?  Or is it all-encompassing, genuine thankfulness for the blessing of walking with Jesus in surrendered obedience?    On the surface, it seem like an easy question. But if we automatically say we are thankful for...

The Beatles sang “All you need is love,” but there’s a lot more to it than that. Let’s just say it’s complicated. The problem? The world does not have a shared meaning for love. And since LOVE is the most powerful word in the Bible, that will be the theme for us this month. Come along with me and we’ll drill deep into the complex and captivating world of love—the world’s flawed counterfeit and God’s...

We’ve come to the end of our month-long journey into finding SOLITUDE with God!  And I want to leave you with my customized “QUIET TIME TEMPLATE” developed over the past 20 years while teaching the Spiritual Maturity Class 201 at Saddleback Church in Southern California. What follows is my BEST SUMMARY of the most important elements for a Christian’s daily quiet time with Jesus. WHY The most...

When I woke up this morning to a stunning, 360o view of the mountains just south of Yosemite National Park on America’s west coast, God pushed me to “seek perspective on my faith walk by looking down on your life periodically to see where you are and where I want you to go.”    It makes sense!    Right now I am looking down on a nearby town starting to stir and greet the new day....

I spent a couple of decades OVERTHINKING everything. Overthinking my career. Overthinking my personal life. And, yes, overthinking my faith walk with God. All three had negative consequences. Especially the first two that emerged in my quest for success and wealth. But the third one—overthinking my faith—KILLED the spontaneity in my entire life and erected a barrier between me and God. Put simply,...

God clearly calls Christians to pray over their meals. “When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them.” Luke 24:30 But he wants so much more from us when it comes to PRAYER. He wants us to be praying every day and, eventually, going into deep prayer on a regular basis while in SOLITUDE with him. This has always been a HUGE CHALLENGE for...

This just in from our global online tribe: “I want to spend time in solitude with God but my life has gotten far from him. I just don’t feel spiritually mature enough. And not good enough. What can I do to fix that?”    At one time or another, and to one degree or another, every Christian has this feeling of being separated from God. Of being inadequate. Of being alone.    That...