Church

On the cross, Jesus shows us the kind of person he really is and the kind of person he wants us to be. Much of who I am today I owe to the influence of my parents – especially my dad. Although he never served as an elder or deacon, his influence led 3 out of 5 sons to serve in ministry at one point or another. Picked up my love of bluegrass music from my dad. He modeled unconditional love for my mother. He instilled within me a love for the local church. This is one of the main reasons my wife and I are committing $5,000 to Mountainview's EnVision campaign. A good example of my dad's influence and impact came at one of the most difficult times in my life. When it came time to discuss whether or not to leave my mother on life support, I’ll never…

I'll be the first to admit that when I was in high school, I was at least ten years behind the pop music scene. While my friends were listening to Culture Club or Flock of Seagulls, I was listening to Jackson Brown, Jimmy Buffett, the Eagles, James Taylor, and Joe Walsh. Joe Walsh. Perhaps rock-and-roll's ugliest guitar player. The man who had the best album titles and cover art (Like Walsh sitting on top of a tank that just demolished a house. The title? "There Goes the Neighborhood"). Back in 1991, Walsh was a judge for the Miss USA Pageant. If I remember correctly, he favored blondes. While scanning through channels on the radio, I heard an old Joe Walsh song that I had forgotten about. It starts like this ... I'm just an ordinary average guy My friends all are boring And so am I We're just ordinary average guys We all lead…

We Americans love our opinion polls. Mostly we love giving our opinion. But – as we know – not all opinions are equal. Most opinion polls simply pool together the ignorance of masses. What about the experts? "We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out." (Decca Recording Co. on declining to sign the Beatles, 1962) "This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us." (Western Union memo, 1876) "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." (Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943) "Television won't last because people will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night." (20th Century Fox, 1946) The search for truth is not new to our day and age. Since the beginning of time, people have searched for the truth. A Roman…

According to George Barna, 60% of evangelical Christians believe the devil is only symbolic. It’s why we see attempts to explain away acts of evil in purely sociological or psychological terms. We're reluctant to classify anything as "evil". Many Christians are fond of C.S. Lewis. Children love to read The Chronicles of Narnia. Many people may not know that Lewis abandoned his Christian faith at age 13 and lived as an atheist well into adulthood. While teaching at Oxford University, he became friends with JRR Tolkien who helped lead him back to faith. This one-time atheist once wrote these words: “Satan hails the skeptic and the superstitious alike.” Some of you are superstitious when it comes to the Devil. You find a demon under every rock. "I ran out of gas. There must be a demon in my gas tank.” No, you didn't go to the gas station when you…

If we face our failures, God can restore us to usefulness. In Where Is God When It Hurts?, Philip Yancey writes about a peculiar handicap of lepers: they feel no pain in the afflicted parts of their body. They can burn a leprous hand in the fire and never feel a thing. A simple cut can become a critical injury because they have no sensation of pain. Likewise, one of the marks of a sociopathic personality is the inability to recognize one’s own error. The sociopath can lie, swindle, and abuse, and never really understand why everybody gets so worked up about it. Like the leper who feels no pain, the sociopath injures himself -- and others -- and totally ignores it. Why am I telling you this? It's simple: I don’t want you to be a sociopath! Much of the disfigurement of leprosy comes not from the disease but…