Paradoxical Prophecies

I was noticing in chapter two of Haggai the amazing prophecies given to encourage God’s people after the Exile. Their entire country had been riven by civil war, then devastated and destroyed by foreign invaders and carried into exile because of sin. It must’ve seemed to them that they’d been abandoned by God. But now He wanted them to stir themselves up again, to realize they were still His people, He still had a purpose for them, and He wasn’t through with them. Continue reading “Paradoxical Prophecies”

The Message on the Mountains, Ps. 121:1 & 2

My wife and I used to live in El Paso, Texas, where I was the pastor of a church called Jesus Chapel. Three different years, we called the church to prayer and fasting at the start of the new year. As we prayed over El Paso and its sister city in Mexico, Ciudad Juarez, we could see two prominent features that dominate this area –  a place called Mount Cristo Rey in El Paso, and the mountain in Juarez where it is written in white letters, “La Biblia es la verdad; Leela!” (The Bible is the truth – read it!) It occurred to me then that those two prominent features of that community tell us practically all we need to know for a successful life here on earth and hereafter! I preached a message about it back in 2011. But this week, one of the lectures I was listening to directed our attention to Ps. 1 & 2, and I saw that those psalms convey the same message! I just had to share it with those of you who check this website… Continue reading “The Message on the Mountains, Ps. 121:1 & 2”

The Past Informs the Present

The Long-Haul Perspective; How the past informs the present. Do you feel frustrated with the way our country is going? Lots of people have said they’re just disgusted with this election cycle. We Christians are saddened to see our country seem to race farther and farther away from God and from everything we think is right. Ever wonder why God doesn’t seem to answer our prayers for this country, why He takes so long, why it seems like nothing is happening? I sure do too, and I’m pretty sure most of us wonder about such things. Please watch this video or just read the notes. I hope it'll encourage you...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4r9ZEkYTWM

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Life as a Seminary Student

Wow, it’s interesting being a seminary student, especially at 62 years of age! Interesting, but strange. Great in some ways, but very odd in others.

Yesterday, I spent an entire day reading. I’m not sure I’ve ever done that, just read for an entire day? Then there was about an hour-long online lecture at night. The only time I went outside was just for about an hour to ride my bicycle through our community, then I jumped into our icy pool for a short time, and it was back to reading. Continue reading “Life as a Seminary Student”

Spiritual Formation

I’m taking a course on Spiritual Formation, and reading some great books. One is called The Kingdom Life. It’s edited by Alan Andrews, but each chapter is written by a leader from a group called TACT (Theological And Cultural Thinkers). I want to pass on to you some great quotes from this book as I go through it. Check them out below… Continue reading “Spiritual Formation”

More great quotes from Fueling Freedom

“Affordable electricity has improved human welfare in the twentieth and twenty first centuries more than any other technology. Yet, as Matt Ridley reminds us, two billion people in the world have never seen an electric switch. Policies now asserted by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the U.S. government limit or prohibit financing for affordable fossil-fuel-fired electric generation in developing countries. This elite green perspective cruelly denies the world’s poorest families basic light, heat, and cooling, on which health and well-being depend. The greatest environmental killers in the world are cook stove smoke, contaminated water, and uncontrolled sewage. The elimination of indoor pollution, the provision of clean water, and the safe disposal of waste require treatment systems running on… electric power.” (223)

Global warming alarmists and politicized agencies tell us that the weather is becoming more extreme, as President Obama did in his 2013 State of the Union address: ‘Heat waves, droughts, wildfires, floods – all are now more frequent and more intense. We can choose to believe that Superstorm Sandy, and the most severe droughts in decades, and the worst wildfires some states have ever seen were all just a freak coincidence. Or we can choose to believe in the overwhelming judgment of science – and act before it’s too late.’ By repeating this nonsense, the president is contradicting the conclusions of the official climate science, which he insists we must accept. The IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report concludes that there is no meaningful evidence that hurricanes, tropical storms, drought, floods, or tornados are more extreme or frequent than in the past. Judith Curry, the former head of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Tech, likewise told Congress that ‘most types of weather extremes were worse in the 1930s and even in the 1950s than in the current climate, while the weather was overall more benign in the 1970s. This sense that extreme weather events are now more frequent and intense is symptomatic of ‘weather amnesia’ prior to 1970. Yet some developing countries are demanding ‘climate reparations’ and ‘climate justice’ from developed countries like the United States, to pay for the extreme weather damage they have incurred, allegedly from our country’s carbon dioxide emissions.” (224)

Siempre Llega Justo a Tiempo

En marzo de 1994, recibí una invitación de enseñar en una escuela de discipulado de Juventud con una Misión, en la ciudad de Tepic, Nayarit, México. En aquellos días, vivíamos por la fe, y por lo tanto, nunca había una abundancia de dinero. Cuando enseñaba en tales países, tenía que hacerlo sin expectación de recibir un pago. A veces estos ministerios me daban una ofrenda, y a veces, hasta pagaban mis gastos, pero por lo regular, no podía yo esperar tal. Nuestro dinero tenía que venir de diferentes personas que nos apoyaban o mensualmente o con ofrendas de una sola vez. Continue reading “Siempre Llega Justo a Tiempo”

It Always Comes Just In Time

In the Spring of 1994, I was invited to teach at a Youth with a Mission discipleship school in a town called Tepic, in the state of Nayarit, Mexico. We were living by faith, so we never had an abundance of money, and when I teach in third-world countries, I usually do it without any expectation of pay. Sometimes they give me an offering, and sometimes they even pay all the expenses, but usually, that was not something I could count on. Instead, we had supporters in the US who believed in our ministry, and their monthly or one-time donations kept us afloat financially. Continue reading “It Always Comes Just In Time”