This Sunday at church, the worship team led the congregation in a song that contained a familiar chorus: More of You, Lord, and less of me That phrase and its variations is common to the religious lexicon, found in dozens of praise and spiritual pop songs, basic Christianese. But, apart from the sappy emotionalism it [...]

For my birthday, Melody and Jacob bought me a three month subscription to Netflix. I received my first movie on Tuesday, watched it that evening and had it in the mail Wednesday morning. Saturday I received my second. The turnaround is super quick and there’s nothing like opening up the mailbox to find a new [...]

So what causes “bad people”? Nowadays, the answers typically fall into these three categories: Parents — familial influences Peers — social influences Predestination — genetic influences Lisa and I have raised four children — our oldest is 25, youngest 19, 2 boys and 2 girls. It was not easy. There was tears, prayers, second-guessing and [...]

The family of the Virginia Tech killer, in a written statement delivered by his sister, confessed feeling “hopeless, helpless and lost” and “deeply sorry” for her brother’s “unspeakable actions.” After almost a week of silence, the family’s statement opened another potential window into the motivations of a madman. Why did he do it? What caused [...]

So this weekend, me and Jon celebrated birthdays. I fired up the barbecue, broke out the skewers, and we polished off a bottle of this. A big bottle. You can blame CD. Though I’m significantly older than Jon, we are so close it’s scary. At least, that’s what Lisa says. Not only is his birthday [...]

Gina Holmes, starlet and site owner of the wildly popular Novel Journey, has graciously allowed me a spot on the roster. The last Monday of every month I’m afforded free reign at Gina’s crib. . . and usually end up breaking furniture, blowing out the speakers and irritating the neighbors. (However, after my previous post, [...]

Eternity in Their Hearts, by anthropologist Don Richardson, remains one of the most important books I have ever read; it has profoundly shaped how I view God, people and the world around me. Richardson’s thesis is simple: God has given prior witness of Himself to all peoples — even pagan peoples. Because of this, primitive [...]

This Saturday, I was something that I rarely am — spontaneous. I’d had an eye on this writer’s conference for a while. When I saw that Dave Long, acquisitions editor for Bethany House Publishing would be there, I decided to buzz on out to O.C. all by my lonesome. Dave had two sessions, a Main [...]

Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy effectively ruined all future fantasy reads for me. I followed it with Terry Brooks’ The Sword of Shannara — a bad choice. While Brooks’ series was well received, I found it a cheesy, blatant rip-off, completely unworthy of its Rings comparisons. I got halfway through the book and [...]