Provision

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The power of faith

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The power of faith

Sometimes you have to throw caution to the winds and just step out in faith. That was a topic of conversation the other day between a successful young church planter in Toronto and myself.

One of the enemy’s cleverest tricks is to keep our focus on what we can achieve by our own efforts.

I was taught a lot about faith as a young leader. The example of several men I personally knew who had taken extraordinary steps of faith in their walk with God took hold of me and challenged me to the core.

We can do a lot by our own efforts, but the kingdom will only really move ahead when we start doing what can only be accomplished by divine intervention.

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What are we building?

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What are we building?

The building in the photograph doesn’t look like much. In fact, it doesn’t even exist any more. But it has quite a story to tell. And something to teach us about building the church and extending the kingdom.

I’ve been thinking a lot about buildings lately.

Here in southwestern Michigan, where we have spent a large part of the winter, the church has completed a major addition to the building, which in turn has enabled us to knock out the walls of the original structure, which is only ten years old, to create a much larger auditorium. This has created lots of excitement as it nears completion. And the Lord will use it in all sorts of ways.

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Times of testing

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Times of testing

I hate the thought of being tested.

I spent a morning this week going through a battery of medical tests, and have more to come. My new doctor loves the idea of preventative medicine, which seems to involve his patients utilizing all available diagnostic services, in the good cause of forestalling worse to come in the future. It has nothing to do with my age, of course.

James 1:2-4 tells us pretty clearly that testing is not only from my doctor, but from God. In fact, he says, testing leads on to maturity and the state of lacking nothing.

And there you go. I thought the prosperity gospel had it all figured out that endless financial blessing is what leads to me lacking nothing. Evidently not.

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Why we get the Bible messed up

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Why we get the Bible messed up

Light in your darkness. It’s something we look for as the days grow short and the nights grow long.

It’s also the title of a book proposal of mine being currently considered by a literary agency in Texas.

The book is about suffering. Why is it that bad things happen to God’s people? How do we process that? For the book, I went to people who could speak with authority, friends who have experienced significant tragedy in life and have walked through it with their faith in God intact, probably even deepened.

As Christians, we have to face these issues head on.

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Behind a frowning providence

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Behind a frowning providence

Behind a frowning providence there hides a smiling face. That’s a line from one of my favourite hymns, God moves in a mysterious way. 

Although he wrote it in 1773, it pretty well expresses what happened to us a few days ago. 

We had made the long trip to Ottawa to move our two youngest kids to university. We sandwiched this between moving house and leaving for the UK, so we were under a lot of pressure to begin with. There followed three of the most stressful, action-packed days I’ve had in many a year. We had so much to do that it utterly overwhelmed the time and energy available to do it. And inevitably, some things went wrong.