Savedthroughfaith.com

When our oldest child was a toddler, my wife and I were baby bodyguards – never more than a leap away from rescue if she were approaching something potentially harmful.  My wife still has that instinct (she’s a mom).  I, however, have become a bit slower in my response time. Our 3rd child is now a toddler and if he is approaching something potentially harmful or messy, I first observe, assess, play out the possible outcomes in my mind, ...

There are many messages out there for our kids. Some align with our values, some we hope they never cross our kid’s ears. These messages come through the media, peers, and parents, among other sources. Lately I’ve been wrestling with choices in my life. I imagine this is a common struggle among men who are balancing their career pursuits with family. My life was thrown out of balance due to my recent growing passion that could easily ...

My family is well acquainted with eating out.  There have been many times where we get the bill and my wife and I talk about how awesome it’d be to have so much money we could leave a huge tip. Wouldn’t that feel awesome to just be able to drop a $50 or $100 and bolt out the door? I like to think I would be the kind of guy who would be generous if I somehow acquired massive wealth.  I know, by world-wide standards we DO have massive...

I was listening to a sermon the other day and either my own mind came up with this or it was God’s Spirit revealing truth – or at least a different point of view to look from.  Now, this is all kind of off the top of my head.  I haven’t searched scriptures to verify the theological accuracy of these ideas But let’s take a quick look at the concept of “surrender.” The act of surrender is a daily practice for...

It’s Sunday morning again and many of us will be heading off to some sort of worship gathering.  Currently, God has me carrying responsibilities as our local congregation’s worship leader (among many other things).  As a worship leader I am often thinking on and wondering about the corporate worship environment and experience. A while back I was reading a few different passages in the Bible and a phrase came to me.  ”Look for...

Forgive me, readers. It has been too long since my last significant post. We start our new fiscal year at work today and it’s half way through the year. So today sort of feels like New Years Day to me. Also, I just got my new MacBook Pro (work, not personal) up and running so I thought I’d better post something to let anyone who has been watching this blog out of the corner of their eye that I didn’t go away, just had a busy ...

I got some good responses to my previous post about being honest and something one person shared with me got me thinking.  They realized at times they thought more of themselves then they thought of God, which, to a Christian, seems obviously not right.  She finds herself trying to force herself to think about God but that doesn’t really last for more than a few moments.  Someone else I know said once that he’s pretty sure he loves...

Francis Chan in Chapter 5 of Crazy Love is exploring how we Christians often give our leftovers to God.  He asks the question, “How many of us would really leave our families, our jobs, our education, our friends, our connections, our familiar surroundings, and our homes if Jesus asked us to?  If He just showed up and said, ‘Follow me’? Now explanation.  No directions.”  He goes on to say: You could follow Him straight...

About 2 weeks ago I ran a half-marathon.  I spent about 3 months training for it.  I ran/biked 5 days a week religiously.  All the hard work paid off and was very rewarding.  But now, it’s been two weeks and I have not been out to run 1 time. I started a blog about 6 months ago.  It took about 3 months to hit my stride.  I was going strong with a couple thought-out posts per week.  But lately I’ve been so busy and I don’t...

Recently my wife and i watched 2 very different movies. One was The Blind Side and the other was Amelia. Both were really good movies and I recommend them. Among other things, there was something I got to thinking about after watching both. The Blind Side dealt with a homeless african-american youth from the bad part of town who was adopted by a white Christian family and eventually makes it to the NFL. Amelia is about Amelia Earhart, the fir...