Personal thoughts from Pastor Jeff on a(n almost) daily basis.
Today is a day wherein my prayer rests upon the desire for God’s children to know and to sense His delight in them. So much of religion presses us to do something. Do something delightful, good or worthy in order to gain acceptance from this incomprehensible God. Major world religions of various stripes place the constant onus on you to work …
My son is one of the most animated people I know. We love Landon’s enthusiasm and zest for life. Granted, there are times when we have considered slipping a Valium in his Gatorade to mellow him, but most of the time we are blessed by how funny and entertaining he is. He will be a teenager in two months and, …
“On one occasion, while the crowd was pressing in on Jesus to hear the word of God, He was standing by the lake of Gennesaret, and He saw two boats by the lake, but the fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets. Getting into one of the boats, which was Peter’s, He asked him to put …
The promises of God are fuel for the soul. I love the history of the bible because it provides context for my faith. Prophecy in Scripture helps me to know what is coming so that I may be prepared in this life before it ends, and before I give a final account for my life to my King. History and …
God has been so gracious to us. Every Easter Sunday we have the exclusive privilege as twice-born children of God to rejoice in the reality that we will never truly die. We will live forever according to Jesus Christ (John 11:26), and His resurrection is the final blow to Satan. The greatest weapon that Satan had was death, and Jesus …
The Cross of Jesus Christ: There has been no greater display of mankind’s sin. There has been no sicker revelation of Satan’s evil. There has been no clearer manifestation of religion’s blindness. There has been no deeper abandonment of any human being. There has been no more horrific agony ever endured. There has been no more savage mockery to …
Recently I spent some time with a man whose heart is longing for more of God. Some people cringe at the phrase “more of God” but I have no issues with using it. When someone says that they desire more of God, they are expressing their desire for deeper experience with Him. They want to interact with the God they …
I once spent around six years struggling in a particular area of my life and ministry. Hear me clearly: this struggle was not a mild irritation, an uncomfortable, occasional sense of annoyance or some vague, peripheral nagging. It was a daily dagger. It taunted me like Goliath before he had his head-on encounter with David’s stone. I fasted, meditated on …
Fear is a pretty potent force. You have your fears, I have mine. Some monster out there on the horizon dares you to challenge it while something inside of you begs you to play it safe. We can fear failure. We can fear loss of something we currently hold. We can fear being alone or stuck in one place forever. …
These days it seems that so many Christians from various backgrounds and cultures are all sensing the same thing: the beginnings of true revival are occurring. It is common for us to hear, “Revival is coming!” That noncommittal anecdote leaves plenty of latitude for us to shrug for years if true Revival does not arrive. What I am currently hearing …
“And so, from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to Him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of …
When we first saw, You showed us a cross. It was there that we saw our sin, our guilt, our shame impaled to those timbers on which hung a Man we had not met. We met Him there when we were made to see Him, and we found forgiveness for the nails our sin demanded, and the crown of thorns our …
Raising children is an ongoing adventure that comprises a major part of most of our stories. To parent well over the long haul is no easy task. These precious bundles that are conceived in a moment of pleasure are usually raised with years of challenge. Amy and I have two awesome children, Alicia and Landon. We have raised them intentionally. …
The Oscars were on television last night. If there was ever a more vacuous scene, void of reality and meaningfulness, I have no idea what it was. No, I didn’t watch. We all know what the Oscars are about. They are nothing more than a chasing of the wind and a manicured collage of hollow words that, in the end, …
Ever since Landon was a baby, I have asked the Lord to make my son a better man than his father. It has been a simple, consistent prayer of mine for him, and I believe it will bear corresponding fruit when he is a man on his own. We all want our children to miss the mistakes that we made …
May I share a few simple statements with you that you will be tempted to gloss over because they are, in fact, simple? Let me give them to you anyway because they are 100% true and can transform us if we would ever truly believe them. These are days wherein God is calling His children to tenaciously pursue the reality …
Living with a mild case of OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) has been something I’ve joked about for years. No doctor has ever really diagnosed me officially, but I’m quite confident that it would be an easy call for one of them if I presented myself as a voluntary lab rat. Some of us just don’t settle down all that well …
Billy Graham, the greatest evangelist America has ever produced, passed away last evening. His ministry focused nearly exclusively in revealing the Gospel of Jesus Christ in its simplest form. He wanted people to spend eternity with God in Heaven. He was ninety-nine years old – that is a very long time to live on earth. Younger people do not often …
In my previous post, I addressed the reality of the Christian’s periodic valley-like experiences. In that season we can experience one or more of the following undesirable realities: 1) dryness 2) distance 3) discouragement and 4) desperation. My own personal testimony is that breakthrough typically comes when we have gone fully though our times of desperation for God. Desperation is …
One of my desires in communicating bible truths is that I might be able to help others in their personal journeys with the King. Over the last twenty-three years, I have been able to experience how amazing it is to walk closely with Jesus Christ. He has truly become everything to me. Yet, that becoming involved some intense seasons of …
God’s love is not conditioned on you deserving it. God’s love is not for sale that you might work for it. God’s love is not a response to anything lovable in you. God’s love does not increase or diminish based on what is happening in your life. God’s love motivates Him in all of His activity towards you. God’s love …
You are not a victim. You are not a prisoner. You are not a pawn. There is a Reason. There is a Purpose. There is a Planner. Heaven’s throne is not vacant and you are not a hapless puppet hanging on tangled twine. The sovereign God of Heaven never slept last night, and He governed everything that exists – both …
We enjoyed a great Sunday service at New Bridge this past weekend. A new friend came and blessed the house with a message that was both pastoral and prophetic. When Vincent Campbell opened up his message, he said, tongue-in-cheek, “I don’t need to bring the greatest message you have ever heard today, but I don’t want it to be the …
Here are a couple of back-to-back verses that could potential cause you to squirm in your seat just a bit: “Then Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed David in the midst of his brothers. And the Spirit of the LORD rushed upon David from that day forward…Now the Spirit of the LORD departed from Saul, and a harmful …
Lately, I have been pondering some of the extreme visible supernatural manifestations in the Scriptures. For the last two years, I have observed an uptick in the activity of the enemy against the Church. I’ve seen an increase in occurrences that can be nothing less than demonic influence over the lives of men and women and teenagers. People that I …
