Opportunity in Discomfort

As the Judgment noose around America’s neck is tightened and more people begin to feel the discomfort of waking from the anesthesia of affluence that has lulled us to sleep with self indulgence and complacency.

There will be opportunity in the life of View full article »

Maybe I’m just jealous of Their beards

For the last five or so years I have grown a beard in the winter. Usually around Thanksgiving I begin to let my whiskers grow, but generally by March I am sick of the itchy old thing. When I see the beards that the Robertson clan can grow, I am truly amazed that not only do their wives seem to enjoy the things, but also that they all can sport such fine specimens of masculine machoism.

It seems that everywhere I go there is an increasingly dizzying array of products that bear the Duck Dynasty label. From boxer shorts to wines, and everything in between; the Robertson family has truly established a product Dynasty on the American landscape. Looking through the latest edition of Christian Book Distributors catalog, I even noticed a Duck Dynasty devotional and recently I have heard of churches holding Camouflage Sundays. View full article »

Yesterday I had one of the most disturbing experiences of my life.

I have been feeding cattle for a neighbor who is out of town. His cows are currently calving and when I arrived, it was apparent to me that one of his young heifers was in the middle of calving problems. She was a small heifer and was having View full article »

“…and they were naked and not ashamed…” Gen. 2:25

The Discovery channel will air a new low of moral depravity this weekend in the form of a new “reality” show that pits a naked man and naked woman against the elements in a survival marathon of 21 days where they survived like natives off the land in the brutal climate of Madagascar. Called “Naked and Afraid”, the show pairs Jeff Zausch and Eva Rupert like native savages, living like primitive people in caves and living off the land, exposed to the elements- all while being “buck” naked. View full article »

 “Wherever the corpse is, there the vultures will gather.” Matthew 24:28

Every year the church I grew up in would have a traveling evangelist come and hold a week long evangelistic crusade.  It could be counted on that one of the most powerful sermons of the week would be on the subject of the rapture and the Great Tribulation.  I remember one especially zealous evangelist who delineated for an hour or so all the recent developments in the Middle East that combined as proof positive that the Lord would undoubtedly return that year and rapture His church. I remember him even pointing out that that year the news had reported that there was an exceptionally good recruitment of baby buzzards in the flocks of buzzards around the middle east.  View full article »

The Erosion of Middle American Local church autonomy

As I write, I look out my window on a landscape sleeping under the domination of winter. A blanket of white has settled over the Wyoming Mountains leaving one to wonder if spring will ever return. Elk and deer paw through crusted snow to find the remnants of summer browse and eek out a meager existence tottering on the brink of starvation. In a similar way, it seems a blanket of cold has settled  over the American Church. View full article »

“The chains of habit are to light to feel until they are to strong to break”

Man is a habitual being.  Part of our make up is that the longer we engage in behavior the more it becomes our nature.  If you studied psychology you probably remember Pavlov’s dogs.  As part of an elaborate experiment on human nature he was able to manipulate a dogs response by continually using the same stimuli.  Pavlov noticed that whenever a dog came to its food, as he was preparing the food it would salivate.  He began to ring a bell every time he fed the dog.  Soon he was able to make the dogs salivate even in the absence of food if he simply rang the same bell.  Although man is a vastly superior creation than the dog, we nevertheless have a very similar mechanism in our brain.  View full article »