Pastor's Blog (Page 47)

Dear Woodland Hills Family, So let’s say—with Election Day come & gone—you find yourself one of the 46% of Americans who didn’t get what you voted for. Quite naturally, you’re wrestling with discouragement, frustration, despair, and maybe even some anger. Some around you are already complaining. Others are wasting no time shifting into the rhetoric of…

Some things never change! No matter how much we’d like them to. The same with people. We keep hoping and praying and waiting… for the other person to change! But a leopard can’t change his spots, can he? 1 So isn’t this an interesting comment: “Then it happened when Saul turned to leave Samuel, God changed his heart.2 What we cannot do for ourselves or for others,…

CNNmoney.com has a 50 People Who Matter Now list—innovators who are changing the world we live in today and reshaping our tomorrow. They also have a 10 People Who Don’t Matter list—people whose power has already peaked, whose influence has waned, whose “best days are behind them.” 1 Hmmmm. Barb and I just returned from our 25th college homecoming. Along with…

Bailout or no bailout, these are tough economic times. We’ll likely be seeing a lot more signs like these. Too bad, because when doors close it’s the people who pay the steepest price. There was once a king who decided to close the doors. King Ahaz decided he’d had enough of God, so “he closed the doors of the house of the Lord.” 1 By this symbolic act he shut more than…

September 14, 2008–Most people fled Hurricane Ike’s massive, destructive forces. But Willis Turner & his wife decided to ride it out. The two held on inside a home that Turner’s wife said “vibrated like a guitar string.” “It was like an atomic bomb going off. Right after the eye passed, whole houses came by us at 30 miles an hour…

The famed architect-designer, Stanford White (1853–1906), once shocked an editor by the high price he charged for a magazine cover design. Although he had spent much thought in preparing the design, its classic simplicity caused his customer to wonder at the bill of $500—a goodly sum at the turn of the 1900s. “I’d say that was a pretty steep price for such a plain…