Category Archives: Spiritual Growth

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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.

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Step Out Of Your Comfort Zone With Short Term Missions

Later this week, I am headed out with two of my kids to American Indian Christian Mission, near Show Low, Arizona. The three of us are really excited about this short term missions opportunity!

Short Term Missions

Trips like this one are always cause both excitement and some amount of trepidation for me. A short term mission trip causes you to step outside of your comfort zone and do things you may not be comfortable doing. That has the ability to make one very nervous.

But at the same time, the excitement is there, because a short term mission trip has boundless opportunities for growth. It’s pretty incredible actually.

On this particular trip to AICM, our team has an incredible project. One of the larger communities on the White Mountain Apache reservation, and yet one of the more isolated communities at the same time, has no church. AICM has been working with the tribal council to lease a property and plant a church there to help meet both the spiritual and the physical needs of the community.

AICM has had a long standing relationship with this tribe, and with this community. They have been there, working with and alongside the people there for years, and have built a solid reputation. Several of the students at the AICM boarding school have come from this community as well. So planting a church there is a natural expansion of the work that AICM has already been doing.

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Lessons From A Sick Dog

My daughter called me a couple days ago and informed me that one of our dogs was listless and wouldn’t eat, or even wag her tail. Something was obviously wrong with her.

Boxer (Not Lila)

A year and a half ago, we adopted a boxer named Lila. She’s a great dog, but being four years old at the time, we’ve had to re-train her a bit in order to fit into our household. She’s a smart dog, and she learns quick. But sometimes we still deal with old habits, like this week.

When my daughter called me, I told her to keep an eye on Lila, and if she acted sick, to take her outside. At lunch I headed home to find out that she was still miserable. I took her out for a walk, and she threw up several times while we were outside (I know, that’s gross).

I didn’t understand what was going on until that moment. Lila had just thrown up more birdseed than I could possibly imagine.

After some further searching, I discovered that Lila had somehow managed to gain access to our garage, where she had eaten a significant amount of birdseed for our outdoor feeders. I don’t know how much she ate, but it definitely wasn’t good for her. She had gotten into something that she shouldn’t have gotten into.

The truth is that I do the same thing all too often, and I’m sure you do too. We tend to get into things we shouldn’t, and they are not always healthy for us.

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The Secret To Finding Contentment

All too often, we look at what the other guy has, and compare that to what we have. And we find ourselves longing for something more.

The Secret To Finding Contentment

It’s tough to be content. We do not live in a world where this comes naturally. Rather, it seems like it is normal to want more, to desire something beyond whatever we have, to long for something new.

And sometimes, that isn’t necessarily wrong. It isn’t necessarily wrong to desire to better ourselves. It isn’t necessarily wrong to seek out more and better things and experiences.

But sometimes it is wrong.

Paul, in Philippians 4:11, states:

I have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I am.

And again, in 1 Timothy 6, he says:

But godliness actually is a means of great gain when accompanied by contentment. For we have brought nothing into the world, so we cannot take anything out of it either. If we have food and covering, with these we shall be content.

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Dealing With Spiritual Dryness

What To Do When You Feel Like You’re In A Desert

One of the more difficult times we experience in our spiritual lives are those moments when we feel spiritually dry and drained. It almost feels like we are in a desert.

Spiritual Dryness

Spiritual dryness can be overwhelming at times. It can lead to feeling down and almost feel like depression. And we all experience it. It’s a fact of our spiritual lives. We enjoy the mountaintop experiences. But what do we do when we hit the lower places, the valleys, the deserts?

Sometimes, life just throws us a curve ball, and our lives take a pretty strong hit. A couple of years ago, my wife fell and broke an ankle while pregnant. Soon after, I was diagnosed with severe sleep apnea, followed by a diagnosis of cancer. It seemed like our world was turned upside down overnight, and we didn’t know what to do.

I felt like that time was one of the driest spiritual stretches I have ever encountered, and yet it was also a period of time where I experienced the most spiritual growth. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, I know. But looking back on that time, and the weeks and months following it, my journal is filled with ways that I can see God molding me into more of the person he wants me to be.

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One Word 365 – 2016 Edition

Forget The New Year’s Resolutions; Just Choose One Word

I have developed a habit over the past few years of selecting one single word to focus my life on for the duration of the coming twelve months. This is the word I will strive to live by for the next year.  Identifying a word to live by for the year helps me to keep my focus on a specific area of growth, and helps me become more of the person God has created me to be.

One Word 365

I’ve settled my focus on several different words over the last few years. For example, in 2011, I chose to focus on the word passion. This word underlined all I did throughout the year. It defined the year. Everything I did, I did with enthusiasm, and passion was pretty visible in most areas of my life.

In 2012, I chose the word commit. One of my biggest struggles in life has been to stick to many of the things I decide to do. Focusing on this word helped me to address that deficiency.

In 2013, I chose the word intentional. We have a large family, and as a result, we have a lot going on. I realized that I needed to be intentional, especially in my relationships with family and friends, and in my ministry.

In both 2014 and 2015, I chose the word wait. I tend to be very impatient at times, and focusing on waiting helped me see the bigger picture. And, rather than take matters into my own hands, it allowed my faith to grow by waiting on the Lord.

Each year, I choose to identify and implement a single word as a part of my Life Plan. I add this word to the beginning of my plan, and try to use it as a piece of the foundation for every portion of my plan. Some areas are more successful than others.

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Reading God’s Word

Developing A Love For The Bible

I have recently been convicted concerning the idea of developing passion in my life as a believer. Such a passion has to be rooted in God’s Word.

God's Word and Coffee

Hebrews 4:12 gives us an incredible insight into the Word of God, and God’s own view of it:

For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

Did you notice the very beginning of that verse? God’s Word is living. If the Bible was a dead book, I would be able to read it once, and would never need to read it again. But it is a living Word. And every time I read it, I experience new and different things in it. As I read in it now, I am in a different place in my spiritual walk than I was the last time I might have read any given passage.

And since it is living, it has the power to work within my life and change me. God, through his Holy Spirit, will nudge me to change the things that he points out to me from reading his Word.

Each time I read this book, I find something new to me that I may never have noticed before. And I may not have ever noticed it before because I was not spiritually ready for that particular piece of Truth. And there are things that I am not ready for even yet. But I may be tomorrow, or next week, or next year, as I continue to grow.