Dear Friends, On the way to work yesterday I came across a large bird in the middle of the road, feasting on the remains of a small, dead animal. When the bird saw my car coming, it gripped the dead animal firmly in its claws, and tried to fly away. Unfortunately, the dead animal weighed too much, and the bird wasn’t able to take off. It was obvious that this bird did not want to leave its meal behind, but it also seemed to understand the danger my car presented - and so with very little room to spare, it reluctantly abandoned it’s meal, and flew out of the way. As I passed by, I couldn’t help but think of how often we can do this very same thing in our spiritual lives - how we can put ou

Dear Friends, Yesterday we had some local government officials stop by for a tour of our church facility. They wanted to see the space because the city is doing construction in the neighborhood, and they would like to use some of the empty offices at our church for the employees managing the construction. As we walked through the building, one of the men in the group mentioned that he had been raised in church, but as an adult, he had lost interest in church. Consequently, he hasn't been to church in over 15 years. So I did what every pastor would do in that situation: I invited him to come to our church. He responded by asking, "Is The Harvest spirit-filled?” It's not a completely unc

Dear Friends, This morning I woke up with an old hymn running through my mind. It was “What A Friend We Have In Jesus”, and the phrase that kept playing on repeat in my mind was: “What a friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and griefs to bear. What a privilege to carry everything to God in prayer”. This is actually one of my favorite hymns because it reminds us that, if we have surrendered our lives to Christ, He calls us His “friends”. It’s an unbelievable idea to ponder - realizing that the God of the universe is willing to be our friend. But it's a truth we can't deny, as Jesus makes clear in John 15:14-15, when He says, “You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call

Dear Friends, Today I’m attending a workshop for pastors that is focused on how the church can be more effective in helping heal a broken and hurting world. When I signed up for this conference back in February, I had no idea how timely it would be for what’s going on in our world right now. Thankfully the Lord knew, and I’m grateful for the chance to be here, and to be able to focus on this topic. The facilitator for today’s morning session opened with this statement: “Real love hates.” It was a bit of a shocking statement to start the workshop with - an opinion that I think most of the folks in the room shared with me, as there was a lot of awkward silence, while folks shifted uncomfor