If there were ever a prayer lifted up for me, one I knew was for real, one that came from the heart of the one praying, I would want it to be how Jesus prayed so openly, so caringly, so lovingly in the last seven verses of John 17.

Wait a minute.

It’s already been prayed right there. He’s already prayed that prayer for you and me. These are not just words out there in some printed pages. These were words from the heart of God prayed for me! How many times haven’t we read and…

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In and Within 32 You Are Your Choices

If we can accept that “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free (Gal.5:1)” then choice is the gift we have been given to be an image of God in a creative and constructive way. Every choice is a spiritual marker, a life changer and an identity builder. Choice is our internal processor. Our choices define who and what we are and who and what we believe and who and what we become. Choice is the ignition switch making every next step a learning…

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The ‘choice revolution’ is a revolution against revolution. It’s internal and personal as opposed to external and impersonal. It’s against a real enemy as opposed to some invisible structure. It is not about picket lines, gathering and inciting anger, shouting meaningless slogans, rock throwing, rioting and tearing down existing political and economic systems. These are worldly revolutions based on the belief that politics and economics are the root problem behind all the world’s…

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Here we are at the thirtieth ‘in and within’ moment. We are still in the personal context observing Jesus at prayer. If we have encountered anything up to this point it is the passion with which Jesus prays. He ‘knows’ His Father. He is conscious of His presence. He is absorbed in the Father’s will for Him. He is fully aware that on the other side of His prayer choice awaits. At anytime those who are set on having Him killed will arrive to take Him away to achieve their goal. He could have…

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We are privileged to be seeing the Lord Jesus at prayer in John 17. Again this is not Jesus teaching about prayer. This is Jesus personally praying. If you let yourself go into His prayer session and visualize yourself standing by watching Him pray, a whole new dimension takes shape. His words are not just nice sweet words from a nice wise teacher. These are words of spiritual destiny. Jesus knows that His choices in every next moment will determine the future. They ring with the chords of…

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In the last section we spent some time talking about ‘knowing’ God, which is relating to and with Him. We identify ourselves in Him. That is, we find our identity in Him, we gauge our experience in and through Him and we set our life course on Him being present in us. The more we ‘know’ God the more we know ourselves. The Lord wants us to know Him and prays for that experience in each of us.

The way, the means, the entry way to that relationship is through His Word. There He is in…

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“Life is not about time but about choice, conscious choice, awareness of God in choice and the realization that He is the Savior and Lord to deliver us from time and bring us into His eternal present (In and Within 26).” Jesus’ prayer is a prayer about personal choice, personal decision and personal eternity and eternity is not about time but about the relational experience of God in Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Listen closely to Jesus praying, “Now this is eternal life: that they may know…

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Jesus is not just praying into space nor is He praying as though His personal concern is the central issue. No, Jesus is praying directly to His Father. The way His personal prayer starts is in the reality of His Father’s presence. It’s conversational, son to father, Son to Father, “Father, the hour has come.” This is reality for Jesus, to pray in faith, to live in faith, to expect in faith, to ask in faith, to recognize in faith, not know the outcome but believe in the outcome, not trust…

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In the last article on Tim Tebow I promised a follow-up that would be biblical so read on.

If you listen to sports shows at all you will hear the emotional debates about the talents of Tim Tebow and most of the comments are negative. As I mentioned in the last article on him it has to do with a culture that has determined the pocket passer is the new ‘orthodox’ standard by which football is to be played on the professional level. There is no question that over the past decades this…

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John 17 gives us a dramatic picture of Jesus at prayer. It is a drama in that we have reality not in contrived scripts and controlled staging but spiritually framed in the actual person of Jesus. He is the drama of life and death being differentiated, of good and evil being given their ultimate definition and of God holding all existence in the balance.

Like an hourglass sifting sand through its narrowest point so Jesus is the picture of God sifting the sands of humanity and all…

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Chapters 13-17 of John’s Gospel contain Jesus’ last teachings.  They take place just before the Passover Feast when Jesus called the disciples together to share ‘The Last Supper.’  When you read these chapters you will see a kind of summary of central Gospel themes, who He is, what He came to do, as well as the role of the disciples and future believers, all of which would be visualized and consummated on the Cross.  They are what I would like to call ‘The Gospel in a…

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This is a ‘Tim Tebow’ article. However, it doesn’t seek to delve into the spectrum of emotional upset his name stirs up or even defending his talent and faith. Rather it is about football itself and what he brings to the game. It is also about the attitudinal base of the football world, its culture and practice that gives us a picture of a leadership and mindset out of balance especially when one position becomes overly iconic.

Having watched a few sports news shows it seems…

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We are still in the inner sanctums of Jesus’ teaching on prayer. Prayer is the ‘in and within’ spark plug the Holy Spirit fires up to bring our image-engine into the presence of God. The Holy Spirit is the personal current carrying who we are to God and through whom the spiritual current of the Father’s will embraces our life both on the conscious and unconscious level (1Cor.2:10-16). Our consciousness of Jesus as our Savior and Lord is the will of the Father and the work of the Spirit. Talking… Continue

Again we turn to Jesus’ teaching on prayer but we take a different passage. It’s short, only seventeen verses that include a four-word prayer (Jn.12:20-36), but it is the study of the context and the circumstance that builds our foundation for prayer.



The context is a crowd gathering from different parts of the world for the annual celebration of the Passover Feast in Jerusalem. But it is also a messianic context in which John identifies the Old Testament prophecies as fulfilled…

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So far I have given what I believe to be a thoughtful approach as to the nature of Jesus’ teaching on prayer in Mt.6. As in all teaching there are words that call for expanded exploration simply because they carry so much within them. Words like ‘Kingdom’ ‘Heaven’ ‘Father’ for instance are constantly used throughout Scripture. I have only dabbled in their meaning and that purposefully because my intent is that as you study them they will have personal significance for you. What they have meant… Continue

Before we get started here we have to make it clear that the word ‘intimacy’ is not a standard word in the Bible. In the NIV it appears only 4 times, twice meaning physical closeness and twice in Job for close friendship. However what affection, closeness and God’s relational love mean in our day can be covered by this word. The word "intimacy" is rooted in Latin intimatus, to inform, to notify, first used in English in 1641 according to a Google search.



In its original meaning, in… Continue

There’s all kinds of activity that pass for intimacy in this world but there is only one true intimacy and that is the kind proceeding from God as modeled in the person of Jesus His Son. What makes that intimacy unique is that it is eternal. All the rest are limited, local and luster-losing. They are temporary, tedious and trendy.



OK, so what does the world offer as intimacy?

First, if you can be accomplished in some area of human endeavor, art, drama, literature, lecturing, and… Continue