What purpose did I wake up for? What am I doing today and every day? I’m ushering people into deeper communion with God through Christ by deepening my own communion with Him: lifting Christ up through taking up my cross, the fellowship of His suffering, by enjoying God and feasting on Christ that others may […]
Church service after church service. Bible study after Bible study. Book after book. We read. We read. We read. We hear. We hear. We hear. How many times have we heard a Word from God and said, “Ooh that’s good!”, only to revert five minutes later back to the way we were before? So, how […]
One dollar and twenty-five cents in quarters is all that I have. I take a deep, quivering breath, pick up the handset and feed the coins into the payphone at the corner of the gas station that would later become Strange Brew coffee house. I push dial the number to call home to Jackson, Mississippi. […]
For the first time in 20+ years of preaching, I am not at all nervous about preaching. It has been revealed to me that I’m unnecessarily complicating it –trying to perform, to prove and impress. I repent. The essence of preaching is found in John 21:15-19 when Jesus asks Peter, “Do you love me?” Jesus […]
I am accepted in the beloved. (Ephesians 1:6) This is what we’re built for, This is humanity’s greatest suppressed desire, This fills the God-sized hole in each of us, It is the reason for our social bent, To be accepted truly, purely, safely, irrevocably, ultimately by the Father. I am accepted in the beloved. To […]
Photo Courtesy Of Columbus Dispatch Someone asked me privately why “I hate this thing” referring to the Starkville Cross of Christ as I mentioned in a previous post. The ultimate point of that post was not the cross but how those of us in Christ can, by His grace, push past even very strongly held […]
I am grieved by the world. I desperately want to change it, but… Spiritual roots produce real world fruit. The suffering I see in the world is due to bad spiritual roots. If I don’t get the spiritual right, all that I hope to do in the world will just produce more bad fruit. Therefore, […]
In week 6 of 52 Weeks of Gratefulness, I give thanks for Alex Romanov. This guy loves me. How do I know? I just know. There’s something about his spirit and approach to me that conveys it. The first time I met Alex was at the gym. I’m trying not to die on the bench […]
NOTE: This is a stub. It’s a raw outpouring of what came to me in a moment. There were points that were deeply helpful to me and I felt compelled to share it at this time, so I’m posting it before it is finished and will fill it out as more about “The Ministry Of […]
In Week 20 of 52 Weeks of Gratefulness, I give thanks for John Jefferson aka “J”. Ok. I’m breaking rules by taking pictures of people in the gym but this is for a good cause and I wanted you to see him in the context where I usually encounter him. My wife sent me this […]