Our Blog
The Presence of God is given first place.
"Everybody squirt!" Suddenly 100 women whip out their spray bottles and begin to squirt their neighbor. Shrieking and laughing, we all cool down from the 105 degree heat. OK, back to the teaching... Our first multi-day conference for women is in progress. It's a first for most. A bit tentative and shy at first, they are warming up to the idea of a safe place where camaraderie and fun are core values. They will spend three full days here in a...
Beautiful Churches
What makes a church beautiful? Peru and Mexico, in the midst of their poorer cities, still have large cathedrals filled with costly items. The cathedrals in London are awe-inspiring with their massive size and intricate architecture. However, many of the churches in India, and Rwanda are small and plain. Often there are no benches, so the people happily sit on the floor. You won’t see people lining up outside of them to take a tour. If you walked by one of them, you may not even know it was a church, it is so plain. The book of Haggai addresses a...
Building and Remodeling
When you see a house that was started but never finished, you wonder why the owner never completed the project. Did he run out of money or was there some major event, a divorce or sickness or death, that was the reason? In the Bible, the book of Ezra introduces us to a building project in which the people lost interest. The situation was corrected when the prophet Haggai appeared on the scene.To remember the theme of the book of Haggai, use this acrostic: How About Getting God’s Abode Improved. Here’s some context: about a century earlier, after losing a...
Running with the Mountain Goats
If you search the internet for images of mountain goats, you will see them standing on what appears to be sheer vertical walls. That is because they have special hooves designed to find traction on the smallest of footholds. They show no signs of the fear of heights. The classic book, Hinds Feet on High Places by Hannah Hurnard, is an allegory of the Christian life (similar to Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan). The Bible, in the same way as Hinds Feet, likens the person who trusts God in the midst of difficult circumstances to that of a sure-footed mountain goat. “As...
How Will God Use You?
Have you ever wondered what God thinks of you? I mean, now that you have become one of His children through faith in Jesus Christ. Perhaps we get an idea from God’s interaction with Gideon in the Old Testament. If you remember, at the time of Gideon, Israel was antagonized by marauding bands from the nearby nation of Midian. These groups would sweep in every summer and steal the bounty of the harvests from the Israelites.To preserve some of the grain, Gideon was threshing it in a winepress, trying to remain hidden from the Midianites. God dispatched an angel, who...