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...

The battle against BITTERNESS in the midst of life’s furnace trial is all about our UNBELIEF. A question of our faith in God’s sovereignty. A matter of believing vengeance is in God’s hand, not ours. God demands forgiveness from us because he knew our lives would include people and situations where peace and comfort were totally absent (Ephesians 4:32).    That is why our battle with bitterness...

Thanking God in advance is faith at its strongest and most glorious point. Jehoshaphat put the choir in front of his men and sang praises to God when the army from Edom was marching toward him from beyond the Dead Sea (2 Chronicles).    He was not intimidated; he was motivated to pray and seek God for wisdom and not rely on his own power.    He remembered what God had promised.    He...

We are living today on the front-lines of a dangerous battlefield that compels us to PRAY and call on God’s power to unleash the ultimate WEAPON—his Word. That’s why we desperately need to connect with God’s Command Central Headquarters through prayer so he can arm us with the power of his Word. Doing that makes us part of God’s victory so we can praise him and let others see his goodness.    Our...

When I hit the bumpy parts of life and start veering off the road, I immediately turn to Psalm 37:4.  Of course I love the notion of God giving me the desires of my heart, but I always remember that his promise is conditional on me delighting in him.    The way to delight in the Lord is to do what pleases him and install his Word in our hearts. Then and only then are we sanctified...

Early in my faith walk I took responsibility for every battle myself with a perfunctory and shallow prayer to God through in for “insurance.” Ridiculous. Looking back on the countless battlefields of my defeats drives home God’s immutable truth that the battles of life are not mine to fight. Never. (See below 2 Chronicles 20:17.)    I spent yesterday in a hospital emergency room with a dear...

Living in the now has always been tough. It was tough when Jesus walked the earth and it’s certainly tough today as we absorb myriad assaults of sound and sight. This thought hit me hard yesterday when I was looking at family videos from the now-distant past. Those images captured every moment of extreme bliss and joy. It was incredible. And I remembered NONE OF IT.    That hurt a lot,...

The predilection to be selfish, seemingly hard-wired into us, makes us vulnerable to slip into that state at any time. Our degree of selfishness is determined by the underlying beliefs and attitudes that determine our behavior across the myriad roles we play in life–parent, spouse, sibling, son or daughter, worker…all of them.    Our degree of surrender to God dictates the depth and...