Jim Rohn once said, “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” I like this quote because it makes me think about the important people in my life and how much time I spend with them. Encouraged by Rohn's statement, I took an inventory today of who I spend the [...]
For years I worked with a youth ministry called Altaer. This unique name was derived from mixing the words altar and alter into one word. Based on Romans 12:1-2, we taught students that when you lay your life on the altar, your life will be altered. This unique phrase served as a great reminder for [...]
Several of my friends adopted children last year. Some had children of their own and added a child through adoption. Others started their family through adoption. Some adopted locally; still others adopted from other countries. Regardless of how they adopted, it has been amazing to watch these families welcome these beautiful children into their lives. It's incredible to [...]
There have been seasons of my life when I have been very disciplined about physical training. In high school I competed in three sports: cross country, wrestling, and soccer. So, I was in the habit of training year round. In college I lived near the beach and rose early each morning to surf for a [...]
When I started working for iDisciple, the company was a small startup with just four employees. During my first week on the job, our COO, Hal White led our little team through a list of core values that help guide the organization. One of these core values is to cultivate a culture of celebration. As [...]
My friend Mike Ashcraft released a book titled My One Word: Change Your Life with Just One Word. As a pastor, Mike noticed that as every New Year rolled around, people in his congregation would make multiple resolutions to change. Usually, these resolutions would be forgotten by the end of January, and the next January [...]
Proverbs 17:17 says, “A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for a time of adversity.” Many friendships are born during good times, but adversity reveals true friendship. Difficult times often take relationships to a new level. There have been a few tough times I’ve experienced that I can’t imagine enduring without [...]
In The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis imagines a bus ride from hell to heaven. Lewis uses this trip to explore how our understanding of the connection between the eternal and the temporal is often incomplete. “Son,” he said, “ye cannot in your present state understand eternity. . . That is what mortals misunderstand. They say [...]
I was a member of my church youth choir for many years. I don’t remember much about the music we rehearsed, but I do remember our choir director ended every rehearsal with a life lesson. One day our director said he had a very special gift for our group. He pulled out a bag and [...]
I started working out again after taking a year off from regular exercise. I never made a conscious decision to stop working out. It just happened. Life was busy and another year passed. About two weeks into my new routine, one morning I still struggled to get up and go to the gym. But somehow, [...]
