Category: 2018 Column

Imagine this scene. One of your neighbors calls on a Saturday morning with an urgent request to come immediately to his front yard. You hang up and hustle over there, to find 30 chairs on his lawn, most of them already filled with neighbors. Directly in front of the chairs you see two children on … Continue reading Why Forgive When You Can Sue?

The people in Acts 12, listening to Herod give a speech, shouted, “The voice of a god and not of a man!” They were in the flesh and so was he and soon he was in the grave. When he received the praise of men, an angel of the Lord struck him, because he did … Continue reading Come Let Us Worship 

The situation inside the church in Corinth was serious, because a couple practiced sin that even the pagans of that day would not permit. “A man had his father’s wife.” Paul may have been shocked by this sin in the church, we don’t know. What we do know is that he was shocked by the … Continue reading Church Discipline is Necessary

Jeff and Amy Jo Akin are good friends who moved from Burlington to Louisville, Ky. ten years ago. Jeff is a leader in the Trane Corporation, but he is also a church planter. After leading a small church for several years, Jeff heard from the Southern Baptist Convention about their emphasis on church revitalization. The … Continue reading Strengthen What Remains

Cindy and I got to spend one night last week with our good friends, Larry and Mary, in a beach house at Emerald Isle. They live in Tennessee, and we only get to see them once a year, if that. But our friendship goes back to when we were still young parents, trying to figure … Continue reading Larry and Mary Love Africa

One of the bedrock principles of the Bible is that God doesn’t need your ability; he works through your availability. We see it over and over again in Scripture. Gideon was chosen by God to lead the nation of Israel into battle against their oppressors, the Midianites. When God spoke to Gideon about doing this … Continue reading God Does Not Need Your Ability