In my days lately, I’m feeling more friends lamenting the secularization of the Christmas season. I see it too, as the world culture moves further away from anything having to do with God and certainly any mention of Christ, but meanwhile at Restoration, we talk about The Story of God being an all-encompassing narrative…there is…
Sunday (Nov 11, 2012), we begin a two-week series on the tribulations out of Revelation. It’s been an extra-ordinary task to internalize and prepare to engage these messages. Several moments over the past couple of weeks, as we’ve been working through our God’s UnFailing series, I have felt in some measure like the Apostle John, who had…
Restoration is an intimate-sized church and we’ve been blessed lately with a regular number of visitors. It seems that almost weekly, we get some new people coming in… and as a church that is coming through a retreading period, every so often, we have friends leave us. This coming in and going out, I think,…
This week, we looked at Revelation 1:9-20: John’s first encounter with the glorified Jesus who is present among the 7 golden lamp stands. The image that John sees is pretty fantastic, so it can immediately contributes to our natural fear & misunderstanding of the book. My wife is/was a teacher (once… always, right?). So every…
Sunday, we were in our second week of our series out of Revelation. And I asked, “Is God failing to hold our attention?” Why is it so easy to tune Him out during the course of our regular day and be excited about new technology or sporting events? There’s a problem that so many of…
I’m old enough to remember when Epcot Center was opened at Disney World. There was massive publicity surrounding the grand opening. They declared it “the dawning of the 21st Century!” This was 1984. Now the torture was, that we were pretty poor back then and going to see the future was impossible. (Though I do…
I like the idea that a blogger posted of setting down his Bible app and instead, reading a physical Bible that he intends to pass on to his kids. I have my study Bible (that looks like, in my wife Alicia’s words, “A Beautiful Mind”) and I have my Sunday Bible (a nice, leather-bound Allan…
We’re in the midst of a 3-week miniseries that is about being Dedicated to the Lord’s purposes through the church… or more accurately, through this church, if here is where God is calling you. In my life of faith (which is now a 1/3 of my age), I’ve always been involved in mission. I…
(Today I begin a 2 week break so we can head up north to see friends & relatives. I also have a renewal of vows to conduct for some friends & a wedding to perform. So, it’s really kind of a working vacation.) Yesterday, I challenged our church to make this A Summer of Second…
I shouldn’t say it (b/c then I risk it happening soon) bu it’s been a while since I ran out of gas in my car. I’ve gotten close at times… My Jetta has this bleeping red warning light that tells me I’m within a gallon. I’ve pushed that a bit. But with the abundance of…
