Elections Are Frustrating, Politics More So

       If this mid term election taught us anything it is one from the Spirit of God.  It was a battle of two secular parties where who could outfox who was the deal.  Both sides argued from cunning hypocrisy and gaudy assumption.  A nation divided is a message to its citizens, a message that neither side has either perfect insight nor is their insight flawless.  Both sides…

Attitudes, the Hidden Pretenders     

by Harald Haugan (Author)  Format: Kindle Edition

       Attitudes are our self-protecting ego controllers. They are the way we believe we are in control personally and relationally; a kind of sonar and radar system we use to identify and justify ourselves in the world around us. They are internal pretenses, The Hidden…

Faith to Faith

       “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.  For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, “The just shall live by faith. (Rom.1:16-17).””

       The first 15 verses of the Romans letter declare the Sonship, the Lordship and the Messiahship of…

“Thou hast set my feet in a large room (Ps.31:8).”

       What few people realize is that all of us live in three realities, three dimensions of existence, visible, invisible and spiritual.  Visible reality is obvious.  The earth, the universe and our bodies in them.  The invisible is the person inside the body, the mind, the heart and the spirit.  There is good and bad, right and wrong in how we use it all as well as the forces that hold it all together, gravity, and whatever else…

There’s Atmosphere and There’s Atmosfear

       Hurricanes, pandemics and their variants, fires consuming the landscape, chaotic evacuations, illegal immigration including who knows what, political division at the breaking point, religious institutions scrambling for survival…….so where is it all headed and what can we do as believers?  Of course, there will arise a series of prophets who will forecast doom and gloom…

Walking Through the Word

       On one of my conference trips to the UK, one in Yorkshire, I was encouraged to do what many Brits do and that is walk.  One group I was with had been walking the path in ten-mile sections along a path from Wales to the North Sea near Whitby.  I was there when they were preparing to finish the last fifteen miles.  Not wanting it be seen as the typical non-walking American I agreed to…

Genesis and John Have Got It Together

      Of the many things that make the Bible significant is its opening words, “In the beginning…”  Two chapters, Genesis1 and John 1 open with those words, “In the beginning God created…” and  “In the beginning was the Word…”  In both cases there is a declaration that God was already there before anything had form or substance.  The first informs us that God is creatively…

The Cross and Stress

       If we want a picture of spiritually handling stress all we have to do is see how Jesus did it.  The Cross is the major symbol, image and reality of the final stress that sums up all stress, death.  It is the logical place to start since death begins fear, the fear that saturates the self-centering lifestyle and tempts the heart’s vulnerability.  That mindset is summed up in…

Handling Stress

       Stress is a major internal feeling that requires relief.   From schools to corporations, stress programs have been undertaken to help students and workers cope when the pressures they feel demand more than they can give.  We are part of a stress-conscious public with a smattering of TV stress gurus offering a fix.  They present bodily and meditative exercises most anyone can do.  Add…

Keeping the Basics Basic

      “One Sabbath Jesus was going through the grainfields, and as his disciples walked along, they began to pick some heads of grain. The Pharisees said to him, “Look, why are they doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?”  He answered, “Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need? In the days of Abiathar the high priest, he entered the house of God…

We Used to Call It ‘Rasslin.’

      There’s real wrestling and there’s fake wrestling.  One is Greco-Roman and the other is TV.  There’s a difference between the two.  The first is slow, tedious, tense and tiring.  It takes controlled emotion and strategy.  It is not something that draws advertisers since the general public is not drawn to its slow action.  The second is fake wrestling, showmanship extraordinaire,…

When He Turned on the Light

       Sometimes I wake in the middle of the night, and I have that feeling of edginess, the edginess of our aloneness.  That is, it is as if the Lord was getting my attention by the inner night the outer night implies within.  Last night was one of those inner moments of darkness when He chose to wake me to experience that inner sense of darkness into which He pours His light.  In this…

Google, CRT and Reality- A brief Critique

       “The basic tenets of critical race theory, or CRT, emerged out of a framework for legal analysis in the late 1970s and early 1980s created by legal scholars Derrick Bell, Kimberlé Crenshaw, and Richard Delgado, among others.  A good example is when, in the 1930s, government officials literally drew lines around areas deemed poor financial risks, often explicitly due to…

When Words Are Weapons      

       For instance, ‘systemic’ is a word with an ulterior motive.  Put the word systemic in front of something and you have an invisibly invented strawman that can’t be proven or disproven.  It is the latest jargon used to incite restlessness and distrust.  Here’s the kicker.  It’s used to accuse, fuse, ruse and re-use, not to correct but infect, to convict. addict and conflict groups of…

Idolatry Spelled Out---The Heart

       We’ve started with a general overview of idolatry.  It needs a bit more detail.  Why not follow the path Jesus takes when He explains His way to live?  Given that we are images of God with a mind, heart and spirit, the Lord Jesus gives us this path to take, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength (Deut.6:5, Mt.22:37).”  Heart, mind, soul and…

The Power Over Idolatry

       Idolatry has many forms.  It is a wandering vagrant begging for a handout, a siren luring the unsuspecting on the reefs of social acceptance, a trophy promising inner fulfillment, a false hope dressed in a lottery ticket, a beard offering the look of masculinity, the diet to be more attractive, the gurus offering inner peace and self-worth. …

The Core Problem

       There is a thread, a theme, a deep concern that traverses Scripture,---idolatry.  It is the gravest of offenses.  Idolatry is misplaced worship.  Worship is to give worth to something.  Idolatry is self-worship as opposed to worship of God.  The first letter in idolatry is I.  I have more worth than God. I consider my worth exceeds that of God.    It starts with the assumption that I know and…

“You Can Do This”

        Encouragement!  That's right, encouragement.  In my later years I've discovered that brothers and sisters in the Faith need to be encouraged.  Most of our time is spent in a world outside the local Body of Christ.  It's a world full of spiritual hostility.  You know what I mean, the culturally conditioned 'me first' atmosphere that spends more time…

Treasure Seeking

        Moosehead Lake, a 40-mile-long natural mountain lake 1300 ft. above sea level, in Maine, is one of the really beautiful lakes in that multi-lake state.  It has island after island you can canoe to and camp on.  It holds the unique treasure fishermen know as freshwater salmon.  The fishing is really wonderful even though it takes some very challenging outdoor smarts to get the fish.  Most of its shoreline is real wilderness.  Deer, moose and occasional…

Jesus, the Gift Giver

       We’ve talked about Jesus being a one-attitude Person, the perfect Spirit-filled Person.  Now we want to talk about Him as the Gift Giver.  He was and is 100% Spiritude motivated and gives us the gift of the Holy Spirit when we receive Him in our hearts. 

       We want to see Jesus as the Person who touches us personally (grace) with the gifts of the Holy Spirit.  I would venture to say that spiritual gifts are rarely taught as basic for the…