We sometimes are so focused on the experience of life in God's Kingdom every day that it is easy to forget that, for now, the Kingdom we experience exists with great evil all about it. And there is no middle ground. Either we live in the Kingdom or the chaos of evil.Every so often evil rears its ugliness in ways that are hard to fathom and ignore. In the Theater you will find a review of the movie...  Read More

Tears. Uncontrollable tears. And I had no idea why.I just sat there. In the wake of a deeply powerful sermon from Ecclesiastes, all I could do was sit, not move or hold in my emotions. I felt a deep sense of despair verging on an existential crisis that eventually resulted in a whole new way of understanding family, work, and being a husband. This little crack in the dam of my emotions was the beg...  Read More

Reading time 1.5 minutes.I usually suppress any inspiration to write about finding the Kingdom in nature. God speaks pretty loudly through his creation, so I have no good explanation. Today I have surrendered that hesitancy. The Holy Spirit really gave me no choice.This morning I was sitting on my back patio for my devotions. I've been pretty stagnant devotionally, focused more on doing for God th...  Read More

Years ago Youth With A Mission in Kona was sending off an outreach team to some far-off nation of the world.  The student-missionaries were surrounded by teachers and seasoned staff praying and waiting to see if perhaps the Holy Spirit had anything He wanted to say on their way to the airport.  And sure enough, His word came forth from one of the older saints:  “Don’t go!  Don’t go unless you love...  Read More

Yesterday morning we received a call from a Georgia friend to tell us that Will, a little boy from our Georgia church community, had died. We were heartbroken by the news, Rarely has a death outside our family cut so deeply. Will was just six years old and carried the nickname, Warrior Will. From birth he had been plagued by a constellation of physical problems that occurs only in one in a million b...  Read More

Often, when people hear about the message of Jesus, what they hear is about how he brings salvation and forgiveness from sin, and offers eternal life in heaven. Certainly salvation, forgiveness of sin, and the hope of heaven are very important, but they are only part of the overall message of Jesus.In Matthew 4:23-24, we find Jesus engaged in what would be the three major activities of his earthly...  Read More

I'm addicted to the Kingdom of God. I crave experiencing it. Even though I do far too infrequently. And I want you to experience life in it as much as you possibly can. That's the reason why I am involved in The Everyday Kingdom. Jesus wants us to experience life in him every moment of every day.  I'm not suggesting it is easy to do. It requires us to think and act by doing something absolutely an...  Read More

Reading time 90 seconds, 5 minutes if you watch the video.In high school, I had roles in two productions of Broadway musicals. I didn’t even sing, but they gave me the bug. Since then I’ve had a love affair with Broadway.One of my favorite musicals is Fiddler on the Roof. If you are unfamiliar with it, the musical tells the story of a Jewish peasant and his family in Russia in the early twentieth ...  Read More

One of the church’s most deadly distractions from the Kingdom is our silly “upstairs / downstairs” idea. From the early centuries of the church, Gnosticism and Greek philosophies began to seep into our thinking which separated God’s world into two levels of reality: the upstairs “spiritual” level, where God lives, and the downstairs “natural” level, where mortals live, work, and watch America’s Go...  Read More

Hurricane Ian undoubtedly prompted some to ask the age-old question, “Why does God permit disasters to happen, especially when he has claimed this world as his Kingdom?” Believers as well as non-believers stood in the path of its fury. Didn’t Christ still a storm to save his disciples? Matthew 8:23-27. Why not now?We all know deep in our hearts that we are not perfect. We hear it in our thoughts a...  Read More

Yesterday, while shopping at a grocery, I overheard a little girl of approximately six years ask her mother, “What is your favorite holiday?” Her mother turned away from the shelves and, looking squarely at her, said, “Your birthday is my favorite holiday!” And the little girl beamed.  Read More