There is a huge difference between knowing and believing. You can know things your entire life, but until you believe them, they make very little difference.

Knowing changes how I think. Believing changes how I live.

I know God loves me; believing it means I live as the beloved.

I know I am...

I had breakfast this summer with a good friend. His marriage was in trouble. For thirty minutes he told me how bad things were. He and his wife had grown apart. He listed all of the things that she did that drove him nuts. He deserved more than what she was giving. She didn’t appreciate...

After Justin’s post yesterday, I wanted to  follow with this post today. We don’t always get this right, but these are 5 things that make a HUGE difference in our marriage. As I speak them into my husband, our love for one another grows. I hope they are helpful to you.

As husbands, God has given us guys a responsibility to speak words of truth into our wife’s heart. Every day, there are lies of discouragement and doubt that the enemy tries to place in their mind. Our role is to come along side them; encourage them and remind them of truth.

Here are five...

There are so many times in my life that I have such good intentions.

-I intend to be home on time

-I intend to help with the dishes

-I intend to get up early and work out

-I intend to have a quiet time

-I intend to give my kids my best

-I intend to pray with my wife

-I intend to be generous with...

Author Lewis Smedes says this in his book The Art of Forgiveness:

When a person asks us to forgive him, he is also asking permission to forgive himself. What he wants is more than freedom from our judgment. He wants freedom from his own. In one sense, we are the only ones on earth who...

Opening night of the NFL season last year our family was invited to a kick-off party. The Titans opened up against the Steelers. My middle son Elijah was playing flag football and had practice that night and Trisha had a meeting at the church. So my plan was to go to Elijah’s...

I wonder if we live with a greater sense of discouragement in our lives because we focus too much on how far we have to go and not enough on how far we have come?

It is so easy for me to focus on the future. How I want my marriage to be better. How I need to improve as a husband; as a father; as...

I often wonder if we are just fooling ourselves in The Church. We say that we want “authentic community”. We say that we value transparency, honesty, being real and coming as you are. Yet almost every day,  I talk to Christians that have spent most of their Christian life being...

We are coming up on the five-year anniversary of my affair. Five years since we lost so much. Five years that we have been gone from the church we started and love. Five years of hard work. Five years of reshaping dreams. Five years of mercy and second chances.

In many ways it has been a long...

Our words carry power. They have the power to usher in life or the power to bring about death. There are days that I live in this and get this right.

I breathe life into my kids. I build up my wife. I am life-giving to my friends. Then there are times that I take this truth for granted. I run...

Yesterday, I wrote a post about Who YOU Are. At the end of the day yesterday, I felt like God laid it on my heart to write a post for pastors who may be struggling with their identity.

As a pastor, I lived for 10 years with an identity crisis that eventually  lead to my ...

You are not your past

You are not your failures

You are not your parents

You are not your sister

You are not your regrets

You are not your sin

You are not your weight

You are not your divorce

You are not your unemployment

You are not the choices someone else made for you

You are not your...

I add value with words.

Well, that is a HUGE assumption.

More accurately, I attempt to add value through words.

I feel most comfortable in ministry; in my marriage; in my relationship with my kids; in my friendships, adding value through words that I speak.

I’ve always been good...

I’ve had this post as a draft for about a month now. I’ve been praying about it and hoping what I share helps someone find freedom.

I remember the first time I admitted my addiction to pornography. It was 4 years and 50 weeks ago. I went over to a friend’s house, thinking my...