Joseph’s life is an excellent example of the way God works, and the way we need to cooperate with His working and ways. He gives us great dreams and visions for our lives – – He gives us a glimpse of the great things He intends to do through our lives – – and then He spends some number of years beating the fleshly snot out of us until we are useable in His hands

Man centered churches and church programs will never produce men (or women) who are full of the Holy Spirit, full of wisdom, full of faith and full of grace., and who can thus be God’s instrument for transformation in their cities.

One of the reasons I love God and follow Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior is because His word is true – absolutely true in every respect – especially in what it says about the nature of man. And it provides hope and real solutions, after it jolts you with the truth.

There is something in our flesh as pastors that much prefers doing practical tangible things that often see immediate fruit or change, rather than the hard patient toil of seeking God through His written and spoken word – and standing in the gap for what He wants and intends to do through prayer.

I’ve come to the conclusion in recent months that we who know and walk with Jesus Christ should stop using the word “Christian”. It only occurs twice in the Bible – once spoken by the unrighteous King Agrippa (Acts 26:28), the other time by the apostle Peter (I Peter 4:16). “Christians” occurs once in Acts 11:26. It is a word that is in my opinion not useful anymore in Western culture.

" any and every young person in America can look forward to a happy and harmonious and life long marriage – – to the same person – – of the opposite sex – – if …… they will follow the blue print or guidelines that our good and all wise God has established, and if they will allow the Holy Spirit to develop in them the necessary heart and mind and character that is crucial to be able to follow these guidelines."

If signs and wonders and healing were solely done by the apostles to authenticate that they were apostles, what do we do with the healings that Stephen in ch. 6, Phillip in ch. 8 and Annanias in ch. 9 did? These men were clearly not apostles, clearly not super heroes, but God used them to heal the sick and perform miracles.

".... this original phrase “Separation of Church and State” came from a private letter written by Thomas Jefferson in 1802 to a group of Baptists in response to a rumor that the new American government was going to establish a national church, similar to the Anglican church in England. He assured them that our Founding Fathers had set up a wall of separation of church and state to prevent this kind of coercion from the government."

Whenever a church begins to walk and minister in the power of God, the enemy rises up in fear and jealousy, and interestingly enough – opposition and persecution often comes through religious not secular leaders.

We can excel at our work and our craft and compile earned degrees, and all kinds of material status symbols (e.g. cars, houses, etc.), but at the end of the day we come home, plop in bed, and are as empty and unfulfilled as ever (typically).