Help! I’m Lonely: Good News for Lonely Leaders

I once heard Tim Keller say, “Wise leaders know that leaders are lonely, and they escape the trap of self-pity about it.” True, but Keller’s talk provided no answer to my immediate question, which was, “Yes. But how?!” I dare not trust myself to attempt to round off a Tim Keller sermon. But I will […]

3 Dead Mentors for Crazy Times

“What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything of which one can say, ‘Look! This is something new’? It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time. No one remembers the former generations, and even those […]

God Parted the Red Sea. So, What Does That Mean for Me?

Which movie does the best job portraying the panic of seeing Pharaoh’s chariots closing in before God parted the Red Sea? Let’s do a multiple choice: The Ten Commandments, starring Charlton Heston as Moses Prince of Egypt, starring Val Kilmer as Moses Exodus: Gods and Kings, starring Christian Bale as Moses Good question. But if we’re […]

My Cup Overflows

“My cup overflows” (Psalm 23:5c, NIV). These three simple words come from one of the most popular psalms in the Bible, Psalm 23. These words have given me so much life and encouragement during my first full-time ministry experience this past summer. On the days when I was exhausted, these were the words I came […]

Legion in the Bible: An Army of Demons VS Jesus’ Authority

Author’s note: Jesus claimed that all authority in heaven and on earth was given to him (Matthew 28:18-20). Although his authority blazes from every text of the Gospels, perhaps his most impressive displays of authority happened when he would confront a demon possessing and tormenting a human. In the Gospels, no account of demon possession […]

Pastoral Burnout: Getting Below the Surface

Author’s note: This is my second article dealing with pastoral burnout. Recent Barna research revealed that 33% of ministers had given serious thought to quitting. My own research for a graduate studies project showed 63% of those surveyed had given or were giving serious thought to quitting the ministry. In the first article, I wrote […]

Why Is the Bible So Hard to Understand? 3 Reasons

Why is the Bible so hard to understand? Here are some key takeaways from this article: The Bible can be hard to understand because we don’t take time to see what it says. We need to learn the skills of “observation.” The Bible can be hard to understand because we don’t take time to figure […]

Who Was Zipporah in the Bible?

Zipporah lived approximately 1500 years before Christ and she was the wife of Moses. She acted decisively in a crucial moment to protect her family, and she helped her husband fulfill his obligation to God. After four hundred years in Egypt, the Israelites cried out for God to rescue them from slavery, and God raised […]