Last winter I binge-watched the Netflix documentary The Making of a Murderer. The premise of the true story documentary is that Steven Avery was wrongfully convicted of assault and attempted murder in 1985. He served 18 years of a 20-year sentence before being exonerated by DNA evidence. The...

A lot of Christians I know say that the disciple with whom they most identify is Peter. They talk about his failures, as well as how much they can relate to those short-comings. 

I get it. And I’m grateful that Scripture not only reveals its characters’ greatest exploits (like...

John opens His Gospel with a revolutionary idea: “No one has ever seen God,” he writes, “but the one and only Son, who is Himself God… has made Him known” (John 1:18 NIV). Even though people weren’t certain what the Father was like, Jesus revealed exactly who...

My Dad and I have invested a lot of hours talking about this material with each other. We saw the principles work at Hilldale, and Dad watched the truths invoke life and freedom in churches across our region. The more we equip others to implement the things we’ve learned, the more we see....

My Dad doesn’t strike me as the kind of guy who’s ever been jaded about anything. Nonetheless, after he left seminary he began asking a few tough questions. In a healthy way. Those questions got more real and urgent as he worked his way through a few pastorates at various...

I almost titled this talk something like, “What do you actually think restoration looks like?” 

I didn’t, because it seemed a bit punchy for such a soft subject. But, after you read the next few pages, I think you’ll understand that line from a place of...

By now, you know my bias: I prop on Scripture and do my best to lean into the Spirit. No problem here if you don’t- we can disagree, still interact with each other, and learn a lot together. 

That said, let me show you something else from the Bible. This will apply to you, too,...

For years I was afraid to talk about some of my struggles- some of the things that had happened to me as well as some of the things I had done. I was certain that I would be written off, rejected, abandoned. 

It’s a longer story than I’ll write here, but as a result of my...

Throughout this series of talks we’ve addressed soul wounds that are primarily mental (our mindset) or emotional (our feelings). But, there’s another area we haven’t spoken about- namely, spiritual health (our faith). 

In the same way our emotions can be...

About a decade ago I made the swap from Windows-based computers to Apple. The upside is that all of my devices connect and communicate with one another seamlessly. If I type something into the Notes app on my iPhone, it appears on my laptop. And if I edit it there, the corrections...