Faith: Devotion - Article Archives
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GPS
GPS. Those three letters have changed the way we travel. Global Positioning Satellite, the little boxes we have on our car that tell us where to go and which road to take as we drive to new places and new areas, have helped men avoid the one thing they hate doing most, asking for directions.
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Vigorously
As I mentioned in my last article, Pietism was a part of Christian history that I had never studied and that I needed to correct that oversight. The most important part of studying Christian history is that we learn what we can apply to our present walks with Christ.
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Have You Forgotten Your First Love
It has been refreshing to spend time with this man. Everything about Christianity is exciting and new to him. The more time you spend with such a person, the more you want to be around them. It reminds of you of when you first got saved and makes you hunger for the same excitement.
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Can't Leave it Behind
There are things in life that you can't leave behind. You can't travel overseas without a passport. There are good reasons for this.
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Finding Freedom
In today's society, it is easy for men to be held captive by something in their lives: anger, pornography, etc. Deep inside, these men love God and want to serve Him, yet these sins and oppressions keep them held captive to sin, making them feel helpless and hopeless to change.
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What Does God Require?
Stating what Christians believe can be very easy. We believe in the one and only God, who had a Son that came to earth in a human body to die and rise again for our sins. After He returned to Heaven, He sent the Spirit to aid us.
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Restoration for the Broken Life
Fear of failure is a huge issue for most men. When things go south in a hurry, men instantly give themselves the label "failure". Along with this label is the feeling that God could never use them. However, this is not true! God can take any failure and turn it into something useful for His kingdom.
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A Call To Wisdom
One of the most avoided portions of the Bible is the wisdom literature of the Old Testament. These books: Job, Proverbs, Song of Solomon and Ecclesiastes, don't contain gripping narratives like the historical books. They don't have prophets telling the future and condemning sinners.
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$4M Oxford Study Asks Why People Believe in God
Researchers at the University of Oxford will spend USD$3.7 million investigating why people believe in God. Academics have been given a grant to try to find out whether belief in a deity is a matter of nature or nurture. They will not attempt to solve the question of whether God exists but they will examine evidence to try to prove whether belief in God conferred an evolutionary advantage to mankind.
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Calling God Father?
A few years ago, my wife told me about an incident at a lunch she had with a dear non-Christian friend. My wife asked her friend if she minded if she prayed for the meal. Her friend said, “That’s fine,” so my wife started her prayer with the phrase, “Dear Heavenly Father.” When she was finished, her friend said that she could never pray those words since her father was such an [expletive].
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Can God Really Use a Guy Like Me?
I want to serve and follow God wholeheartedly. However, I have made such a mess of my life. I have been an abusive, hateful man. I have a hot temper. I have hurt and alienated everyone close to me. I have hurt so many people. Can God do anything with me?
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Characteristics of a Godly Man
A godly man is not macho, hard, tough, womanizing or egotistical. Rather, he is a warrior, a mentor, a friend and a priest. His goal is Christlikeness. He is a builder, nurturer, instructor, provider and protector. He is strong yet sensitive and firm yet tender with his children. He is strong yet romantic with his wife. He is teachable and not intimidated by the gifts and strength in others – including those innate strengths of his wife. He is a leader and also able to follow. He leads at home; yet, he may lead or follow on the job or at church. He desires God above all relationships and will not compromise or turn in the face of adversity.
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Devotions or Devotion?
The problem we have as men is that we can have the mindset that having devotions is more a task than a relationship. Have devotions…CHECK! Next task? Devotion to Christ may mean recalling His Word throughout the day, praying simple Nehemiah type prayers in the car or quietly worshiping while sitting in our favorite chair.
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Getting Ready
Life is going to throw you a curve ball soon. I can’t guarantee when or what, but I can assure you that it will. Curve balls might include you or a family member being diagnosed with a chronic disease or a sudden death. Your boss might walk in one morning and tell you that the company is downsizing and your position is included. Another curve ball might be someone runs into your car.
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Hang In There
How much faith do you have? How do you even know how much faith you have? You can tell your faith by how you respond to the trials of life. It’s easy to have faith when things are going well. The test of your faith is how you handle life when things aren’t going so well. Until you go through a trial, you don’t know what your faith is made of.
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High-Flying Faith
Flying several thousand feet above ground with my daughter and son, the pilot decided to teach me a lesson regarding emergency landings. Without warning, the pilot, also a friend and fellow pastor, cut the engine of the four-passenger prop. He then proceeded to point out several potential landing strips for our mock emergency.
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Ice Fisher
Professional hockey demands a tough attitude. Rough play and physical confrontations characterize the action in NHL arenas.
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Joy in the Law
Psalm 1:2 surprises a lot of readers; “but his delight is in the law of the LORD; and in his law doth he meditate day and night.” As a rule, modern people do not see the law as a delight. They describe “law” in a variety of distasteful ways.
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Lessons from the Wreckage
I had a bit of a mishap in my home the other day. It all began with a "brilliant idea" to move my bookshelves from one side of th room to the other. I wanted a larger workstation in my spare bedroom/office, and I believed that moving my library to another corner would accomplish that. What I failed to calculate was the personal and emotional cost such a transition would entail.
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Lies in the Key of Me
I despise lying. I realize we all do, of course, but I really detest it. I was raised to loathe it. My mother could be quite the disciplinarian. (Who could blame her with three rambunctious boys and no other parent in the house?).
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Our Great Cloud Of Witnesses
So many men long to serve God, but they feel that their inadequacies, shortcomings and/or the issues they struggle with will keep them from being used by God. However, these men need to realize that God can use anyone who will open themselves up to be used by Him.
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Purity
I have failed miserably. As a Christian, I conceived a child out of wedlock in my early twenties. Ultimately, I married my daughter's mother. We endured an intense, brief and difficult time as a married couple. My compromise led me down a path of futility.
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Self-esteem Isn’t Good Enough
Seems like we hear about self-esteem everywhere we turn. If someone is pessimistic, we are assured that proper self-esteem would take care of it. If someone is doing well, they have good self-esteem. Self-esteem has been turned into a goal in itself. So much so that teachers aren’t even allowed to properly discipline their room because saying "no" might damage a child’s self-esteem.
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Sheer Madness
To borrow from Dickens, "March is the best of times; March is the worst of times." It is a month of great transistion.
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Sights on the Goal
On the gridiron, LaDainian Tomlinson zeroes in on the goal line. In 2006, the San Diego Charger running back scored an NFL record 31 touchdowns and waltzed away with the league’s MVP award.
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Soldier son's death prompts minister to examine his faith in 'Rest in Peace'
Chuck Goldberg, a former journalist and minister ordained by the Assemblies of God, turned from pursuing the truth of his son's death to documenting his own truth.
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Spiritual Panic ain't Spiritual
I can't believe I fell for it.
It's a fact of life that all computer owners know full and well: your computer will get viruses. No matter how hard we try, no matter how many anti-virus or malware programs we use, things are going to get through the net and attach themselves to our hard drive. -
The Day I Gave Him Everything
I’ll never forget the day I first asked Jesus to be my Savior. I was a wide-eyed, seven-year old kid attending a Vacation Bible School. I couldn’t wait to tell my mom about the decision I had made when I got home that afternoon. She rejoiced with me and commemorated the occasion by buying me a green, hard-cover Living Bible. On the front, inside cover, she carefully scribed in pen the date of my conversion so I would never forget it: “Saved – July 29, 1975.” It would be a date I could forever point to and say, “Yes, that was the day I gave my life to Christ.”
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The Power of Voting Publican
How do generous people become the way they are? I believe it stems from a deep, spiritual, life-transforming experience that allows them to hold more tightly to their Lord than their resources.
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The Use of Doctrine
God commands Christians to walk a fine line between several things in this world. We are called to be in the world but not of it. We are to win friends for Christ and influence people for the Lord. Most of us cannot do that from monasteries. We have to be living amongst other people to influence them.
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To-By-For
As a writer, I'm a lover of the language. I realize that puts me in the minority of Americans, but what can I say? I am what I am. Call it an occupational hazard, but I have this tendency when I'm reading the Bible to look very closely at the verbiage being used. Sometimes certain words will almost leap off the page and get my attention. The Lord has a fantastic way of using them as teachable moments for my life. I had that experience recently in my time with God.
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Where Are You Headed?
When teaching anyone of your children to drive you expect to see your life flash before your eyes or carry your will in your pocket. Little did I realize that on this day I would find myself laughing hard enough to forget that my life was in the hands of my 16 year-old daughter. It was a nice Nebraska day when I had Lindsay out for our driving lesson. We were approaching a four-way stop when I told her to make a right hand turn at the stop sign.
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Who is Responsible for This?
As a minister of the gospel for almost twenty years, I have learned the ability to keep my head in situations. All right, most situations. I haven’t exactly seen it all, but I can’t be too far away. Now in my forties, I believe I am on my second or third go-around with different situations. I’ve seen different fringe teachings ooze their way through the pew, be ushered out with extreme prejudice and years later creep back in. I’ve dealt with more than my share of people who one might call EGR (extra grace required).