'God' Tagged Posts
Fire Up Your Faith Life
“You may not know how badly you needed silence and solitude until you get to know them.” Quiet time has been among the most important keys to my health in ministry thus far. I begin my day either first thing in the morning, or first thing in the office, with bible reading, reflection, journaling and prayer. I use the SOAP method I wrote about it here. I am always looking to adjust my spiritual disciplines to the current needs of…
Michael Wittmer
Michael Wittmer’s 2015 book asks a question that is dear to my heart as a millennial pastor who grew up middle class with plenty of accouterments: Can you serve Jesus and still enjoy your life? I may be a Calvinist but even I still think the answer not only needs to be but is YES. Here’s the thing, I spent a time outside the faith, a time when I snidely looked down on those foolish enough to believe the faith…
A Word of Encouragement (Or the Church as a Trapeze)
I used to teach snowboarding at a high level. I would take snowboard instructors to the biggest steepest run at our resort and ask them to ride it fakie (with the wrong foot in front). I enjoyed hundreds, if not thousands, of hours snowboarding. In order to improve and in order to help others improve I had to push both them and myself beyond the ordinary comfort zones. As we progressed some people took notice of us and recognized the…
God Fulfills His Promises
This past weekend I was reminded of how frustrated many of our churches are these days. I sometimes think I create bogeyman in my head when it comes to the troubles we are facing as a denomination; I pay too close attention to the numbers and the seeming struggles of my brothers and sisters in ministry. I want so badly to help them. Despite what one woman said to a member of my team recently “I know your church is…
Walking a Dog…What’s That Smell???
What’s that smell? It’s spring here on Vancouver Island and the flowers are budding and many tulips have already blossomed and many others stand sentinel straight waiting for just the right moment to grace the earth with their blooms. I was walking my dog this morning amidst the splendor and sunshine when we had an inauspicious start. She laid a deuce that scented the air with sickness and my alert brain immediately discerned that something my bubbly 2-year-old mutt ate…
I Worry Too Much, How about You?
Sometimes I feel like I am a real sentimental guy. There are days when I look at my boys (aged 5 and 3) while they are climbing on me, asking for hugs and running around, yelling in high pitched joy-filled voices that hurt my ears. At these times, I feel compelled to think about the future; the times when they are going to be quiet, the times I will have more time on my hands to take up the various…
Thomas Turns 3
Today is Thomas’s third birthday, I have now been a dad for five and half years. This is a sweet time in life, when my boys still think everything I say is gospel and they still want hugs, bedtime books and stories, and nighttime cuddles. It is a real joy to spend so much time with them and to share so much love with them. They each have special kisses just for me and they, of course, inhabit a special…
It’s Simple Really
This past week I stumbled upon a blog post about living more simply. It stated that the average North American house has something like 300 000 objects in it and that there is a movement of people trying to get their number down to under 1000. They suggest the things we own in reality own us; and they propose a bunch of ways to lower our number. One way, if you are interested, is to spend a month progressively getting…
History Maker 2015
This past weekend I was in Chilliwack attending the History Maker youth conference with a gang from Duncan. It was a rare opportunity for me to spend gobs of time with some of the youth in the church. There’s really nothing like hours on busses and ferries and midnight pizzas and candy to bring people closer together. The conference was good, I would say it accomplished it’s goals of bringing some kids to Christ, bringing others closer to him, getting…
Windows into Heaven and Flowering Trees
In response to hearing that amidst a famine God was about to act so that the very next day food would become so cheap no one would believe their luck a lord said to the king “Behold, if the LORD would make windows in heaven, might this thing be?” (2 Kings 7:2, KJV) The poetry in that stopped me today. Partly because I can hear the longing in the man’s voice, the voice of one who has had trouble feeding…
Into the Routine
I love this time of year, the moment after Christmas when things go back to normal. Don’t get me wrong, Christmas and all the hullabaloo that go with it are awesome, the food, the time with family, the extra time with my brothers and sisters at the church, the tree, the food, the lights, the food. All of it can be fun and good but it leaves me tired and ready to get back into routines. Right after Christmas there…
So My Dog Peed on a Tree…and I Thought of God
Being a preacher means that everything that happens in my life is filtered through a strange lens that asks whether or not this is something I could preach about or use in some way to further proclaim and explain the Gospel. I don’t do this consciously, it just sort of happens. I used to practice this sort of thinking, hoping that with time it would just come automatically, like that airline pilot who had practiced emergency landings so many times…
What Did He Say?
This week I read one of the most chilling quotes I have ever come across. It went straight to my heart, and I instantly felt a wave of panic come over me, like it was referring to my own little boys, or the parents of the little girls I know. It was the sort of quote that sends me to my knees in prayer, the sort of thing that can only allow for two responses, first disgust, and second…