Help! My Teenager is Using Drugs! A Personal Story

Let me start with my story so that you can understand where I am coming from. First, I have to give a disclaimer. I was taught to be careful when disclosing information about my past as it might give license for people to justify their actions. Sort of a "Well Robbie went through it so …

90 Days in Him (1) – Beer-lahai-roi

I am going to read the bible through in 90 days and occasionally I want to post a devotional message from it. today I read Genesis 1-16 and a thought came to me at the close of my reading. Hagar is Sarai's servant who was given to Abram so that a child could be born …

Divine Encounters

I work at the YMCA Monday-Tuesday from 5am-8am to make a little extra cash on the side and it helps pay for my membership.  In the few months I have been there I have experienced a few divine encounters that have left me in mourning at how people hurt.  I call them divine encounters not …

A Day in the Life of a Teenager 10 (The Hope They Posses) by Philip Jenkins

There have been times where you’ve written them off. “They’re teenagers. What’d you expect them to do?” And there have been times when they’ve written themselves off, “I’m just a teenager. What I can really do?” But we hope for them. We hope that these teens will figure out this thing called life (because we’ve …

Life does exist after 30

I have delayed writing this post much like I delay going to the dentist, doctor or even a car repair shop.  It is the self-discovery that I dread and the inevitable bad news that comes from a doctor's office or a repair shop that I loathe.  Nevertheless I drudge on through because it is only …

Looking into Cisterns

"So when Joseph came to his brothers, they stripped him of his robe—the ornate robe he was wearing—and they took him and threw him into the cistern. The cistern was empty; there was no water in it" (Genesis 27:23-24). Most people know this story where Joseph is left to die in a cistern by his …

The Day this Roller-Coaster Started

They say, "time passes by so quickly" and today I am painfully aware of that fact.  Kaleb Christopher Mackenzie turned five today.  I know you probably are feeling what I am feeling and your response is, "I can't believe he is five!"  We can't either!  In the shower this morning I told Kaleb he was …

Ellie Rushing – The Day of the Surgery

Yesterday I had the privilege of visiting with the Rushing/Jenkins family as little Ellie Rushing (10 week old) had reconstructive surgery on her head to correct formation problems.  The surgery went well and she is doing fine but I wanted to recount some of the events so that you could see through a window of what it …

Prayer–Divine Encounter vs. Personal Favor

I have been thinking a lot here lately about what prayer is and how it works specifically in the way we normally see it in corporate worship.  There is a dimension of prayer that we may never understand and for the secret things left for God (cf. Deut. 29:29) I cannot comprehend.  However, there are …

Book Review – Same Kind of Different as Me

Rarely do I read a book that captivates me to the point where I cannot put it down.  It was 11:05pm last night and I was on page 115 or so...I finished the book at 1:30am this morning reading about 120 pages in the process.  The book encapsulates themes of redemption, reconciliation, providence, suffering, theodicy and …