Faith (Page 19)
Scott’s Newest Writing Project
Hey, where has Scott been lately?” A few of you may have been wondering the above interrogative. Rest assured, I have not dropped off the map. In fact, the metaphorical map may be growing by leaps and bounds. In the past six months, many people have seen their COVID-19-inflicted semi-lockdown as a bringer of hours of freed-up time, with some lamentably scurrying for new hobbies and (gag) new Netflix series on which to binge. For me, the bulk of…
The Filter
All ideas that you believe and follow must begin and end with Jesus and the Bible.” In today’s information overload world, you’re never at a loss for people giving you advice, sharing memes that echo their thoughts, giving their two cents, and wanting to offer their take on why things happen and what you should do about them. For instance, if you open yourself to social media even the smallest bit, you’ll get a relentless avalanche of viewpoints from voices…
Numbers in the Bible
I’ve always loved numbers and statistics, as well as clever connections and relationships between things, in just about every area of knowledge or storytelling. So when I first discovered numerological connections and meanings in Scripture, the nerdy part of me who loves stuff like this went into high “geek-out” mode. There are some who take this brand of Biblical numerology to fantastic extremes, going so far as to uncovering numeric values to alphabetic characters and deeper meanings to words that…
The Importance of the Resurrection
Although millions of Christians pile into churches this time every year – and this year, many will watch services via YouTube, Facebook video, or Zoom chats – a large segment of them probably don’t even realize the significance of Easter. Perhaps they know of the Cross and the Resurrection of Jesus but have never really given it more than a fleeting thought or two in their minds. Maybe that describes you in your thoughts on the events of Passion Week.…
The Overlooked
I know who you are. You may feel like you’re the only one, but I’ve been in your shoes more times than you can count, and I sympathize with your plight. You are the one who constantly gets overlooked. The one who busts their rear-end while everyone else gets the accolades. It seems like everyone else gets the fanfare, the promotions at work, the likes on social media, the praise and pats on the back, and the credit for good…
Always Be Teachable
“Poverty and disgrace come to him who ignores instruction, but whoever heeds reproof is honored.” – Proverbs 13:18 [ESV] During the early years of my first marriage, I was admittedly unskilled when it came to the “domestic arts”. Being a budding, young man in my early twenties, I had just barely begun living independently, and taking care of the house wasn’t exactly my forte. I’ll put it bluntly: I was a pizza-box-thrown-around-the-apartment, soda-cans-everywhere-kind of slob. So no doubt I lacked…
Interview With John Clark and Michael Bodine of Soulcon Ministries | Soulcon Operator Book Released!
Soulcon Ministries is a digital men’s ministry that encourages Christian men to abandon the watered-down confines of lukewarm faith and instead go all-in for Jesus Christ physically, mentally and spiritually. Soulcon was founded by US Navy veteran-turned fitness expert and personal trainer Cody Bobay after he saw the “couch potato” lives that your average, 21st Century guys – yes, even most evangelical men – practice on a regular basis in every area of their lives. To help encourage men to get…
Unmet Expectations
“Many are the plans in a person’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails.” – Proverbs 19:21 [NIV] One of the most damaging things you can do in your life is to place too much stock in your perception of the universe, your selfish desires, and your own ideas about how things should unfold. We’ve all been there when things don’t go our way, leading us to feel crushed and disappointed at one point or another in our…
List of Soulcon App Inspirational Messages
I’m honored to be part of a fantastic online men’s ministry called Soulcon. One of the main focuses of Soulcon Ministries is to encourage men to get out of their lazy, lukewarm rut and instead pursue the Lord Jesus Christ with all of their hearts, living lives with the same intensity that special forces soldiers do in the military. Soulcon Ministries, through its awesome phone app, pushes out great Bible verses, quotes, and inspirational sayings at least once a day…
Check-In On Your Brothers
One of the quasi-questionable ways that society has misled the male population over the generations is by encouraging us to tighten our lips and “buck up” every single time whenever something negative happens in our lives. You know, “shut up and be a man!” That’s not necessarily 100% poor advice. Depending on how you look at it, it is actually partially good advice. In fact, 1 Corinthians 6:13 instructs us to “Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like…
Garbage In, Garbage Out
Back in the “ancient” times of computers (AKA, before the Internet started invading peoples’ lives in the mid-1990s), there was an acronym that computer programmers and data analysts liked to throw about quite a bit: GIGO. It stood for “Garbage In, Garbage Out.” Simply put, if you typed in bad input or data into a computer, you would get bad output. For instance, if you didn’t quite know where to insert the correct code in a program or place the wrong…
111 Ways For Christian Men (and Women) To Be More Romantic
When it comes to demonstrating how much we love our spouses or our girlfriends, we men can almost be like befuddled cavemen banging rocks together. Yes, we as Christians can become adept at knowing high-level spiritual or theological matters, but admittedly many men can have a very limited capacity for good, romantic ideas. To a lot of us, the word “romance” equates to red roses, a box of chocolates, and Valentine’s Day dinner by candlelight. Or we think of sitting…
Why You Need to Develop a Wartime Attitude
Folks, do you have a wartime attitude or a peacetime mentality in your everyday lives? The last time we had nationwide wartime mindsets here in America and the UK was nearly 80 years ago during World War 2. If you’re not familiar with it, the “war effort” here at home was a spirit of cooperation whereby the general civilian populace joined together with our military and industry by doing things like rationing and by collecting and recycling materials such as…
Recommended Reading – My Top 11 Favorite Books
I love making lists of things, and it’s about time I make one on what I consider to be my all-time, top 10 (alright, 11), crème de la crème, favorite, most important books ever written. These encompass what I think is recommended reading for all my blog readers. When I compiled these, I noticed that all but one have to do with spirituality and that they are all non-fiction (with a fictional devotional story comprising of the second half of…
Head, Heart, and Hands
Head, Heart, and Hands Theologian and pastor Erik Thoennes once succinctly summarized the three-prong approach to our spiritual growth by saying, “our theology (right thinking) should always lead to doxology (right worship) and orthopraxy (right practice), or else we have a major disconnect in our theology.” Our Christian lives are more than just us getting saved by the grace of God through the cross of Jesus. Yes, that is the Gospel, the very core of our faith which we celebrate…
A Kick in the Pants
Let’s see a show of hands to all of you who have seen the following scenario in your life before. You see a friend or relative in the midst of some tough life struggles and witness him or her having to wrestle with things like moral predicaments and spiritual imbroglios. For some reason, they are hesitant or half-hearted to press forward, or worse, they have come to a functional gridlock of sorts. You, being a dedicated Christian, may see what…
Swing For the Fences
Well-known Christian author and apologist Lee Strobel once talked about a man he once knew named Bill McMillen. Bill was a successful financial consultant who never had a degree in theology and never worked on staff at a church. But Bill was radically saved by Jesus and used every opportunity he had to talk to others about his Savior. He went all-out every chance he got; Bill would go the proverbial “above and beyond” in all of his interactions with…
Revenge
Ah, revenge. We’ve all known what it is like to be betrayed, hurt, lied to, and generally screwed over. And we have all experienced multiple times where we wanted to exact revenge against the perpetrator. The feeling of getting bloody, satisfying payback for someone done wrong against someone else has provided the basis for some of our favorite stories, as it allows us to vicariously live out our fantasies of revenge through the protagonists’ eyes. For instance, we feel the…
The Biblical Order of the Family, and Dispelling Misconceptions About it
It’s way too easy to point at a multitude of sources and blurt out, “now that is the reason society is going downhill!” In most cases, with these reasons both being direct and indirect negative influences, I honestly think that the majority of woes in our society can be fixed if not only if we accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, but also if we completely abandon the world’s definition of family and wholly embrace God’s Biblical standard for…
In Evangelism, Tell a Story
I feel that one of the biggest hindrances in spreading the Gospel is that we often don’t know how to break the ice with people. It’s almost like how it was back in your dating days (of course, some of you are still in that dating phase!) when you wanted with all of your might to approach the beautiful girl and acquire her phone number, only to fearfully hold back because you’re too afraid of saying the wrong thing and…