Monthly Archives: January 2017

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Bethsaida—With God Your Past is Never Pointless

The hometown of 3 disciples reveals God never wastes our past.

It’s hard feeling embarrassed about where you grew up. Maybe your family had problems. Perhaps your hometown or church seemed nothing special. You’re not alone. Three of Jesus’ disciples felt that way too.

Bethsaida—God Can Use Your Lousy Hometown

(Photo: Plain of Bethsaida. Courtesy of the Pictorial Library of Bible Lands)

The slopes near the site of Bethsaida offer some of the most beautiful scenery in the Galilee. In the spring, wildflowers burst open to drink in the sun, and the surrounding meadows paint the whole area a bright green. From certain vantage points, I have looked at the Sea of Galilee from Bethsaida and observed no modern distractions.

Most modern maps, signs, and tourists point to the site of et-Tell as biblical Bethsaida. If so, then this was the place in which Jesus performed miracles.

Peter, Andrew, and Philip had this as their hometown. A hometown that rejected Jesus. But God would still use the boyhood home in the lives these men.

God can use your lousy hometown too.

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Finding the Motivation for Giving All of Your Heart to God

It comes from a past action that wasn't even yours.

There is a past action that dictates your motivation for living for God. It’s an action you can’t change. In fact, the action wasn’t even yours. But it can help you give it all to God.

Finding the Motivation for Giving All of Your Heart to God

(Photo courtesy of Unsplash)

Years ago I owned a different car—a sports car. Sitting behind those eight cylinders, I could go from zero to too-fast in about five seconds. (Of course, I never did). After Cathy and I had our first daughter, I decided I needed a family vehicle. Car seats don’t fit in Firebirds.

So I sold the car.

A few months later, I found a spare set of keys to the car, and I thought: I need to get these to the new owner. Even though I could have kept the keys (as insignificant as it seemed), they really weren’t mine to keep. I had sold them, in a sense, when I sold the car.

Living for God is like finding a spare set of keys to a car you no longer own.

In fact, you have a whole lot of keys that aren’t yours, because of that past action I mentioned.

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This is How to Overcome Your Overwhelm

Your problems can seem smaller when you see a new perspective.

Close one eye and look closely at a marble. It seems massive. In fact, the marble is all you see. It dwarfs everything else. But its size is an illusion.

A basketball is bigger. The planet earth is even bigger. Come to think of it, God is infinitely bigger than your marble. Your problems are like that.

This is How to Overcome Your Overwhelm

(Photo courtesy of Unsplash)

Life is filled with marbles. When you fixate on your marbles, you can’t see the reality that they are small in comparison to God’s power.

Sure, they’re real. Of course they hurt. But your life is more than your problems, just as the world is more than your marbles. Or it can be. You can stop staring at your marbles. You only need to sit up, blink a few times, and look around.

God is much bigger than your marbles.

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Tel Megiddo and What Megiddo Tells Us

Israel's most strategic site offers you a strategic lesson.

If the world wants something so badly, why not let them have it? The problem comes when what they want is what God has given you and commanded you to guard. It becomes a tug of war with your heart as the prize.

The strategic site of Tel Megiddo

(Photo: The strategic site of Tel Megiddo. Courtesy of the Pictorial Library of Bible Lands)

If history ever compared the land of Israel to the game of “Monopoly,” the site of Tel Megiddo would be Boardwalk. It was the most coveted spot on the playing board. Location, location, location . . . 

Tel Megiddo’s tremendous value came from its strategic location as the sentinel of the most important pass through the Mt. Carmel range.

Whoever held Tel Megiddo in the ancient world controlled the traffic and trade along the International Highway to and from Egypt. That meant both military and financial security.

Taking Megiddo is like capturing a thousand cities. —Pharaoh Thutmose III

Its value simply can’t be exaggerated. It’s lesson for us has a daily application.

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I had the honor of playing guitar for Paige Brumley as she sang, “When Love Was Slain” (by Riddle and Yates), on July 27, 2014, at Stonebriar Community Church. Paige set the recording to pictures she took from Maui.

It’s a beautiful reminder of the hope that awaits us in glory!

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The Golan Heights—Are You Sure Your Contentment is in the Right Place?

A lesson from the Golan Heights' bastions, burials, battles, and borders.

Contentment isn’t always a good thing. The Golan Heights illustrate why. A long plateau rises east of the Sea of Galilee, high above the surrounding basins. As the highland stretches north, basalt cones penetrate the landscape, betraying extinct volcanoes below the surface.

The Golan Heights—Bastions, Burials, Battles, and Borders

(Photo: Nimrod’s Fortress in the Golan Heights. Courtesy of Pictorial Library of Bible Lands)

For thousands of years, the Golan Heights in Israel served history in countless ways—from pasturelands to burial grounds, from battlegrounds to borders. It’s no wonder this region has remained the envy of its environs—even to today.

The volcanic soils offer lush pastures for grazing—and spectacular panoramas for the eyes.

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The Blessing of God’s Secret, Wondrous Will in Your Life

If we knew what the Lord knows, we'd trust His timing.

If we knew what God knows, we would choose to wait for His timing rather than push Him to act now. God created us to live in dependence on the Creator. As such, we wait for His wondrous will and provision.

The Blessing of God's Secret, Wondrous Will in Your Life

(Photo courtesy of Unsplash)

Insisting on instant gratification (even for good things) minimizes and overlooks the infinite worth of God’s sovereignty—a wisdom that sees beyond the next five minutes. Or the next five years.

Are you waiting for the Lord to do something in your life?

If you knew what God knows, here’s what you would do.

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