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The Comfort of Christmas
Comfort, comfort my people, says their God Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned . . . Isaiah 40:1-2 It’s Christmas time, for many of us our favorite time of the year. This is the season of brilliant lights and beautiful color, of celebration and laughter, of holiday parties and family traditions, of rich memories and precious anticipations. There is no season like Christmas. Yet for many of us there’s another side to Christmas, a dark and colorless side, a season of painful memories and family struggles when those who should have brought us joy have…
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The Glory of Business
God has created us to pursue business, but not only to provide for our needs and make a profit. His primary purpose is to experience the glory He designed for us when He gave us the life and gifts He provided for us. The problem is many of us don’t understand what God has done. We tend to think that living for God is one thing, but conducting business is another. What we miss is the fact that God is not only interested in our going to church and participating in Bible study but also in how we run our business and even more in why we run our…
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Thanksgiving 2017
It’s Thanksgiving. But let’s suppose you can’t be very thankful this year. Let’s suppose you have spent more than five years pouring yourself into a group of people who are not thankful for you at all. You have given them everything you have. You have not charged them anything for your sacrifice. While you have not complained to them or asserted yourself over them, you have been faithful to them and truthful with them. You have given them all you can possibly offer them, and they have freely taken what they wanted and rejected the rest. No one has given as much to them as you have, and no…
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A Dog In A Tree
At a recent session of the Wednesday Morning Men, a men’s Bible study I teach every Wednesday morning (what else would the Wednesday Morning Men be except a gathering for men and when else would it meet except on Wednesday morning) one of the regular guys, Wayne Mitchell, talked about something his grandmother said to him when he was in his late twenties. Wayne questioned her about prominent pastors who promote themselves, become well known, and then fall. She said, “They’re like a dog in a tree.” Wayne had never heard that phrase before so he wondered what she meant. She replied, “You will never see a dog in a…
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The Giants Are Going And The Pygmies Must Take Over
Recently one of my former students sent me an e-mail about a current article in Christianity Today on Karl Barth, one of the most influential theologians in the early part of the twentieth century who had an adulterous relationship for much of his married life. The article was revealing, penetrating, and distressing as it spoke of such terrible sin in the life of one of the most significant thinkers in the past one hundred years. My former student, now a man with thirty years ministry experience and a key theological thinker in one of the largest evangelical countries in the world, reminded me of a time when he came to…
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God’s Call
In the summer and winter of 1944, the sovereign God transformed my life from temporal and purposeless to eternal and purposeful. Here’s how He did it. During that time my name was Douglas Rice, I had no home, no father not much of a mother, and she intended to put me into a religious boys’ home when I turned five late in 1944. I have no idea where I had been for the first four plus years of my life, but that winter I and my half-brother, Donald, lived with Anna Keeler, known to us as Mother Keeler, a British immigrant and a member of the Salvation Army. Mother…
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When God Forgets You
How do you respond when God forgets you? He forgets your cell phone number, your e-mail address, and your Face book page. He doesn’t recognize your picture or recall your address or even your long unused landline. How do you feel? As far as you can tell God has forgotten He even created you let alone had a plan for your life. All of those identity defining expectations He once gave you are long gone and never thought of—at least by Him. Perhaps you’re like Moses who defended one of God’s enslaved people only to have to flee for his life. Once he was a member of the…
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Renewed, Refreshed, Refocused
On January 29th of this year I fell down some stairs and fractured my skull, caused a concussion, and spent eighty days recovering from significant brain damage. Now I am virtually well and I have much to rejoice about. I invite you to join with me in thanksgiving to God for His grace and faithfulness. It was probably five or six weeks after I fell before I could begin to think about what happened and what was going to come of it. Even though I could not write or communicate consistently, I could pray and think about what the Lord was doing. I knew Lynna and my family…
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The Leader, Not Leadership
At Leader Formation we focus on the leader rather than leadership. Effective leadership is our aim, but we have learned that leadership collapses when competent leaders lack godly character. God has used leadership from the beginning of time, but time after time we see leadership fail because leaders fail. Look at Adam, Abraham, Moses, David, Solomon, Peter, Mark and on throughout history, and you will see that leadership is flawed because leaders are flawed. As one of our board members, Dr. Gary Wood, declared, “Skills are essential but not sufficient.” Leader Formation exists to strengthen leadership by forming leaders. As we see it, the heart of the…
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When Does A Leader Talk About Their Fear?
When does a leader talk about his fear to his followers? Never? The apostle Paul disagrees. He talked about his fear when he shared his faith, when he showed the Corinthians that, while he came to them in fear, he acted by faith and bore fruit despite his feelings. “When I came to you I came with fear and trembling (I Cor. 2: 3). He wrote that after he survived terrible suffering from Macedonia to Corinth, when he was rejected and attacked and had to wonder what his future was. He certainly knew that Corinth was too much for him, that Roman culture mixed in with the Corinthian…
