Relationship or Religion?
My best friend in the world, from ages eight to eighteen (except for three long months), was Mark Maxam. Inseparable companions, we walked to school …
Cultural Creep
How To Be IN But Not OF — That Is The Question
My grandfather was a missionary in China from 1917 to 1936. He once told me of some early Pentecostal missionaries to China. They decided it was …
Spiritual Insanity
A few years ago, a twenty-eight-year-old woman shared with me what she called her “unseemly struggle:” she was dissatisfied … with most everything. …
When Obedience Doesn’t Make Sense
When my family moved to Detroit, the summer between my first and second grade, Tommy was the first friend I made. He too was the son of a pastor—so we …
Why Do Our Kids Reject Christianity?
Why do so many people—people with incredible conversion stories—parent children who abandon Christianity? History overflows with great saints whose …
Who is Your Hero?
Sometime God speaks through a careful choreography of life events: conversations, readings, observations, and even the occasional media clip. …
Spiritual Judo
I reached my fitness high water mark at the age of twenty-four. I ran thirty miles a week, sweated three hundred pushups a day, and I brawled each …
The Nonsense of S.M.A.R.T. Sense
Is modern business wisdom destroying Christian spirituality? Oswald Chambers once asked, “[Do we consider ourselves] so amazingly important that we …
Navigating The Mountain of Biblical Authority
My daughter’s boyfriend, Matt, works in the High-Tech Performance Apparel industry. (I always thought the height of high-tech apparel was the Converse …
What’s Wrong with this Picture?
I’m in the middle of another bout with bronchitis (I think I’m losing), so I planned to skip my blog this week. But last Sunday, a TV advertisement …
Let’s Rethink the Way We Think
Circumstances, commitments, and surprises (the unpleasant kind) overwhelmed me the past six weeks. I had too much to do and too little time to do it. …
The Heart of Spiritual Warfare
Plato urges us: “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle.” If you are breathing, you are under a spiritual assault. The question we …