Her Good or Mine? (08/06/07 - 44 Comments)
Asking myself why I want her to change... I have been thinking about this subject for a while now. I've even tried to write about it once or twice with decidedly poor results, causing me to give up and put it aside for another day. I'm going to give it another shot today and hope it works out better. It was probably a month ago, or sometime around then, that I found myself faced with...
Father's Day (06/17/07 - 5 Comments)
Today is Father's Day and I thought I'd share something I posted here before--an article I wrote for my dad three years ago on this day. Like most boys I idolized my father. When I was a child you would have had a difficult time convincing me that there was anyone smarter, faster or stronger than my dad. I really did believe it when I told my friends that "my dad can beat up your...
Creativity Cramp (2007 Edition) (06/07/07 - 13 Comments)
I am a Web designer and as such I have to be creative on an on-going basis. Every time a client calls and asks me to design a site I have to be creative and come up with a new design--something that will look attractive, that will be original and will fit the "feel" of the company or ministry or person. This is often quite difficult to do. I find it especially so when I've...
A Notch in the Belt (06/06/07 - 12 Comments)
When I was a teenager, there was a boy in my class who was not quite normal. I don't know if he suffered from a type of mental disorder or if he was just a bit "different"--never completely accustomizing to the culture he lived in. I suspect the latter. Somehow he did not quite fit in. He had funny mannerisms, would sometimes say strange things and often seemed oblivious to social propriety. One of my...
Blogging - My Story (05/15/07 - 19 Comments)
Last week at The Basics Conference I was privileged to lead a seminar on the topic of blogging. The topic that was assigned to me, "Blogging Your Ministry," is probably not the best title for what I delivered. I spent a couple of weeks trying to figure out what I could possibly say about blogging that would not be both tedious and boring. I soon found that there was a lot that was worth saying...
The Light of Certainty (04/24/07 - 16 Comments)
Last week Jacob Hantla wrote about an article that had appeared in the news the day before. A girl who lives in the Minneapolis area unexpectedly gave birth to a baby. She is overweight and it seems that neither she nor her mother had known that she was pregnant. She did not want the baby and reacted to its birth by stabbing it some 135 times and stuffing the lifeless body in a trash can....
Even the Smallest Island (04/23/07 - 6 Comments)
The Pacific Campaign of the Second World War is a fascinating slice of military history. In many ways, it seemed like a nonsensical series of battles between the United States and Japan--battles that ranks as some of the most horrifyingly brutal in the long and terrible history of warfare. As the Americans sought revenge for the devastation of Pearl Harbor, and as they sought to curtail Japanese aggression in the East, they fought their way...
Testimony Tuesday (For Bloggers) (03/29/07 - 29 Comments)
I've been thinking for a while now that it would be interesting and beneficial to have bloggers post their testimonies to their blogs. Some have already done this, but many (myself included) have not. And yet I love testimonies and find them so beautiful and so moving. It is amazing to read about the many ways God saves His people. He uses an infinite variety of means to draw an infinite variety of His people...
The Mirror (03/28/07 - 10 Comments)
I was skimming headlines a few days ago and noticed a story about some activists on a college campus who were planning to cover all of the school's mirrors for a day. I did not read long enough to see why they wanted to do this, but I assume it was somehow meant to draw attention to a problem the school or government was covering up. You know how these college-aged activists are, always thinking...
Spiritual Posture (03/24/07 - 6 Comments)
Roy Halladay is Toronto Blue Jays' ace pitcher and is one of the top players in baseball. Halladay has a well-established routine that begins as soon as a game is complete and continues until the next game has begun five or six days later. He has another routine which takes him from the end of one season to the beginning of the next. And, like many players, has a routine which takes him from pitch-to-pitch....
Tax Time Theology (02/21/07 - 9 Comments)
I am quite a fan of sports, or certain sports at any rate. One thing that has always attracted me to sports, and baseball in particular, is the numbers. I can take a brief look at a list of players and immediately have a sense as to how they are doing. The sports pages always have these great lists of statistics, showing batting averages, on base percentages, numbers of hits, home runs, singles, doubles and...
Answered Prayer and Prayerlessness (02/13/07 - 14 Comments)
Thank you. Just over a week ago I asked that you would pray for me. I asked that God would allow me opportunity both to work (and thus make money to support my family) and to find time to finish up my book in what is going to be a very busy six to eight weeks. Someone must have taken the time to pray for me because God answered in an amazing way. Late last...
Conference Season Begins (02/09/07 - 31 Comments)
This time next week, if all goes well, I will be sitting on a plane, on my way to Los Angeles. I will be heading to the Terrace Theatre: Long Beach Convention and Entertainment Center (that's a mouth full!) to bring liveblogging of the Resolved Conference. This kicks off my 2007 liveblogging schedule--a schedule that is ridiculously full. I never anticipated that I'd be traveling across the United States blogging conferences. It is really something...
A Delight and a Frustration (01/31/07 - 17 Comments)
Being a parent is wonderful. Parenting is filled with moments of joy and happiness and excitement and love. But it's also filled with moments of almost overwhelming frustration. We've had plenty of great times and plenty of awfully frustrating times in the past few weeks. A couple of days ago Aileen and I were talking about the children (our two older children in particular) and I said, "You know, what I find most frustrating is...
This Thing Called Blogging (01/23/07 - 39 Comments)
This thing called blogging is not nearly as easy as it looks, and this is especially true in a blog that receives a good deal of traffic. I suppose if you were to plot out the history of this blog in terms of its traffic, you would end up with a graph showing a slow but steady rise from the left of the graph (representing the time I began the site) to the right (representing...
Zealous Immaturity (01/04/07 - 34 Comments)
My work on The Discipline of Discernment has taken me to many places in the Bible and to many of the books on my bookshelves. I have been surprised and delighted to see how God has been preparing me to write this book, for many of the books I have read in the past few years tie directly into what I feel the Bible says about discernment. I've found help in books by many authors...
The Twenties: A Retrospective (II) (12/01/06 - 23 Comments)
(This is part two of an article I began here). I ended the last article with the birth of our first child. It did not take long after the birth of our son to encounter difficulties with our church. I knew nothing of Baptists, but had begun listening to Charles Stanley on my way to work each day and quickly began to respect his passion for the Word and his ability to teach it simply....
The Twenties: A Retrospective (11/30/06 - 19 Comments)
This Saturday will mark my thirtieth birthday. I am not typically one who takes much notice of occasions such as birthdays or who makes a big deal of them, but as I considered passing a decade barrier, it seemed appropriate that I should spend some time thinking about the last ten years. I was convicted that it would be beneficial to ponder all that has happened in my life since 1996, the last time I...
Poetry (11/24/06 - 20 Comments)
I've been thinking a lot lately about words. This must sound fascinating, I know, so congratulations if you have even made it to the second sentence of this article! With this being an unofficial holiday in the United States (and National Sleep-in Day, or something like that) I don't expect too many people to visit my blog anyways. Still, for the benefit of myself and anyone else who cares to read it, here is a...
The Folly of Solomon (10/26/06 - 20 Comments)
It's no secret around here that I love the book of Proverbs and consider it my "home page" in the Bible. I work through it at least once every year and always benefit from doing so. And while I love Proverbs and envy the wisdom of Solomon, the man who wrote the bulk of the book, I find something almost terrifying about his life. Whenever I consider Solomon, I am faced with the question of...
