Category Archives: Spiritual Growth

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Walk Thru The Bible

How A Weekend Event Can Help Us Read The Bible

Last weekend, we held an event at our church called Walk Thru The Old Testament. It was an excellent event and provided the perfect incentive to encourage our church to spend more time in the Bible.

Walk Thru The Bible

I have had experience with Walk Thru The Bible before, way back in 1995. It has been a while since that seminar, and I really didn’t know just what to expect. I was blown away by just how incredible this ministry is, and how it can impact people.

We started planning for this event several months ago, when I pitched the idea to our leadership team. They seemed to be excited about it, but none of us really knew just how big this would actually turn out to be.

Planning continued, and we tried to do all of the preparatory work by the book. We followed WTB’s schedule closely, publishing ads when they said to publish ads, hanging posters when we were supposed to hang posters, making the announcements so many weeks in advance, and working our way up to the weekend of the event itself.

What happened was absolutely incredible. God’s Word was presented in such a way that many people grasped an overview of portions of Scripture hat they had never put together before.

WTB’s Old Testament event is a five hour event, broken into four separate sessions. We presented the first session during our church service, devoting most of our time to it. After a break for lunch, we returned for the next three sessions, working our way through the Old Testament, from Genesis to Malachi. Along with the overview, we were taught seventy-seven different key points, with creative hand motions, to help us remember it all.

It was one of the best weekends that our church has experienced in a while. A large number of our congregation made the commitment to stay for the duration, and several people from our community joined us for the day. It was a phenomenal success, and we haven’t heard a negative review of it yet.

Through it all, I learned a few key facts about leadership and ministry. I think I have known these, and they may seem like common sense to many, but they were reinforced in my mind very strongly over the weekend.

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Making Good Friends

One of the most important aspects of life is developing great friendships. We need friends. No one can do life alone. God designed us to be in relationships with one another.

Making Good Friends

But making, and being, a good friend can be difficult sometimes. And especially so if you are the least bit introverted at all. Luckily, there are several things that you and I can do to help develop quality friendships that will last a lifetime.

When you look through the Bible, you see multiple examples of great friendships. For example, King David, before he became king, and Jonathan had an amazing friendship. Their relationship went to great depths, inspiring David to say that it was deeper than any other in 2 Samuel 1:26.

Their relationship went beyond casual acquaintance, deeper than social buddies, and achieved the level that few people ever reach.

A friendship such as this is needed, and it will help you develop into the man or woman that God has created you to be. And when we develop that kind of friendship, it’s because we have learned to be that kind of friend.

There are a few things that you and I can do to build such friendships. Some of them are more difficult than others, but all of these traits will help you be the kind of friend that you want to have.

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Developing A Consistent Prayer Life

Praying can be hard. We often tend to neglect this important part of our spiritual lives, sometimes without even meaning to do so. But it is a critical aspect of our connection with God, and we need that line of communication like no other.

PrayerMate

I have always struggled with maintaining a consistent prayer time in my daily life. That may sound a bit weird coming from a minister, of all people. Reading the Bible has always been an easy discipline, as has journaling, and many others. But prayer has been harder.

I have tried all of the different methods: a prayer journal, writing my prayers out, making lists. I’ve tried to develop this discipline on my own, and with prayer partners. I have purchased several different “systems,” and developed my own.

Nothing really worked for me.

I’ve studied the concept of having a great prayer life, and the need to have a quiet place with sufficient time and no distractions. I have opened up time in my schedule, my home, and my life. All to little avail.

I get distracted easily. I can be praying, and the next thing I know, I’m imagining myself to be a fighter pilot, or hiking El Capitan, or playing with the bookmark in my Bible.

Frankly, it’s kind of frustrating.

Enter PrayerMate. Goofy name. Great app.

Someone out in the digital world apparently had the same problem I do. Somewhere, I ran across a blogger who had as much frustration about being as consistent in prayer as I do, and they mentioned an app for the mobile phone, and iPhone in my case, that had helped them. I don’t remember who it was, but I am eternally grateful.

I downloaded this app, and it has been the best thing I have ever done for my prayer life. This app is completely customizable, and I can set it up to fit my needs almost perfectly. It creates my prayer lists, as many as I need, and allows me to create specific prayer cards for each item in that list.

For example, I have lists for the following subjects and topics: biblical prayers, wisdom, personal godliness and growth, my wife, each of my kids, my ministry and church, my friends, other ministries and missions, evangelism, our nation, and many more. Some of these lists hold dozens of prayer cards.

I can set the parameters for each list. For example, I have seven different prayer cards in my personal godliness list. PrayerMate cycles through these cards, randomly, until all seven have been prayed for, and then starts over again. This way, I can ask God to grow me in these different areas each week, but not always in the same order.

Another example would be my church family. There are several dozen cards in that list. PrayerMate is scheduled to select three cards each day, until all of them have been covered. And then the list begins again. I am able to pray for my entire church, family by family, and no one gets left out.

The scheduling in PrayerMate is incredible. I can choose to be reminded of as many or as few prayer needs on each list as needed, and build my prayer lists accordingly. And, with the reminder feature, I never forget to pray over these lists. My phone is always with me, and as a result, I can prayer while walking, or driving, and more. It’s been an incredible blessing for me.

And the best thing about this powerful little tool? It’s free, for iPhone and Android. Perfect!

The only drawback to it is that it does take some time to get things set up like I wanted them. I had to add and delete a few things until I figured out where everything fit. And even that ability is pretty simple to accomplish.

I highly recommend that you give this app a shot, especially if you struggle with a consistent prayer life. PrayerMate is a great tool that can help your prayer life become much more disciplined than it has ever been before.

You need to try this for yourself.

Question: What do you do to help build your prayer life into a solid spiritual discipline? You can leave a comment by clicking here.

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When Siblings Connect

Being Thankful For Small Things

You may know that I have seven kids. My oldest is a senior, and my youngest is about a year and a half right now. And I am continually amazed at the closeness that exists between my kids, almost all of the time.

When Siblings Connect

A few weeks ago, my seven year old son made a statement that hasn’t left my mind ever since. Speaking to his oldest sister, who is beginning her senior year, he said, “Are you sure you want to go to college next year, instead of staying here and living with us?”

My daughter is a year away from college, but he is already beginning to panic. He knows that this is a crucial event, and that it will shake up his whole world. He is really bothered by this.

This week, our church attended a Springfield Cardinals game, and several of my kids signed up to go. As it turned out, I had an eye appointment that same day. With my latest episode of cancer being so near my eye, it seemed prudent to have it checked, just to make sure nothing was spreading that direction. (And it is all clear. That was a huge relief.)

Two of my kids stayed home, to ride with the church group later in the day, but my seven year old and my oldest daughter came with me. That was a perfect opportunity!

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Slow Down And Listen

Wisdom From An Apache Elder

Very often, I receive a stunning blow of wisdom from a completely unexpected source. That happened to me last month on our mission trip to the White Mountain Apache Reservation in Arizona.

Slow Down And Listen

We worked hard all week, demolishing some walls on a community youth center so that it could be repaired. Things were not going as well as we would have liked. The walls were pretty stout, and we not coming down like we wanted them to. And when you add the fact that we were working with limited tools and resources, it was going pretty slow.

We were also holding a Vacation Bible School in the afternoons for the kids of the community. Again, we were pretty frazzled, trying to run the bus through the community in a timely fashion, and do all the things we had planned for that portion of our days. We were working pretty hard, no matter where we were. And that was a good thing; we are called to work with all of our might, especially as we work for the Lord.

On our final day in this community, when the kids had all been loaded on the bus for the return route through the community, dropping them off at their homes, I stayed behind, waiting at the community center. We were having a special dinner that night, and one of the local Apache ladies was providing some freshly made fry bread for us. So I lingered, waiting on her to arrive, and the rest of the group to return.

As I was sitting there on the porch, and elderly Apache slowly made his way over from his home across the street. He sat beside me for a while, without even speaking. He just joined me in sitting and enjoying the breeze. I soon found out his name was John Longfeather.

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Pay Attention! God Does Some Amazing Things That May Just Wreck You!

God, Knives, and Cancer

Sometimes, God steps in and does things that are completely unexpected. And if we don’t pay attention, we may miss out on something grand, and overwhelming, and it might even just wreck you!

Pay Attention!

You may know about my brush with skin cancer last October. Since then, I have had another recurrence, on my left temple, just outside of my eye socket. It stinks, but it there, and so it must be dealt with. Fortunately, I have a good dermatologist who knows his stuff, knows me, and between the two of us, we keep a pretty close eye on my skin’s condition.

My dad had the same thing. It metastasized into his brain, and he passed away in 2011. So this isn’t some simple little health issue. This has the potential to be vastly devastating, for me, for my wife, for my kids, and a lot of others who are close to me. So we keep a close eye on it.

Unexpectedly, this time around, we discovered that it would be better for us to pay out of our own pockets for this, instead of submitting it to the ministry share program we are members of, Samaritan Ministries. The bills were not enough to warrant sending them in, and Samaritan Ministries has been overwhelmed recently with needs, so it likely wouldn’t be fully covered anyway. So we decided to try to pay this one off on our own.

I collect pocket knives. Mostly traditional slipjoints, but I enjoy an occasional Swiss Army or other modern folder too. I have several in my collection, so I decided that I could part with a few of these to help cover the bills. And, I’m in a couple of knife groups on Facebook, so I figured it would be an easy thing to liquidate a couple of them.

What happened next caught me completely by surprise.

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Seeking Hope When All Feels Hopeless

Watching Christ Work Through Short Term Missions

Last week, I joined several others from our church on a short term mission trip to the White Mountain Apache tribe in southern Arizona. That was a great trip, and really reopened my eyes to what others may be facing in their own lives.

Desert Landscape

This trip was a perfect opportunity to get out of our own comfort zones and serve others. Our goal was to help clean up a building that American Indian Christian Mission hoped to use as a church building in the small town of Cibecue, on the reservation. That turned out not to be what God had in store for us. Instead, we helped to build the church in other ways.

Our work project was to help tear down some walls, a part of the community youth center that the health department required to be repaired before it could be used again. While three or four of us worked on that, the remainder of our group weeded, picked up trash, cleaned up the area around the community buildings, and interacted with several of the people who stopped by to see what we were doing.

In many ways, this was a much greater impact on the community than cleaning out the proposed church building would have been.

After the work was done, and lunch was eaten, we hosted a Vacation Bible School for community kids. Our highest day was around sixty kids, but we averaged closer to thirty-five or forty the rest of the week. Many of these kids worked their way right into our hearts.