Not much time tonight for writing. I leave for a 10-day trip to Ghana two days from now and I have been running around like a head with my chicken cut off (as my friend Tim likes to say). So I am posting the trip itinerary that was created by our Ghanaian director for Mission Resource, Emmanuel. He will be the one picking us up from the airport and getting us everywhere we need to be. I post the itinerary here hoping that maybe your curiosity would be piqued and cause YOU to picture yourself coming along next time. 😉…

Author Derek Sivers was on the Modern Wisdom podcast recently and gave an illustration that highlights how counterintuitive and illogical human reactions are. He paints a picture of three Olympic athletes standing on the winner’s platform after their competition and asks, “Which one is happiest?” Well, the Gold Medalist is happiest, of course. But then Sivers asks, “Who is the next happiest?” Your first instinct would be to say the Silver Medalist would be next in line, but then you pause and consider the situation… Maybe not? Sivers maintains that the second happiest is the Bronze Medalist and his reasoning…

No time or energy for writing tonight beyond sharing a quote from author, musician, and entrepreneur Derek Sivers: “Mastery is the best goal because the rich can’t buy it, the impatient can’t rush it, the privileged can’t inherit it, and nobody can steal it. You can only earn it through hard work. Mastery is the ultimate status.” It has only been later in my life that I have come to understand the value of mastering a skill or discipline. Now I feel like I have one overarching drive – the desire to understand my faith at a far deeper level.…

This morning I finally located the Bible book, the passage, and the verse where I want to focus for my dissertation work.  The book is Paul’s letter to the Colossians. The passage is this one from Chapter 3: 5 Put to death, therefore, the components of your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, and greed, which is idolatry. 6 Because of these, the wrath of God is coming on the sons of disobedience. 7 When you lived among them, you also used to walk in these ways. 8 But now you must put aside all such things as…

This year more than ever, my favorite part of an election is the defeated candidate’s concession speech and the phone call to the winner.  And not just because it signals a true end to the campaigning and that the outcome is not going to be contested for weeks. Rather, it’s my favorite because it is the closest any politician ever gets to admitting outright that their political rhetoric is 99% hyperbole and BS. Day before the election: “We must win this fight. If my opponent wins, it will be the end of democracy itself and our nation will have no…

“Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth.” The internet is split in attributing this quote to Lenin, Hitler, and Goebbels.  The uncertainty, ironically, does not stop the attributions from being repeated – until they become accepted truth.  There is a theological lie that gets repeated often and, thus, taken for truth, and it drives crazy every time I hear it: “Jesus taught more about hell than about heaven”.  You will find this sentence in the mouths of way too many preachers, from the unknown to the famous, but I don’t believe I have ever heard anyone even…

It’s strange – I won’t preach again until three weeks from today. And that will be the Sunday before Thanksgiving! (Time continues to pass at an ever increasing rate these days!) Next Sunday is our annual Harvest Day and there will be a special speaker for the morning. The following Sunday I will be in Ghana, God willing. Assuming my flights are all on time, I should be back in the pulpit on the 24th. And I already know what direction that sermon will take.  The typical Thanksgiving sermon is on gratitude and contentment, but I plan to invert that…