Behind are the long lines under the blistering sun, toting extensive documentation to share with consular officers. Also in the rear-view mirror are the concern and guilt over leaving country and family behind in favor of a better future. Now we were planted at our arranged destination with much work left to be done, learning a new culture, language and way of life. Not an easy task for an uneducated hard-working couple with a young son rebelling against this seismic shift. What lay ahead was much gut-wrenching change, tedious toil, misunderstandings, and constant learning experiences, all with the goal of […]

When was the last time you considered just how easy it is to fall into the trap of exchanging the love and devotion you have for our Creator for created things? Now, I am not just speaking about those created things that we would put under the heading of “BAD” – like possessions that possess us, worldliness that wreaks havoc in our world, and the desperate desire for instant gratification regardless of the cost or circumstance. We exchange the Creator for some very good created things like . . . Family Friends Finances Success Work Church service Hobbies Possessions Can […]

There are countless ways we can waste the little and precious time our Lord has given to us.  But there is one way that trumps them all – PROCRASTINATION – putting off until tomorrow what we should and must do today. And if the truth be known, one day soon, tomorrow will not come.   “As Paul talked about righteousness, self-control and the judgment to come, Felix was afraid and said, ‘That’s enough for now! You may leave. When I find it convenient, I will send for you’”  (Acts 24:25). The apostle Paul is speaking before Governor Felix at Caesarea about […]

“I am sending him back. You therefore receive him, that is, my own heart, whom I wished to keep with me, that on your behalf he might minister to me in my chains for the gospel But without your consent I wanted to do nothing, that your good deed might not be by compulsion, as it were, but voluntary. For perhaps he departed for a while for this purpose, that you might receive him forever, no longer as a slave but more than a slave-a beloved brother, especially to me but how much more to you, both in the flesh […]