The book of Proverbs is LOADED with instruction on UNDERSTANDING (Proverbs 2:11; 3:13; 14:33; 16:16). That got me wondering…if getting understanding is so important, why can’t we lean on it?    Because life’s pain and anxiety come when we lean on our OWN understanding and think we are smarter than God.    It is INSANE to trust our woefully inadequate understanding when God’s unlimited...

God used my quiet time this morning to remind me about “fighting the good fight” and to encourage others to focus today on the same thing because we all have a fight to fight. The first thing we must remember is that the fights we wage in life are not against a weak foe. Far from it. We are fighting the enemy and he does not want to be our friend. He wants us dead.    Whatever fight you...

   Early in my faith walk I learned through much pain that being “ready for God” does not come from trying hard to be spiritual. It does not come from acting the way Christians are supposed to act. And it does not come from being a “good person.” Being ready for God comes out of a “right relationship” with him to see where we are and where he wants us to go. It is being ready every day,...

Believers through time have experienced the shame of being ruled by our spirit and held captive in the grip of passionate anger. Instead of thinking before speaking, we speak without thinking and the carnage comes fast. Winning that battle has always been hard. It takes more courage and wisdom to resist an angry response than it does to take a city.    Anger almost always stems from our...

That was the late, great Tom Petty’s timeless and probing line from his 1981 mega-hit “The Waiting.” He was right then and it’s still true today–waiting is the hardest part because we’re living in the age of NOW. Impatience is our weakness that needs everything to go according to our plan.    Patience demands incredible INNER STRENGTH that can only come from God. It’s the strength...

I came away from reading Proverbs 12 this morning with a palpable fixation on wanting to live a RIGHTEOUS life that becomes a witness by giving people around me a glimpse of Christ at work. At first I was deflated—more like flattened, I would say–by that seemingly unreachable state. But then God calmed me down and I started to think it through.    My starting point was that God’s...

Christians are the light of the world, right? Yep.    “You were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light.” Ephesians 5:8    We need to continually remind ourselves of that truth and its huge responsibility because we are living with millions of people lost in the abyss of spiritual darkness.    Before we can be a light to others,...

I surrendered to the dentist. I surrendered when the plane took off. I surrendered when the roller coaster barreled down the track. But I didn’t fully surrender to God.    That was early in my faith walk and with the exception of my initial surrender the day I was saved for eternity, I surrendered nothing. Not the possessions. Not the thoughts. Not the purpose for my life.    And...

The prince of darkness has hijacked today’s information revolution to scroll his poison across the cinema of society and pierce the peace of our heart. Listening is being sent to endangered species list of life by our ability to say so much in so many ways.    We increasingly listen with the presumption that we know what others are thinking and what they “plan to say.”    We compound...

Discouragement is a normal emotion every believer experiences at some point, but it is not to be “accepted.” It is to be FOUGHT! It does us no good to pretend we are not discouraged in life on this side of the heavenly divide. Escaping REALITY in that way means we cannot take action to fight it off. And if we allow it to settle in without fighting back, we are going against God and his command to...