God speaks to us in a variety of ways. He speaks through His Word, whether read or spoken. He speaks through the still small voice (the voice of crucified silence - 1Kings 19:12 alternate translation), the witness of the Spirit, the intuitive 'know-so' within. God speaks to us through the various confirmations of truth in life. He speaks to us through visions and dreams, through the wonders of creation, through meaningful situations, and through the fellowship of the saints.

Sam ...

There is a town outside of Syracuse, Skaneateles, that has declared itself a stress free zone. If a person looks stressed out we are told that they are given a voucher to relax at a local coffee shop. If the traffic warden comes by your car and you are discovered to have run out of time on the parking meter, he or she will deposit a quarter on your behalf and then leave a printed envelope with a note: "Your time had expired so I put another quarter in the meter for you. If you would donate a q ...

"Therefore, holy brothers, who share in the heavenly calling, fix your thoughts on Jesus, the apostle and high priest whom we confess."(Hebrews 3:1 NIV).

Many of us would like God as a partner in our business. We assume it would guarantee success. However God is more interested in us becoming partners in His business than He in ours. When it comes to doing business, God Himself has chosen to ...

"We must pay more careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away. For if the message spoken by angels was binding, and every violation and disobedience received its just punishment, how shall we escape if we ignore such a great salvation?" (Hebrews 2:1-3 NIV).

Undercurrents of fear, sentimentality, and the false securities of ritual, religious activity and se ...

"How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. Everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself, just as he is pure."

On the foggy morning of July 4th 1952, Florence Chadwick, a powerful swimmer, attempted to be the first woman to swim the 21 miles of shark infested waters from the coast of California to the Island of Catalina. Less than a half a mile from her goal she asked to be pulled from the waters. What caused her to quit was not the fatigue but the fog. "If I could have seen land, I might have made it." Two months later she attempted the swim again. This time she was successful despite the fact th ...

The irony of it all! This Monday, in our part of the world, Tax Day and Patriot's Day coincide. Patriot's Day is celebrated today, April 15th, on the Monday closest to April 19th, the anniversary of the first forceful resistance by the New England colonists to the Loyalist troops. The protest centered on taxes on imported tea. Some 220 years later Americans celebrate this event by paying taxes on everything (property, income, and both domestic and foreign purchases)! Today our state and federal tax ...

We do not know with certainty on which day of the week Jesus died. The Scripture claims that it was on the day before the Sabbath (i.e. Saturday). This fact has led to the widespread belief that the crucifixion was on a Friday. However the Bible also claims that there was a 'special Sabbath' to mark the beginning of the Passover feast (Leviticus 23:7; John 19:31). This, the fourteenth day of Nisan, could occur on any day of the week, even as December 25th will fall on different days of the week.< ...

Not only are hurts inevitable, they are necessary. Animals suffer hurts. But only humans become morally and spiritually better because of them. Our walk in the world is often painful. Jesus experienced pain as a result of His time in the world. He suffered rejection, betrayal, injustice, slander, scorn, physical torture and the cruel death of the cross. He is the man of sorrows, acquainted with grief. Our sinful nature is hostile to God. It was and is impossible for Him to walk with us without bein ...

A Tale of Two Builders, Two Homes, Two Hearers

It was reported today that the two model homes recently constructed in the Faith Heights section of Christian Boulevard overlooking the Sea of Time took the brunt of the record breaking winds and rains that accompanied yesterday's storm, Hurricane Prove-Authenticity. Although the two houses were both built with similar design and materials, they suffered different outcomes. One house w ...

Are false prophets born or made? It's doubtful that false prophecy is primarily a genetic issue, although we do inherit a nature that easily stretches a truth into a lie. Nor is it just a matter of educational training. No institution, to my knowledge, specifically states their mission as 'to matriculate a generation of false prophets', although I'm sure many institutions produce more false prophets than true. Neither is it the result of pure ambition. I've never heard a child say, "I want to ...

(The Need for Active and Focused Faith)

"But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it." (Matthew 7:14 NIV)

Saturday morning, March 9, the space shuttle Columbia landed successfully in Florida. The space ship's commander has limited options for re-entering the earth's atmosphere without b ...

Some people are too critical for their own good. There is a Greek myth concerning the god Momus, a critic who lived on Mount Olympus with the other gods. No matter how praise was lavished upon anything or anyone, Momus found something to criticize. We are told that Jupiter, Minerva and Neptune once had a competition to see who could create the most wonderful thing. Jupiter made a man. Neptune made a bull. And Minerva made a house. When the other gods on Olympus were asked for their evaluations, Mom ...

John Bunyan, who penned 'The Pilgrim's Progress' while imprisoned for twelve years in the Bedford Jail in England, catalogued many of the dangers, deceptions and distractions that disciples face as they make their way from the City of Destruction to the promised Celestial City. The pitfalls, personalities and principles illustrated in his allegory have a timeless relevance.

Rudyard Kipling wrote:

The craft that we call modern
The crimes that ...

The three main areas of our Christian walk are summarized in Matthew 6: our outward horizontal relationship with others (giving); our vertical relationship with God the Father (prayer); and our inward relationship with ourselves (fasting or self-mortification- putting off the dominance of the old nature). Jesus teaches that in each of these areas we are to beware of hypocrisy and seek to live authentically before God.

In our attempts to live righteou ...

The surgeon general warns us that 60% of the U.S. population live dangerously sedentary lives. We don't get enough exercise. Fitness experts are being called to the rescue. They are prescribing movements that exercise your body without much risk of causing damage. Sit-ups and crunches from the floor are considered poor for the back. The same muscles can be exercised by bowing down while seated. And walking is still one of the best overall exercises.

The New Testament refers to o ...

Corrie Ten Boom's story in her book, 'The Hiding Place' is a classic illustration of the power of forgiveness when, after World War Two was over, she faced those who perpetrated the tortures she faced when a prisoner in a German concentration camp:

It was a church service in Munich that I saw him, the former S.S. man who had stood guard at the shower room door in the processing center at Ravensbruck. He was the first of our actual jailers that I had seen since that time. And sud ...

The law was never meant to be a measure of your goodness. It was to be a teaching aid, a tutor, appointed to lead us to Christ (Galatians 3:24-26). As a revelation of God's demand for an absolute 'mirror-image' reflection of His righteousness, it was meant to drive us to the foot of the Cross in repentance. The lesson of the Old Testament is that we need a new heart and a new spirit. Christ alone can be the source of righteousness. Imputed righteousness. And imparted righteousness.

Once silver dollars were actually made of silver. Like many coins, now they are made with inferior metal at the core and a silver-coating on the outside. You can tell whether a silver dollar is true by the way it sounds when dropped. If the coin is merely silver plated, with a lesser substance at the core, it gives the sound of a dull thud. If it is a real silver dollar it 'rings true' when dropped, indicating that it is silver both on the outside and in the core.

How do our liv ...

(Read Joshua 3:1-11)

When Joshua led the children of Israel into the promised land it was a day of new beginnings. God promised that He would do amazing things among them if they would set themselves apart to cooperate with him fully. And the Lord said that he would give them what He had promised and magnify the name of Joshua before all of Israel.

The applications are many. Prophetically we see a greater Joshua (Yeshua, Jesus) being magnified among the peopl ...

I have celebrated the New Year in different countries and in different ways. In Portugal, people would stay inside until midnight and then come outside for a bonfire upon which old things, worn out furniture, things that served as reminders of their detested past were publicly burned. As midnight on New Year's Eve approaches, to the sound of music and celebration, fireworks would be lit from these fires. It was a time for a new beginning. A clean slate. A fresh start.

Now I live ...

King Solomon writes in the Book of Ecclesiastes: "I also saw under the sun this example of wisdom that greatly impressed me: There was once a small city with only a few people in it. And a powerful king came against it, surrounded it and built huge siege works against it. Now there lived in that city a man poor but wise, and he saved the city by his wisdom. But nobody remembered that poor man. So I said, 'Wisdom is better than strength.' But the poor man's wisdom is despised, and his ...

"Now it came about when he had finished speaking to Saul, that the soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as himself." (1Samuel 18:1 NASB).

Aristotle defined friendship as one soul in two bodies. You would think that he was describing Jonathan and David. The Bible teaches that, although each soul is distinct and precious, it is possible to have our souls knit to ...

The word for gospel or 'good news' in the Greek language is 'euangelion'. It originally referred to a messenger who was dispatched by a ruler to bring back reports of the successes of his armies on distant battlefields. It later came to be identified with the message of victory itself.

I recall an amusing story of such a messenger returning from a far off battlefield, having to run on foot over hill and dale, fording rivers and streams and finally sprinting the last stretch befo ...

"Yet those who wait for the LORD will gain new strength; They will mount up with wings like eagles, They will run and not get tired, They will walk and not become weary." (Isaiah 40:31 NASB).

There is more to waiting for the Lord than meets the eye. You do not wait for the Lord like you wait for a bus or a train. Waiting for the Lord is the activity of readying your heart and mind for cooperat ...

For some Christmas has become Xmas and Thanksgiving has become T-Day. Turkey Day.

Our foreign friends marvel that we Americans actually set aside a day to thank God for His blessings in our lives. Although for some it is little more than a day off, feasting, football or a family get together, it exists on our calendars for a purpose.

Thanksgiving was not always a day for turkey dinners. The Pilgrims of Plymouth gave the American nation a foundational preceden ...

"People were overwhelmed with amazement. 'He has done everything well,' they said." (Mark 7:37 NIV).

There was a trademark of excellence on all that Jesus did. The people were not amazed that He did all things. They were amazed with the things that He did and that He did them well.

Nearly two thousand years before Peter Drucker's "The Effective Executive", Jesus m ...

"He said to them, 'When you pray, say: 'Father, hallowed be your name'." (Luke 11:2 NIV).

A person's concept of God can dramatically affect their behavior and our world history. The tragic assassination of the Israeli prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, was perpetrated by someone who felt God told him to do it. This is not the first time that evil works have been carried out 'in the name of God'.&l ...

On the eve of Yom Kippur, the Great Day of Atonement, O.J. Simpson was acquitted of the charges for murder in what has been called the trial of the century. Whether or not you agreed with the verdict, the coinciding of the official Yom Kippur, the Hebrew commemoration of God's surprising transaction of justice that both punishes sin and releases the guilty (known as 'Atonement'), and the shocking conclusion to this trial, gave rise to the following meditation. It is taken from a message that I prea ...

"Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?" (Romans 11:34 NIV).

What do we do when we hit the wall of our limited understanding? Life deals each of us some hard punches. There are times when we want to cry, "Unfair!" Even as believers, we may wonder why some prayers are answered so obviously and some appear to be ignored. Why does God spare one person from an ...

There are many appointments in life; some more important than others. Some are non-discretionary - they are made for us. Others are discretionary. We make them for ourselves. Some are incidental. Some will affect our eternal destiny. "It is appointed for men once to die, and then the judgment." (Hebrews 9:27).

Solomon reminds us that there are a variety of appointed happenings in life. "There is an appointed time for everything. And th ...

"Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing." (John 15:4-5).

The call to Christ is a call to a disciplined dependency. The words 'discipline' and 'depe ...

As important as we might believe our professional achievements to be, in the light of eternity, they pale next to the importance of our relationships with God and with others.

The God of the Bible exists as a community of oneness. The Father, Son and Holy Spirit, one in divine essence, yet three distinct persons, live in perfect co-equality and relational harmony. There is no history of tension, distrust, argument or selfishness in their relationships. This relational God made u ...

In the earlier part of this century T.S. Eliot wrote about the 'Hollow Men' of his day. Pursuing every possibility under the sun, they fail to find the peace of knowing God personally: "We are the hollow men We are the stuffed men... Shape without form, shade without color, Paralyzed force, gesture without motion."

We need to see 'hollow men' turned into 'men of heart'. The human quest for fulfillment often takes us down the cul-de-sacs of narcissism (self-absorption) ...

"Then the LORD God made (literally in the Hebrew the word is 'banah'- built) a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man. The man said, 'This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called 'woman', for she was taken out of man.'" (Genesis 2:22-23)

Only three times in the Bible is the Lord said to build anything. He said He would build his church (Matthew 16:18) which ...

"When all kinds of trials and temptation crowd into your lives, my brothers, don't resent them as intruders, but welcome them as friends!" (James 1:2, Phillips)

I'm convinced now that if I had no problems in my life, the Lord would give me some. If there were no problems in our church, something would be quite wrong.

The reason is that He is at work building something that ...

Have you ever wondered why the Holy Spirit saw fit to record the heroic deeds and the standards of excellence exhibited by David's mighty men? Three chapters in the Bible describe the dramatic transformation of David's rag-tag army (2Samuel 23; 1Chronicles 11&12). Those who were once discontent, in debt, and in distress, emerged as daring, discerning and distinguished men in hot pursuit of God's full thought.

There is a clear parallel between the story of the anointed Ki ...

Hello fellow travelers of the Way. It is good to be back in the saddle again after visiting relatives, a refreshing study break in Chicago, and getting two kids off to college. I pray that all is well with you.

This summer I have been reading the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah, two books of great relevance to the church today, describing the restoration of the temple (the heart of worship) and the walls of Jerusale ...