PDF Printable Version Fasting and Feasting Fasting has long been a part of spiritual growth. In Deuteronomy 8:3, Moses describes a type of fast that the Israelites endured for 40 years in the wilderness: And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by ...

Recently I have had a few conversations that circle the same question or concern. They all went something like this, “I am reading my Bible on a regular basis, but I feel like if someone isn’t teaching me what I am supposed to get out of it, I am struggling to go deeper. I want to learn more, but I feel like I am hitting a wall.”...

Recently I was speaking with a friend concerning a difficult conversation someone had with him a few months back. They had pointed out some areas of sin in his life and although he eventually calmed down, at first he got quite defensive. In our conversation, one of the statements he made was, “We all have areas of sin. I don’t need to run into your home and point out a...

We offer a 2 week reading plan and a family discovery study for the new year, to reflect on God's goodness and faithfulness. ...

Whether it is season of life or just life in general, I seem to consistently feel as though my bandwidth is tapped. Even as we have grown as a church and hired more staff, life is always more than enough to keep us busy. This is, in large part, why I wrote my articles over the summer about busyness and rest. I was, predominantly, writing to myself - trying to keep my own b...

At the beginning of September was my dad’s 75th birthday and at the end of August was my 37th. It just so happened, that right as these birthdays were happening, and summer was winding down, I read Psalm 90. I don’t have the space to copy it all here, but I would encourage you to go and read it on the internet so you can get a sense of it. In Psalm 90, the Psalmist, in...

“But Pastor, we are married in the eyes of God.” Over the years, I have heard this argument used to justify not getting legally married so that someone could keep their health benefits or even finagle the system to still receive assistance from an ex. I have heard young, dating, couples use it to explain why it is okay that they are sleeping together even though th...

Any gardener knows that if you want your tree (or in this case vine) to bear really healthy fruit, you need to trim it. If you just let the plant go wild, growing all over the place, it will get tall and bushy, but there won’t be healthy energy going to the branches to produce good fruit. In a sense, the plant is overwhelmed, spread thin, and ineffective. Why? Because it...

We’ve been talking about being busy all summer long. I have received more feedback than normal via emails, text messages, and regular conversations about how much many of our readers have resonated with the things that we’ve been talking about each week. With just a few weeks of this series left, we want to loop it all together and bring it home. ...

Recently, we’ve been talking about some of the core issues that cause us to be too busy. Last week we looked at how our overuse of technology might be compounding the busyness that we feel. Today we want to look at the reality that you need more rest than you think that you do. ...