Captive To Our Culture

Aug 03, 2020

We are born of God, in His image, into this world, into this country, where we are raised in its cultural standards and goals. Even if we are raised in the church, we are very much indoctrinated into the norms and standards of our culture through our parents, our friends, our schools. Here in the […]

Loyal to the Church or to Christ?

Aug 27, 2018

  “For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere humans? For when one says, ‘I follow Paul,’ and another, ‘I follow Apollos,’ are you not mere human beings? What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to […]

In This World, But Not of This World

Apr 16, 2018

[based on Romans 12:2] To live in the world and not be of the world is not something we can claim because we believe in Jesus Christ. It is a step-by-step dismantling of the world’s influence in our lives. It is taking the bias of the world out of our own thinking. It is giving […]

3rd Step in Loving God: Surrender

Dec 19, 2016

In the last two weeks I have written about the first two steps in loving God with all of ourselves, 1- giving up our own very negative self-image and 2- exchanging our anxiety and fear for a deep trust in God for taking care of everything for us and listening for God’s wisdom in everything. […]

Surrender is the Key

Jun 13, 2016

The spiritual journey comes with many challenges and many joys. The first challenge is giving up my life to Christ and agreeing to let him lead me where he will. And then comes a long period of retraining/transformation of how I think, how I feel, how I think about myself, how I relate to other […]

10,000 Surrenders

Nov 30, 2015

Once we have surrendered our lives to God, we enter onto a journey which I call the 10,000 Surrenders. It is a journey in which we are constantly having to offer our resistance up to God and as we do that, he is healing us of the fight within us. Every time our expectations of […]

Spiritual Surrender

Mar 30, 2015

Surrender is a loaded word. Give up. Give in. Yield. Capitulate. Submit. Acquiesce. Concede. These are a few of the synonyms for surrender. For an American person surrender often looks like quitting or giving up yourself. Waiving the white flag is not something we are taught. We fight. We take possession. We conquer. We don’t […]

Steps on the Journey

Jan 12, 2015

I think there are many ways to look at and to experience the spiritual journey. Here is one that I think is quite true to the essence of the journey. In this scenario there are four steps along the way. The first step has to do with acknowledging the yearning within us for more, for […]

We’re on a need-to-know basis with God

Apr 07, 2014

In living the Life of the Spirit we give up the need for control, the selfish desires that rule our lives, the right to call the shots, and much more. We live in the present, with what we are given now to do, with God calling the plays. You could call God the Great Coach. […]

We Are So Acculturated

Mar 24, 2014

We are so steeped in the culture, we don’t even know where the culture ends and we begin. So much of the culture slipped in under the radar of our pre-cognitive brains when we were small children that we can’t see what in us belongs to the culture and what belongs to our self. This […]