Sometimes God has to take us halfway across the world to remind us he can also use us right in our backyard. Christa Hitchcock was raised in the church but it was in middle school that her faith became very real and her journey to live missionally in the place...
Today's feature is a creative story surrounding the “work underneath our work". This story is a beautiful illustration of how Jesus came to do the work we can’t do for ourselves so that our work can become what it was designed to be. Maybe you too have taken a...
Most people in the world view work as a necessary evil to be tolerated. In fact, our negative view of work has found its way into at least one hundred pop culture radio hits over the last fifty years. From the Beatles A Hard Day’s Night, to Dolly Parton’s 9 to...
Our family is a huge fan of the TV Show Psych, where a quick-witted smart-aleck with a photographic memory deceives the Santa Barbara police department into believing he has supernatural crime-solving abilities. My kids can probably quote some Sean Spencer...
Raised as a pastor’s son in rural upstate New York, Dave Cooper recalls a unique call for world missions from an early age. “Growing up with my dad as a pastor we always had missionaries around. In fact, they would often stay with us for long stents. I recall...
We have a passion for unreached people groups here at The Stone Table. Three billion people around the world have no adequate witness of the Gospel, and a major portion of our mission investment is aimed at proclaiming Jesus and planting the Church in these...
Recently I sat in a hotel conference room in Dubai for a three-day meeting with the following list of people: The head of the Russian Pentecostal Church who oversees a Gospel movement that stretches across 11 time zones. The pastor of a multi-site South African...
Did you know that until this year, Indiana was only one of three states that did not have a state insect? That changed this March when Indiana Governor Holcomb signed Senate Bill 236 into law making the Say’s Firefly Indiana’s state insect. For me, fireflies...
If I asked you to join me for lunch with a successful Chinese businessman… A major chicken producer, including all the KFC’s in northern China. An exporter of medical gloves, shipping over 7 billion units his last year in the business. A man who oversaw nearly...
My seven year old has become a bedtime theologian. All day long its glitter, dancing and unicorns and then magically after getting tucked into bed, prayers said, kisses given...out pops true deep theological questions. You know the kind; maybe you have had a...
One of the most powerful tools you can add to your business arsenal this year is prayer. Prayer changes everything. Prayer aligns our hearts with the heart of God and makes us a safe place for Him to deposit His creativity and His ideas and His blessing. There’s this great scene from the Magicians Nephew in The Chronicles of Narnia series that I think illustrates why prayer is so vital. And I’m just going to read it to you, I’m just going to read right out of, right out of this great book. If you haven’t read The Chronicles of Narnia series, I highly recommend it, but the Magicians Nephew, there’s this great scene when Aslan has sent young Digory on a journey to accomplish something for him with one of his friends and they’ve gone on a flying horse together.
A mentor once told me that the two most vulnerable moments for any leader are after a great failure or after a great success. And it’s those moments of success that I want to talk about today. I think it’s when God has breathed on something that we are involved in; When God has done something more than we could have ever asked or expected. We tend to want to take more ownership of those things than we should. And it’s not that we don’t have a role to play, but I think in those moments of success when God has just multiplied something beyond our wildest imaginations, we can tend to pat ourselves on the back. Maybe begin to arrogantly think we were more of the causation for that than we actually were. And there’s going to be moments in any leadership journey of failure, but there’s also gonna be these moments where things just work. Where you look back and you realized, “Oh my gosh, look what has happened in and around me.” And it’s in those moments that we need to humbly fall on our knees and remember that we have a role to play. We are stewards. We function in obedience and response to God but the work, and ultimately the glory, for any success, in any endeavor, goes to God alone. And so, I want to encourage you, in those moments of success, to stay close to the heart of God. Cause there’s gonna be moments where God just miraculously breathes on something and it’s in those moments, we should be grateful that He allowed us to be a part of that journey.
Merry Christmas friends. I absolutely love this time of year. I’ve always loved this time of year, but I think as I’ve gotten older, I’ve gotten a little bit sappier and even a little more weepy this time of year because ‘ve grown to feel the weight of what the Christmas season really means, and I think all of us understand there’s something that’s just not right with the world that that even when good things happen, they’re not ultimately fulfilling.