Holy

Pre-Game Warm-Up

Trying to write today’s brief introduction has been laborious and futile. I’ve greatly enjoyed writing countless chapters in many books through the years, but this one just won’t compute. I’ve attempted to place my pen to the pad over and over again, but to no avail. Describing God’s holiness is difficult. Actually, it’s far beyond difficult, It’s impossible. I thought about the bacteria and contaminate free, pure…

Truth

Pre-Game Warm-Up

Three weary travelers on the brink of exhaustion and starvation trudged across the desert in search of an oasis.  They stood in amazement as two riders appeared over the distant horizon. As the strangers were encountered they told the travelers that in one day’s journey they would cross a dry riverbed with many curious stones.  They told the famished men, “Fill your backpacks with stones when you…

The Homecoming

Pre-Game Warm-Up

My first daughter, Jamie Jo, was seven years old when she first thumb-tacked a picture of a Cambodian orphan child in the middle of her bedroom bulletin board in our cliff side Ozark Mountain home.

Those trusting brown eyes of that baby burned an image in my daughter’s heart that branded her with compassion for every “broken winged” animal and person she would ever encounter….

Separated

Pre-Game Warm-Up

Recruiting (from 330 university campuses) our summer staff, of 2,700 college athletes, who love God and love kids, is a great annual adventure that takes a team of forty plus directors (of our twelve Christian sports camps) across tens of thousands of miles of U.S. highways each winter. Our counselors are truly champions and the cream of the crop, our kids deserve nothing less.

In the…

Incomprehensible

Pre-Game Warm-Up

What is the mathematical likelihood that our universe, capable of originating life, could have been randomly brought into being by a “Big Bang” accidental explosion? One chance in a billion (109)? One chance in a trillion (1012)? One chance in a bilion trillion (1021)? According to Dr. Roger Penrose, Emeritus professor of mathematics at Oxford University, the odds are far greater against such an occurrence.

He…

Omni 

Pre-Game Warm-Up

NASA’s premier intergalactic telescope is strategically positioned aboard the WMAP satellite orbiting the earth and transmitting never-before-seen images of the majestic cosmos to Mission Control in Houston. There, the team of stellar scientists ponder and computer enhance the findings and interpret their significance to the mysteries of our origin. In April, 2006, a retroactive computerization from one such telescopic discovery was released on the media airways that…

The Ultimate Sacrifice

Pre-Game Warm-Up

For the last 50 years of Fran Gajowniczek’s life, August 14th was a shrine, a day of remembering and a pilgrimage to a place where one life was given for another. For Maximillian Kolbe, August 14th will forever be ordained as a day of ultimate liberation and freedom from a place called “the death bunker” to the throne of grace and the outstretched arms of…

Jesus

Pre-Game Warm-Up

And He was saying to them all, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me.” (Luke 9:23)

Following Christ is a radical, sold out, all-encompassing commitment dwarfed only by His trip to planet earth to reconcile you and me to God.

How can I follow someone I have never touched?

Why would…

Opponent

Pre-Game Warm-Up

Playing “nose tackle” in college suited my “appetite for action” to near perfection. Lining up against the Buckeyes of Ohio State, the Tigers of Auburn, the Arkansas Razorbacks, the Texas Tech Red Raiders and other formidable foes was thrilling to say the least. But standing over the football as the eleven best in college football approached the line of scrimmage like a band of ruthless gladiators dressed…

Spirit

Pre-Game Warm-Up

It was a brisk, but beautiful, Christmas day in Hereford, Texas, when a teenage friend, named Jason Paetzold, watched his dad step into the small single engine airplane his uncle had just received as a Christmas gift. A short routine flight, and “I’ll be back in 30 minutes, Son,” were his dad’s final words as he latched the door and waived “adios.” Jason’s big blue eyes were…

Undeserving

Pre-Game Warm-Up

Like a 10 karat diamond, hidden just beneath the surface of a sandy beach on a remote South African seashore, a keenly insightful story and picture window into God’s heart resides in 1 Samuel. Familiar to most Old Testament readers is the intense friendship between David and Jonathan. The historical friendship, like those rare, truly great friendships today, began with a commitment of loyalty and trust. Theirs…

Metamorphosis

Pre-Game Warm-Up

Of all the magnificent mysteries of God’s intelligent design of our cosmos, and the creatures that inhabit our highly favored earthly home, is the metamorphosis and incomprehensible migratory flight of the tiny Monarch butterfly from its summer home near Saskatchewan, Canada, to its winter residence in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of southern Mexico. This annual 3,000 mile, four generational air voyage defies the laws of reason and…

Lamb Over Me

Pre-Game Warm-Up

For decades and decades, he prayed for a son. He dreamed of the day his wife would conceive.  To hear the word “Daddy” from the mouth of a toddler that bore his name was his hope and daily request before God. His vanishing desire became an aging disappointment. His wife had long since passed the age of fertility. His family tree had resolutely ended….

The Pinnacle

Pre-Game Warm-Up

The resurrection of Jesus after His torture and crucifixion is the single most important historical factor in all of Christianity. Jesus is the only religious figure in the history of mankind to make the claim of deity and subsequently rise from the dead. The resurrection alone puts Jesus light years ahead of all other religious figures in history and in a category all His own.

Halftime

“Who’s Your Timothy?”

When I first met Troy, he was twenty-four years old and preparing his mind for his third suicidal attempt and the courage to jump off the tall water tower from which he had climbed and from which he had retreated twice before. I had the humble privilege of leading Troy to Christ and subsequently encouraging him in the faith over the following several years.  

Last…

M&Ms (Memorize & Meditate)

Pre-Game Warm-Up

If you divided all the stars in the known cosmos and distributed them equally to every human on earth, we’d each have about 6 trillion stars to account for. Our God is Big! 

If the Cray Supercomputer was going all out, full steam ahead on one project, it would take years to accomplish what the human eye accomplishes in seconds….

Overboard

Pre-Game Warm-Up

I’m guilty as charged. I overdid it big time! I was one big easy pushover with my kids…especially my two girls! If that wasn’t bad enough, I’m worse with my grandkids. I do find comfort in two things! Thanks to my down-to-earth wife, they didn’t turn out spoiled (far from it)! Funny thing about a lot of grandads I know.

The more I look around, I…

Craftsmanship

Pre-Game Warm-Up

The winter of 1494 was memorable for its bitter cold.  The city of Florence, Italy, was blanketed in snow, and Michelangelo Buonarroti’s heart was as heavy as the gray clouds that dipped low and blocked out the sun.

The Grand Duke of Florence, Lorenzo de’ Medici, had been the young artist’s benefactor.  It was this great supporter of the arts who had given Michelangelo the numerous…