Have you ever looked back over a season of your life and thought, “What happened to all those years?” The years the pain took. The years the mistakes took. The years other people took from you. Joel 2:25, God says, “I will restore to you the years that the locust has eaten.”

Friend, that is one of the most hope-filled promises in all of Scripture! Notice what God does not say. He doesn’t say, “I’ll give you back the exact same years.” Time doesn’t rewind. But He does say He will restore. And when God restores, He doesn’t just bring you back to where you were or restore what was....He brings you forward to something better, deeper, and more fruitful.

You say, “But Lon, you don’t understand what I’ve lost.” Folks, we have all lost things, jobs, relationships. God knows all this. And He is not limited by our past sin and mistakes or what others have done to us.

Our God is a Redeemer. That means He takes what is broken and wasted and turns it into something that carries eternal value.

Joseph lost years in a prison. David lost years running for his life. Naomi lost years in grief. Yet in every case, God wove those “lost years” into a greater story for His glory and their good. 

So, what can we do? We can stop living in regret. We can stop rehearsing the past. And we can start trusting God who promises restoration. When we put our faith and trust in the Lord, there are no wasted years only years God is preparing to redeem.

The locusts don’t get the final word. God does.

I was deeply saddened to hear about a pastor, that I have known for years and worked alongside in ministry, claiming to have left the Lord and has "deconstructed". He is now on social media encouraging others to do the same. Heartbreaking.
 
Please hear me on this: Do not allow this apostasy to shake your faith.

Even the great apostle Paul faced similar heartbreak. Paul speaks about people who deserted him and turned away from the faith. Yet he urged Timothy to stay strong, hold firmly to sound teaching, and guard the truth that had been entrusted to him. (2 Timothy 1:13–14)

I want to take a moment to reassure you of something very important. I remain 1000% committed to the Lord Jesus Christ and to the glorious plan of salvation that God has made available to us through His shed blood on the cross. I have absolutely no doubt that this is the real truth and the only way to heaven and eternal life.

By God’s grace, I have followed the Lord Jesus now for more than 55 years—and I say with confidence and a full heart, that in all those years, He has never once let me down. And I promise you this: He will not let you down either. Praise the Lord!

Over the years, I have had the privilege of leading more than a hundred trips to the Holy Land and other places connected to the Bible. Again and again, we have seen archaeological discoveries that confirm the historical reliability of Scripture. As I love to say: “The more they dig out of the ground, the more the Bible proves to be right.”

Every shovel of dirt seems to remind us that God’s Word stands firm and is true.

That’s why I often encourage people with a simple word picture: Ride the Bible like a surfboard into eternity. Trust it. Stand on it. Build your life upon it. If you do, you will never regret it. As the Bible says: “And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son… I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life.” 1 John 5:11–13

If the apostle Paul were standing here today, I believe he would say the exact same thing to you: Do not be discouraged by those who walk away. Pray for them.

As for you, be encouraged, my friends. Stand firm. Keep your eyes on Jesus. Stay anchored in the Word of God. And remember that the truth of the gospel has stood the test of centuries—and it will stand forever.

There was a season near the end of my time as Senior Pastor at McLean Bible Church when an unexpected spiritual darkness began pressing in on me. It came without warning, without logic, and always at the same time—Saturday nights and Sunday mornings, right as I prepared to preach the Word of God.

Driving to church, I would feel a heaviness descend on me—thick, oppressive, unmistakably spiritual. I would pray against it “in the name and by the blood of Jesus” and cling to God’s promise in James 4:7: “Submit yourselves, therefore, to God; resist the devil, and he will flee from you.”

All of this was so strange. But the battle only intensified.

Preaching had always been one of the greatest joys of my life. I used to drive to church fired up and eager to open the WORD. But suddenly, something changed. Week after week, I found myself wrestling through a cloud of spiritual resistance just to stand in the pulpit. Sermon preparation—once a delight—turned into an exhausting fight. Even at home the warfare showed up. If Jill was going to have a seizure, it almost always happened on Saturday night, robbing me of sleep and weighing heavily on my heart before Sunday morning.

At first, I tried to dismiss it all as coincidence. But after months of the same pattern, I knew this was not coincidence. It was warfare. It was personal.

As I sought the Lord for discernment, I slowly came to believe that Satan was preparing to use my upcoming transition at MBC to cause deep trouble in the church I loved. I had already witnessed two strong, Christ-honoring churches collapse after disastrous transitions of leadership. Both had been vibrant. Both had been spiritually alive. And both eventually ceased to exist.

The enemy had used leadership change to destroy them.

The warfare was not abstract. It was targeted. And for reasons that I will never fully understand, only God knows, the target was me.

Those last three or four years were some of the most intense of my life. The battles came in my office, in my car, on my knees, and even in my sleep. When my ministry there finally concluded, I drove home completely drained. I was exhausted down to my bones. I felt a deep connection with Paul’s words in 2 Corinthians 12:15: “For I will most gladly spend and be spent for your souls.”

That’s exactly how I felt—spent.

It took months before I began regaining strength. In many ways, I have never fully recovered. Even now, I feel like a soldier who survived years in the trenches—grateful, but never quite the same.

For the first time in my life, I understood Elijah on Mount Carmel in a deeply personal way. In 1 Kings 18, Elijah confronted the prophets of Baal and the demons behind them. It was a massive spiritual battle requiring everything he had. And the very next day, exhausted and vulnerable, he ran in fear from Jezebel. I used to wonder how a man of such faith could collapse so quickly. Now I understood. When you go nose-to-nose with Satan, even with God’s help, the toll is real. The battle drains you spiritually, emotionally, and physically. And Elijah’s cry—“I’ve had enough, Lord”—felt more relatable than ever before. And with that realization came a newfound compassion for Elijah.

Less judgment. More understanding. Sometimes the man of God is not backsliding—he’s simply battle-weary.

Spiritual warfare is real. It is intense. And sometimes God allows His servants to walk through seasons where the battle is fierce, unrelenting, and deeply costly. Yet even in those seasons, He remains faithful. He sustains. He protects. And He brings us through.

If you’re in a battle today, take heart. Resist the devil. Stand firm. And remember—your strength may fail, but the God who fights for you never will.

Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. 1 Peter 5:8

When I came to Christ, I had never read the Bible much less memorized a verse. Bob Eckhart encouraged me to start memorizing scripture. Not only would this help me to grow in my faith but protect my heart and mind.

The way I did my Scripture memorization was the old-fashioned way. I bought a stack of 3x5 cards, and whenever I was reading the Bible and a verse jumped off the page and grabbed my soul, I’d write the verse on one side of the card and write the reference—chapter and verse—on the other.

Then I carried ten cards with me every day. Whenever I had a few free minutes—eating lunch, sitting in a doctor’s office, waiting in line—I’d pull out those cards and work on memorizing both the verse and the reference.

Once I mastered those ten, I moved them to my “completed” stack and started learning ten more. Every two weeks, I’d sit down one evening and review all the verses in my completed stack, so I didn’t lose them.

That’s it. Nothing fancy—just hard work, consistency, and determination.

The Holy Spirit opened my heart and mind and after a few months, I had memorized over 600 verses!

To this day, I can still quote most of those verses. PTL! That season of Scripture memorization reprogrammed my mind and heart for the Lord, and it can do the same for you.

Want to get 2026 off to a great start? Memorize God's Word!

Your word I have hidden in my heart, That I might not sin against You. Psalm 119:11

Most of you have seen the He Gets Us ad campaign which shows that to be like Jesus, we must be warm and fuzzy, non-controversial, good people, who accepts and understands everyone, regardless of who they are, what they do or don’t do, sin included.

While the Bible certainly calls us as Christ followers to be loving towards all people, and our behavior and treatment of people can show the world that we are Christians, God never called us to ignore, embrace or excuse sin. Jesus never did. He always lovingly told people the truth about their sin and need for a Savior, so much so that many hated Him for it.

Christianity gives us a noble way to live, and the Bible offers us great behavioral models to pattern our lives after. Women like Mary, Ruth and Esther. Men like Abraham, Moses, David, Paul and of course Jesus Himself. But the essence of Christianity is not noble ethics, social acceptance or giving us great behavioral models. The essence of true Christianity is that God is offering to forgive our sins through what Jesus did for us on the cross.

God is very clear in the Bible that mankind’s greatest problem is sin, and He has the only solution for it, and that is Jesus. The most distinctive thing that biblical Christianity proclaims is that sin can be forgiven. God is interested and anxious to forgive your sin, my sin and everybody else's sin who is willing to come to God the way He tells us to. No other religious leader ever offered this but Jesus.

If you study the Bible, you will soon learn that sin is a central theme from cover to cover. The Bible begins in the Book of Genesis by telling us about sin entering the human race through Adam and Eve. The Bible ends in the Book of Revelation by telling us about God's plan to eradicate sin once and for all from His creation. Every page in between deals with the issue of mankind, sin and God's response and remedy for it, which is salvation and forgiveness through Christ alone. The word sin is actually mentioned more times in the Bible than the word love.

Why is sin even a problem for the human race? Well one reason is that sin separates us from God. Isaiah 59:2 says, "But your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear.” That is why for many of us God seems so far away, so distant, so remote.

But God is not distant, and this is the great news of the Bible! God provides the way for us to have forgiveness of sins and to bring us into a personal relationship with Himself through Jesus. The Bible declares this without apology. Jesus said in John 14:6 that He is the Way. He didn't say I am a way. He said, I am the Way. I am not a truth. I am the Truth. I am not a life. I am the Life. Nobody comes to the Father except by me. Nobody. Not you, not me, nobody. The reason God raised Jesus from the dead is again to verify that Jesus is the Son of God and that He is telling us the truth. To validate that Jesus is the only true way to God, to validate that His shed blood is the only true payment for sin.

You might be saying, So What? Well, it’s pretty simple. During Jesus’ recorded 3-year ministry here on earth, He healed many people, was certainly kind and loving, but Jesus did not come to be nice or to make friends. Jesus came to die on a cross so that a lost, broken and sinful world could be saved.

Jesus does not care what you have done or where you have been. You don't need to fix or clean yourself up. He alone has the authority to forgive your sin, to reconcile you to God, to give you a whole new life. 2 Corinthians 5:17 says, "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new." That is what Jesus did in my life and He can do for you. (Listen to Lon's story)

Remember the woman caught in adultery? Jesus rebuked those who rejected, accused and mistreated her, but the last thing Jesus said to her was, “Go and sin no more.” John 8:11.

That’s the real Jesus.

“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.” John 3:16-18

“If indeed you have heard Him and have been taught by Him, as the truth is in Jesus: that you put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and that you put on the new man which was created according to God,  in true righteousness and holiness.” Ephesians 4:21-24

How can you have a real and personal relationship with Jesus?

I celebrated a birthday this week.

I think most of us when we celebrate a birthday, we can't help but to reflect back on our lives, and although I am nostalgic, I am also keenly aware and stand amazed at all that God has taught me.

Some of these lessons I learned the hard way because I didn't have someone to mentor or guide me. But I'm hoping that by sharing what I have learned after many years of following Jesus, that perhaps you can learn some of these lessons without having to learn them the way I did. Experience is a wonderful teacher!

I have learned many things over the years, but these five lessons I share with you are some of the most important. Do I know it all after all these years? I don’t. Have I failed in some areas? I have. But what I do know is that the Bible says there are some lessons that can only be learned with age. Lessons that make us people of wisdom and seasoned maturity.

Number one, and probably one of the biggest things I have learned, is that people are the most important thing in the world. In Acts 20:28 Paul says, “Therefore take heed to yourselves and to all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood.” Now isn't it interesting where Paul's focus is in this farewell speech? Would you notice his focus is not on church budgets, building programs, denominational squabbles, attendance figures or numbers of baptisms? He doesn't even mention any of that. His focus is on the sheep. His focus is on people. He says, take care of these people. Watch over these people. Care for these people. Nurture and treasure these people whom Jesus bought with his own blood. That should be our main objective. No mission, no accomplishment, no objective, no task, no goal is important enough that it's worth damaging, hurting and misusing people. And you know, even though I might have known this in my head many, many years ago, it's taken me a number of years to finally get it.

Lesson number two that I've learned is that every hill is not worth dying on. I love what happened to Jesus in Luke 4. Jesus had visited his hometown after he claimed to be the Messiah and all the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this. They took Him to the top of the hill, in order to throw him off the cliff. But do you know what Jesus did? He walked right through the crowd and went on his way. Now, when we read this, isn't it true that part of us wants Jesus to respond and say, “Okay, okay, you want to throw me off the cliff, bring it on! You want me to show you who I really am? You want me to reveal my power and prove to you I'm the Messiah? Okay, well watch this. Kaboom.” But what did Jesus do? He just walks away. He walked away from the insults, He walked away from the challenge to His authority, He walked away from people who wanted to harm him. Jesus’ actions here say… “Hey, you know, I could win this battle if I wanted to, but not every hill's worth dying on. This is not a hill I want to die on. I'm just going to walk away.” When we are young, we often think every hill's worth dying on. I've been there, I understand this. But as you get older, you begin to realize that's not true. After you get some years in the cockpit, you begin to realize that yes, there are some hills in the world worth dying on, but there's not nearly as many as you used to think there were. And that's wisdom. Wisdom is to walk away and not die on a hill you don't have to. It's a lot easier and you take a lot less casualties just going around the hill.

Lesson number three I've learned is that timing is everything with God. Ecclesiastes 3 says there is a time for everything and a season for every activity under heaven, a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal. And on and on and on the passage goes. But the point is that there are times and seasons in the way God runs this world and that everything doesn't have to be done yesterday. The Bible is clear in Isaiah 55, that God's ways are not our ways. God's thoughts are not our thoughts. And may I add God's timing is not our timing. God has a timing to the way He does things, that as you grow older, you begin to realize smart people wait on God's timing. Because they realize everything is perfect when you wait on God.

Lesson number four is that some failure in life is a good thing. Proverbs 30:8-9 says, “Remove falsehood and lies far from me; Give me neither poverty nor riches—Feed me with the food allotted to me; Lest I be full and deny You, and say, “Who is the Lord?” Or lest I be poor and steal and profane the name of my God.” As followers of Jesus Christ, we all agree that too much failure is not good for us. But what the Bible is also telling us is that too much success is not good for us either. Jesus said, whoever exalts himself shall be humbled, but whoever humbles himself will be exalted. God rewards humility. That's clear in the Bible. And friends, nobody ever got humble from success. It has never happened. It is never going to happen. Success only causes us to grow more self-sufficient, more arrogant, and haughtier.

And as Proverbs 30 says, when that happens, there's a tendency to disown the Lord, to deny the Lord, and to engage in behavior that God has to humble. Failure is a whole different story. Failure brings us to the end of ourselves. Failure drives us to our knees. Failure forces us to depend on the Lord and not ourselves. Failure humbles our high opinion of ourselves. Follow my logic. Since God wants to exalt every follower of Jesus Christ and He does. And since God blesses and exalts the humble, and He does, and since failure is what causes us and teaches us to be humble and it does, then the result of all of this is that some failure in life is good and beneficial. All sickness, all failure, all setbacks, all loss is not completely out of keeping with the will of God. I have personally experienced that failure is a doorway through which God teaches humility. The door through which God gets the freedom to exalt and bless our lives.

The 5th lesson that I've learned is this, that Romans 8:28 ALWAYS comes true for followers of Jesus Christ. It says, "And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose."  And one of the things I've learned in my life is that this verse always, always, always comes true for followers of Jesus Christ. God may send some failure. God may send some setbacks. God may send some loss and tragedy into your life but give God time and He’ll turn it into a blessing. Now God is not saying in this verse that everything is good. What He said is he'll take the good and the bad and the ugly and he'll work it all together and produce something beautiful in your life if you'll just give Him time. Sometimes it may take years before you can see what God was up to, but I'm here to tell you, after over 50 years as a follower of Christ, if you give God time, He will always be true to His promise.

I pray that these 5 life lessons will encourage and help you. And hopefully you will learn them faster than I did!

A week or so ago, one of my daughters-in-law called me, and told me about a library book that her elementary-school child (my grandchild) had checked out of their school library.

It was a book about witches, witchcraft, and the occult which included recipes for brews and potions for evil magic. Because of some of my pre-Christ experiences on drugs, I have always been militant in my aversion to anything dealing with the occult, and I have taught this to my family.

Anyway, my daughter-in-law, upon seeing this book, refused to let her child read it, a decision which I applauded. She told me that her child was livid and furious about her decision, but that she was standing by it unfazed. I prayed with her and encouraged her in her decision to defend her children from any exposure to the occult.

I went on to share all of this with my wife, Brenda, who wrote a text to my daughter-in-law that you will find below. When Brenda read it to me, I commented that I’ve never heard it said better than she said it and that I think other parents would benefit from hearing Brenda‘s godly wisdom. And so here it is (with Brenda‘s permission). I hope it will be an encouragement to all parents who seek to raise their children to love the Lord and to be circumspect about their exposure to unholy things.

I am so sorry I didn’t get to talk to you last night when you called but Lon shared afterwards what you shared with him.  Glad he could pray with you.  Christian mothers have the hardest job in the world, especially these days.  It is not going to be easy, but you stay in the Word, on your knees and in community with like-minded Christian moms.  “Greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world.”  I read a statement in the last lesson of our Bible study this week, ”the God who can do anything can be trusted with everything.”  There will be many bumps along the way, the girls might not like some of your decisions, but your first job is not to be their best friend but a loving, strong, God- fearing mother whose instruction through the years to her children will last a lifetime.  God wants to use your daughter's lives to be a light for Him no matter where they go and where He leads them.  Those girls are truly blessed to have you as their mom.  Not easy to watch them struggle or get upset when you put safe boundaries around them for their protection.  Keep up the good work and keep crying out to the Lord for wisdom.  There is not a greater job in the world than being a Godly mom.  Those girls will go on to change the world because of your hard work each day.  One day they will rise up and call you blessed and thank you even if some days they might not like your decisions now.

• Proverbs 1:8-9 - My son, hear the instruction of your father, And do not forsake the law of your mother; For they will be a graceful ornament on your head, And chains about your neck.
• Ephesians 6:1-3 - Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and mother, which is the first commandment with promise: that it may be well with you and you may live long on the earth.
• Philippians 4:8 - Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things. 

When I was 16 my life took a dramatic turn.

My dad suffered a massive heart attack, and he ended up spending several months in the hospital. To make matters worse, unknown to my mother, my dad had stopped paying the premiums on our health insurance. This was due to the fact that the jewelry store my parents owned had run into financial troubles. My dad had not shared this with anyone, including my mother. Needless to say, the hospital bills were enormous, and the jewelry store was broke.

As a result, my parents were forced to declare bankruptcy. They had to sell our home, consolidate the jewelry business and we moved into an apartment. The affluence and life that I had known growing up was gone. The people that my parents had called “friends” all dropped them like a hot potato. Not only were we isolated in the community, but I was also isolated at school. My father was forced to try and find a new job, which was made more difficult due to the fact he had virtually no marketable skills and a serious heart condition. Things looked bleak.

I had walked to my school, Woodrow Wilson High, every day since my house was only 3 blocks away. The move to the apartment in downtown Portsmouth (VA) meant that I now had to take the city bus. This was a terrifying experience for me for several reasons.

For one, I was an extremely immature, insecure 16-year-old. I had been sheltered for most of my life, living in a tight knit Jewish community. But outside of that bubble, segregation was still in full swing in Portsmouth in 1964 and people of color were not allowed to sit in the front of the bus. So, day in and day out, I sat there on the bus by myself, simply hoping to survive the ride. I remember feeling alone and abandoned by everyone.

Due to my lack of self-confidence and insecurity, I was not involved in any extra-curricular activities. The one thing that I did do well (and still do to this day) is talk!  And not only talk but talk loudly! One day a fellow student suggested that I should be in the Drama Club. I am not sure if he was joking or not, but I desperately wanted to be a part of something, so I ended up joining the Drama Club and that is where I met Mrs. Brady. She was a strong, assertive, elderly woman (at least it seemed so to me at the time!) She taught senior English and was passionate about drama. For reasons only God knows, Mrs. Brady took a liking to me.

Every day after school I would go to play practice in the large school auditorium. At that time there was no such thing as wireless microphones, so all the plays were performed with no sound amplification of any kind. Mrs. Brady would sit in the back of the dark auditorium during rehearsals and would constantly yell, "I can't hear you!"

It was during these rehearsals, that Mrs. Brady taught me how to project my already loud and strong voice so that everyone in the room could hear me clearly. She taught me to enunciate, how to articulate, how to address an audience, how to gesture and posture.  She taught me how to inflect my voice, and to engage the audience into each scene. Thanks to Mrs. Brady taking me under her wing, by my senior year in high school, I was considered one of the leading actors in the troop and had major roles in all the plays. I often think back on my theatrical training as the greatest single piece of preparation that I could've had for being a good communicator for the Lord Jesus Christ! Of course, at the time, neither I nor Mrs. Brady had any inkling of how God was going to use this training in my life.
 
What had been a dramatic turn of events in my life ended up leading me to the very thing God used to prepare me for what He had planned for me to do.

As followers of Jesus Christ, God wants us to know with certainty that not only did He redeem us, but that He has an individual personal plan for our lives. God does not want to be our lifeguard, my friends, God wants to be our shepherd. And shepherds are involved in the lives of their sheep down to the smallest detail. He will personally lead us in that plan if we'll just let Him.

Every one of us face tough times, challenges and crossroads in our lives. When we're tempted to quit, when we’re tempted to throw in the towel, it’s in those moments, the only thing that allows us to stick it out is the absolute confidence that we are where we are because the living Lord Jesus personally put us where we are, led us to where we are, called us to where we are. One of the greatest benefits of being a follower of Christ is that we can trust the process when our trust is in God.

So, if you are not sure what God is doing, and circumstances seem desperate and beyond your control, just rest in the peace of knowing, that an all-knowing God is right on schedule.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding, in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight. Proverbs 3:5-6
 
He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. Philippians 1:6
 
And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose. Romans 8:28
 
Casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you. 1 Peter 5:7

“A good wife who can find? She is far more precious than jewels. The heart of her husband trusts in her, and he will have no lack of gain. She does him good, not harm, all the days of her life.” Proverbs 31:10-12 
 
I have always considered my marriage to Brenda to be one of the greatest joys of my life. I felt so unworthy to be her husband! I had so little to offer, where she had so much.  
 
Brenda came from a wonderful Christian family. Her family loved the Lord and lived Christ honoring lives. As you might imagine, when my background started to come out, it for sure raised some eyebrows! They wanted a godly husband for their daughter and rightly so!

I had not had a serious relationship since I had come to faith in Christ. At the time I considered a romantic relationship to be a distraction that I could not afford as I was trying to get off to a good start in my walk with the Lord.  Besides, I knew that I did not know how to relate to a woman in a God honoring way and that I needed to grow spiritually before I was ready to be the man and husband a godly woman would want to marry.  
 
I knew that I wanted to be married and I felt that was my heart’s desire and God’s will for my life in ministry. So, I began to develop a list of characteristics that I was looking for in a wife.  
 
The list had 3 columns:  
1. Non-negotiable qualities.   
2. Very important qualities; and  
3. Nice qualities to have but not absolutely necessary.  
 
I had prayed over this list for many months, and, by observation and Bible study, I had developed quite a list! 
 
Among the first category's list, I had things like "must love God; must want to serve God as her life's call; must come from a Christian family and know how to make family work; must be a woman of wisdom and discretion; must understand God's plan for marriage from the Scripture and so forth.

In the second category, I had listed things like beauty, intelligence, kindness, warmth, theological soundness, agreement in childrearing philosophy, etc.

In the third category were things like great dresser, fiscally conservative, good housekeeper, etc.

I will admit that my list might not be very romantic in some people’s minds, but I was convinced that it would help me do a good job of picking a life partner who would honor God and be a blessing to me and our family.
 
As time passed in my relationship with Brenda, I realized that although she met the outward criteria, more importantly, she embodied the godly qualities I was seeking in a wife.  
 
After pastoring for years and maturing in my faith, I narrowed down the qualities that I believe Christians need to be looking for in a marriage partner. These are biblically based, and you can listen to my sermon, Marks of a Great Mate, Up Close and Personal Pt. 1 for the scripture references.
 
1. Look for a person that is spiritually connected. The person who has a vibrant, active, growing, living, real authentic relationship with Jesus Christ and takes it seriously. And don't settle for anything else. You will regret it.

2. Look for a person who is a giver. To make marriage work, to make intimacy work, both people have to be giving 100%. Takers have a very difficult time making marriage work.

3. Look for someone who is a hard worker. Marriage is all about diligence and responsibility and industriousness. It's about duty and commitment and holding up your end of the relationship. You're looking for somebody who doesn't run for cover when the hard work starts.

4. Look for a person who is sensitive to the feelings and needs of others. Now, why is this so important? It's so important because marriage is a relationship. If you do it right, that peels the layers away and exposes you like no other relationship in the world. Not only do you become physically naked with one another, but where you become emotionally and spiritually naked with one another.

5. Look for someone who is loyal. A loyal person, who even though behind closed doors, they may chop you off at the knee's friends, but when you walk out of that house, it's one for all and all for one, that's the kind of person you want to marry.

6. Look for a person that knows how to forgive. If you're going to make a long-term marriage work, you're going to have to be a person who knows how to forgive and marry a person who knows how to forgive.

7. Look for a person who has integrity. You can't trust a person who doesn't have integrity and integrity is key to making a marriage work.
 
If you find a person that has these seven qualities in their life, and I'm telling you, it doesn't matter what their eyes look like. It doesn't matter what their hair looks like. It doesn't matter what their teeth look like. And it doesn't matter what their superstructure looks like…you can build a long lasting, successful relationship with a person who has these kinds of character traits.

This is what you're looking for. Trust me, the rest of it will come and go. I can say after almost 50 years of marriage and many years of counseling couples, these qualities, based on God’s plan for marriage, is what will last.

“Therefore, whoever hears these sayings of Mine, and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock: and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it did not fall, for it was founded on the rock. But everyone who hears these sayings of Mine, and does not do them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand: and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it fell. And great was its fall.” Matthew 7:24-27

This week Lon Solomon Ministries (LSM) celebrates our 5th anniversary. To be honest, this ministry was never really in my thoughts or plans, but it was God’s plan.

When I left McLean Bible Church in September 2017, I literally had no idea what God had for me, if anything at all, as far as ministry goes. For months before this when people asked me what I was going to do next in the Lord’s service, I could only say, “I am totally spent. I've got nothing left to give right now”. And that was truly how I felt. I had said yes to God, when as a young believer, He had called me to preach. I did just that to the best of my abilities by the power of the Holy Spirit for almost 38 years as a Senior Pastor. But saying yes to God does not include retirement!

The elders at McLean Bible Church had decided to discontinue the radio ministry and that all contracts with the church would end on December 31, 2017. This included both the 30-minute sermons (So What? Radio) as well as the 60-second "Not a Sermon, Just a Thought” ads. While not surprising, I had to decide at that moment what God wanted me to do. God had bigger plans, although I did not know at the time what that looked like.

So, 5 years ago this month, after much prayer, we decided to step out in faith and launch Lon Solomon Ministries. The first thing we had to do was to take over the radio contracts from McLean Bible Church and keep the SO WHAT? Radio sermons and the Not a Sermon, Just a Thought gospel centered ads on the air.  This transition became official on January 7, 2018, and by God’s grace, So What? Radio sermons and the Not a Sermon ads did not miss one single week of airtime!
 
Today, So What? Radio is broadcast on over 1000 stations nationwide with the half hour sermons reaching countless people with the WORD of God and the hope that is in Christ alone.

Not a Sermon, Just a Thought ads continue in the DC area, but this year with the money that the Lord has provided, we decided to do a gospel message outreach and launch Not a Sermon, Just a Thought (NAS) in varies cities across the country. We are now airing NAS on secular radio stations in several cities across the country, including Austin, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, Atlanta, Nashville, Tampa, Orlando, Denver, Miami and Seattle. We plan to add more cities as the Lord provides. Listeners are directed to our website, www.notasermon.com, where they will be presented with the gospel and can listen to my story of how Jesus radically changed my life.

What God has done and is doing at LSM in 5 short years is beyond what I could have thought possible, and it is humbling. Where there seemed to be no way, no money, no plan, I am reminded that indeed, little is much when God is in it.
 
Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us. Ephesians 3:20

So He was saying, “What is the kingdom of God like, and to what shall I compare it? It is like a mustard seed, which a man took and threw into his own garden; and it grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air nested in its branches.” Luke 13:18-19

Little is Much - Downhere

One of the most influential men ever to impact my life as a Christian was Pastor A.W. Jackson. He was the pastor of Cherrydale Baptist Church in Arlington, VA for 25 years. I met him when he was a professor at Capital Bible Seminary, where I was a student.

When he turned 90, I wrote him a letter to thank him and to let Pastor Jackson know what he had meant in my life. Here is a little bit of that letter. “It was almost 30 years ago that we first met at Capital Bible seminary. You as a professor and me as a 22 year old seminary student, as I sat in your classes, I decided that I would try and pattern my approach to the pastoral ministry and my life living as a servant of God, after your example. Almost 30 years later, I am still trying to do that. However, I must confess that I have fallen far short of the bar that you've established with your life. In my opinion, Pastor Jackson, your life is an incredible example of humility, graciousness, honesty, and genuineness. Your faithfulness to your wife, Dorothy and your family for almost 67 years has been a pleasant change from the track record of so many others in pastoral ministry and watching how you continued to trust God, even through the crushing loss of your daughter. (she passed away from cancer). It has inspired me so many times in my life to keep trusting the Lord through the painful experiences that Brenda and I have been through with our severely disabled little girl, Jill. Anyway, the point of all this is to thank you for the difference you've made in my life. I thank God that he gave me the privilege to call myself one of your disicples.”  If you asked me to name someone who epitomized the words finishing well for Christ, I would say Pastor Jackson. If I could finish half was well, I would consider that a success. I can honestly tell you before God that the one thing I want the most is to finish well. I want to finish in a way that doesn't disgrace Jesus Christ, that doesn't dishonor my family and that doesn't destroy my ministry. I want this more than anything else in the world.

If you are reading this and you are a follower of Jesus Christ, that is what God wants your goal in life to be, to finish with honor. That no matter the obstacles or troubles that come our way, we stand strong and firm for Jesus and finish well. So, how can we as Christ followers finish well? One the of best examples to look at is the life of the Apostle Paul.

There are four things that Paul had that enabled him to finish well, but the number one thing was that Paul was fiercely loyal to Jesus Christ above everything else in life. In 2 Timothy 2:3-4, Paul writes, "You therefore must endure hardship as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. No one engaged in warfare entangles himself with the affairs of this life, that he may please him who enlisted him as a soldier." No good soldier gets distracted by civilian affairs because his goal is to please his commanding officer. And as Christians, that is Jesus. Because if we're loyal to anything else, our own comfort, our own desires, our own passions, any other person or thing above Jesus, the enemy will use that and we will leave ourselves vulnerable. If we are not 100% loyal to Jesus, we are going to have trouble making it in our Christian life.

The second thing Paul did that helped him to finish well, is that he lived every day in light of his eternal accountability. 2 Corinthians 5:10 says that every follower of Christ must stand before the judgment seat of Christ and be held accountable for the things, whether good or bad, that we have done while here on earth. When you trust Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior, you are going to heaven, period. But when you and I arrive, we're going to have a performance review. We are going to sit right there with Jesus and go all the way back to when we first became a Christian. We won’t be able to hide anything from the Lord. We need to live our lives focused on eternity.

The third thing that helped Paul finish well is that he rooted his life in the scriptures.  As our world goes from bad to worse, the one thing that is going to stand is the Word of God. Your Bible reading and scripture memorization needs to come before you look at your social media, read other books, turn on the TV or go to a movie. Make the Word of God a priority and habit in your life.

And finally, the fourth thing Paul did that helped him to finish well was that he never lost sight of his heavenly rewards. 2 Timothy 4:7-8 says, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day—and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing.” Paul ran the race here with his eye, not on the track, but on the finish line. He ran his race with his eyes on heaven and what Jesus had promised him.

Nothing would please Jesus more than to be able to say to you, “Well done good and faithful servant!” And you know, honestly, nothing is going to make you happier than when you hear Jesus say it!

"Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith." Hebrews 12:1-2a

Never in my lifetime did I ever expect to see Roe v. Wade overturned by the Supreme Court of the United States.

Many of us have prayed for this for 50 years. Many of us have marched for this and worked for this for 50 years. But, frankly, it seemed about as impossible as Hezekiah and Jerusalem escaping from the Assyrian army under Sennacherib, which had surrounded the city. But God was bigger for Hezekiah and, in His mercy, He has been bigger for us in America who cherish the lives of unborn, innocent children.

Our position remains inescapably and biblically clear. Psalm 139 declares that the Lord sees people’s unformed substance while we are still in our mother’s womb—and that He has all of our days written in His book before we live day one here on earth. A person’s life begins before conception in God’s mind and, therefore, certainly at conception.

So let us, who cherish life, take this moment to thank God for His sweet mercy for the unborn babies. Babies who will be saved and allowed to live out their God-ordained lives.

And let us not forget to thank God for His mercy for America.

"For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well." Psalm 139:13-14

I'd been in Chapel Hill, North Carolina for almost six years by the time I came to Christ.  Shortly after I was baptized, Bob Eckhart, the man who had led me to Christ, told me that I needed to leave town. I was a little taken back. Everyone I was close to at that point in my life was in Chapel Hill. Why in the world would I leave my “home” and all my friends?  

Bob said, “Lon, don't you understand that every relationship you have here, all your old drug buddies, all your old drinking buddies, all your old girlfriends, all your fraternity brothers -- don't you understand that every relationship you have in this town is enticing you to sin and disobey God? All those relationships are not going to help you grow in the Lord. You need to get out of this town and make a deliberate effort to build friendships and a team of people around you who walk with Christ.”  

So, in 1971, after hitchhiking around the country for a few months, I ended up settling in Washington D.C. and I set out to do exactly as Bob had advised me to do. I began seeking out people whose spiritual walk was higher than mine, better than mine, and would challenge me. I surrounded myself with these people.  

Bob gave me the best piece of advice anyone has ever given me. And he was so right! If I had stayed where I was with all those old friendships and relationships, it would have been very difficult for me to grow as a believer and a much greater chance that I would have fallen back into my old sinful and destructive behaviors. The bottom line is who you hang around will have a huge impact on your spiritual life. Charles Spurgeon once said, “A believer never pulls the world up. The world always pulls a believer down.”  

Of course, we all have acquaintances who do not follow Jesus, but that is not what I am talking about. I am talking about guarding our hearts and not letting those people become the influencers of our lives. Friends, it’s a real simple formula. Bad company promotes bad morals, good company promotes good morals and godly company promotes godly morals.  

If you are a follower of Christ are you deliberately seeking to keep company with godly people? People who will challenge you in your walk with God. People who will confront you about non-Christlike behavior in your life. The Bible says, “Do not be deceived: Evil company corrupts good habits.”  1 Corinthians 15:33.

So I am here on behalf of God to say to you what Bob said to me, which is, to intentionally seek out people who are sold out for Jesus Christ. People who are ahead of you in their walk and make those Christ followers the influencers in your life.

Was it hard to lose all those friendships, leave Chapel Hill and start over? Of course. But if we are serious about our relationship with Jesus, we need to be willing to make those changes.

Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the path of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful; but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law he meditates day and night. He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that brings forth its fruit in its season, whose leaf also shall not wither; and whatever he does shall prosper. Psalm 1:1-3  

My mother and I had a complicated relationship.

Even though my mother was seldom around, she was determined to control and dominate me. I realized later in life that perhaps this was not a deliberate and voluntary decision that she made, but rather just who she was, someone who had been raised by a domineering father.

The problem was that I was wired for self-determination and was fiercely independent. I remember that my mother and I would clash in epic battles-she trying to manipulate me into doing it her way and me resisting her control with every fiber of my being!

My mother would use cruel and hurtful rejection to try to achieve her ends, often refusing to speak to me for weeks at a time if I did not comply and do something the way she wanted. During these times of silence, she would send messages to me through my younger brother Brian. It was a vicious continuous cycle.

This treatment produced a troubled young man dominated by paranoia, lack of self-confidence, multiple neuroses, and dangerously sociopathic behavior. At this point in my life, I was a therapist’s dream!

So, at first glance, it would certainly seem like I was destined to grow up to be a damaged, neurotic, perhaps even dangerous person. The odds favored it and indeed at 22, I was well on my way to living a destructive godless life.

Not too long after I gave my life to Christ, I ended up attending Washington Bible College. It was during those early years of Bible school that I started praying for a godly wife. I personally knew the impact that a mother could have on her children, and I was determined to marry someone who lived for Jesus. So, I decided to start of list of Christ-like qualities that I was looking for in a wife.

As the months passed, by observation and Bible study, I had developed quite a list! Some of my top priorities were things like, must love God; must want to serve God as her life’s call; must come from a solid Christian family and know how to make family work; must be a woman of wisdom and discretion; must understand God's plan for marriage from the Bible and so forth.

In the second category, I had listed things like beauty, intelligence, kindness, warmth, theological soundness, agreement in childrearing philosophy, etc. In the third category were things like great dresser, fiscally conservative, good housekeeper, etc. I realized even back then that my list was not very romantic in some people’s minds, but I was convinced that it would help me do a better job of picking a life partner who would not only be a good wife, but a great mother to our children.

Then I met Brenda. She was the epitome of everything I was looking for in a godly wife and mother. She had been raised in a caring, loving Christian family. She put the Lord first and it was evident in her life. God blessed me with a woman who knew how to raise her children in the fear and admonition of the Lord.

I am grateful and blessed that I ended up accepting Jesus as my personal Savior and thankfully, my mother came to Christ just prior to her death. But we can never underestimate the impact that a mother has on a child during those early years. For the good or the bad, starting from birth, mothers are one of, if not the most influential person in a child’s life.

As parents we need to commit to making an impact on our children for Christ. Start at an early age taking them to church, praying with them, memorizing scripture together, reading them God’s Word. That will make all the difference. Deuteronomy 6:6-7 says, “These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.”  

A godly foundation and pointing your children towards the Lord will have an eternal impact that can’t be measured. You will never regret living your life for Christ and leading your children to follow Jesus.  

 “I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth.” 3 John 1:4  

Fifty-one years ago, in the spring of 1971, I gave my life to Jesus Christ.

The first person I wanted to tell was Bob Eckhart, the preacher who had handed me a gospel tract and shared Christ with me on a street corner in Chapel Hill, NC.

I had not seen Bob for almost a month. He had been going to the large demonstrations that were happening all over in protest to the Vietnam War. He was handing out tracts and telling people about Jesus, so he had not been in Chapel Hill for a few weeks.

But that first Saturday after I had come to Christ for good, I headed to Franklin Street looking for Bob on the corner by the post office where I had first met him. When I saw his van from a distance, I hurried over and found him handing out tracts as usual.

I excitedly pulled him aside and began to tell him about the events of the last month. Bob could not believe what he was hearing! He listened in stunned silence as I told him about the healing of my dog and my salvation prayer. (Listen to my testimony here) Finally, when I was finished talking, he let out a loud "Hallelujah" and said “Come here, you have to tell Amy this story!”

Bob ran and got his wife Amy, who had been praying in the van while Bob was out on the street corner talking to people. I told Amy what I had just shared with Bob, and she yelled “hallelujah” too! Then Amy and Bob began to hug each other and pray out loud in thanksgiving to God. They pulled me into their group hug and started to jump around!

At that moment, I began to wonder if I had done the right thing. All this emotion scared me. I worried I might have gotten myself connected to a bunch of crazy religious nuts!

But when everyone calmed down, I knew that it did not really matter what other people did. I knew for certain at that moment what Jesus had done for me on the cross and no one could take that away from me. No one.

Bob immediately took me under his wing and began to mentor me. That very day, he put a bunch of tracts in my hand and the two of us stood on Franklin Street witnessing for the Lord.

At first, I objected to doing this. I said, “Bob, I just gave my life to Jesus a few days ago. I don’t know anything about theology or the Bible. I am brand new to all of this. What in the world do I say to someone who questions or challenges me?”

Bob’s answer was simple and profound. He said, “Lon, just tell people what you told me. Tell them what Jesus has done for you. People’s hearts aren’t moved by theology. They’re moved by someone’s compelling story of what God has done in their life. God’s done a great work in your life; just tell them your story.”

Friends, Easter is a perfect time to tell people your story about what God has done for you. That He sent His only begotten son, Jesus, to die on a cross for your sins. That His story is the reason you have peace. Because of His death, burial and resurrection you have hope. That He is the way, the truth and life. And accepting Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior has made all the difference in your life.

God can and will use your story to draw people to Jesus. Step out in faith and share your testimony and trust God to do His part.

But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear; 1 Peter 3:15

As I drove off the church property after the congregational meeting, in September 2017, I was aware that things would never be the same.

I was flooded with competing emotions. The memories of the last 38 years as Senior Pastor filled my mind. It was overwhelming to think about! When I started as pastor, I had one small child and now I had 8 grandchildren and my oldest son was 40!

I felt like a rudderless ship as I drove home that night. I had been a pastor for so long I had forgotten what it felt like in the days before. What would I do now? How would I spend my weekends? My weekdays? I honestly felt like a duck out of water. I felt exhausted and tired like I had never felt before: emotionally, physically, spiritually, and in every other way. I had no idea what I would do next or what my future was going to look like.

In the months prior people had been asking me what I was going to do next in the Lord’s service. I honestly had no idea. I would respond to anyone who asked, “I am totally spent. I've got nothing left to give right now!" And I meant it!

Since I was no longer pastor, the church decided not to continue sponsoring the radio outreach into 2018. While I completely understood the decision, I felt that it was not God’s will that the radio ministry come to an end.  It was clear that God was leading me to continue the ministry, but what that looked liked, I had no idea.

So with much prayer and discussion, in November of 2017, we decided to start Lon Solomon Ministries. This would encompass reaching people with the gospel and preached WORD through the SO WHAT? Radio sermons, Not a Sermon, Just a Thought ads, social media, podcasts, the LSM App , and my annual tours to the Holy Land and other biblical sites.

We immediately applied to be a 501c3 non-profit, which would give us tax exempt status with the IRS. Much to our surprise, we received our 501c3 status within 6 weeks! Lon Solomon Ministries (LSM) was off and running!
 
Never did I think that I would start a ministry like this! In fact, I felt like God had actually "forced" me into it-that the Lord had used circumstances to force me to go somewhere that I would never have planned to go on my own.

But when I thought about it, I realized that I was not the first person that God had moved like this.  

God, in His perfect will, forced Joseph to go to Egypt through the treachery of his brothers.
 
God forced Joseph and Mary to go to Bethlehem through the actions of Caesar Augustus.

God forced Moses to go to the backside of the desert through the actions of Pharoah.

And now, God had forced me to go somewhere that I had never thought, dreamed or planned to go anymore than Moses, Joseph or the Holy Family had!

Over the last 4 years, God has provided beyond my wildest dreams. LSM airs on over 800 media outlets with the preached WORD of God. I started Live with Lon! in March of 2020, to give hope in the midst of a pandemic, and here we are over a year later with a thriving online video preaching channel! Praise the LORD!

I am humbled and honored that God was not finished with me yet, and dear friend, if you are reading this, God is not finished with you! It doesn’t matter how old you are, who you are, where you are, how little you’ve done, how much you’ve done, how far you’ve come, how much you’ve stumbled or failed, and it certainly doesn’t matter what stage of life you are in! God has a purpose and plan for your life. He is just asking us, like the old hymn says, to trust and obey!

Friend, remember, it's not over til GOD says it's over!

Being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ. Philippians 1:6

Bob Eckhardt was a strong, robust man in his 40's with a gray beard. He had given his life to Christ a number of years before and had a passion for sharing Jesus with people. Eckhardt especially loved and felt called to open-air, street evangelism. He would travel to Washington, DC and many other places along the east coast, handing out gospel tracts and sharing Christ.

But in the spring of 1971, Bob and his wife, Amy, decided to settle down in Durham, NC, where Bob had found work Monday through Friday as a laborer. However, on Saturdays, Bob would drive the 5 miles to Chapel Hill, park his van on Franklin Street and hand out tracts to anyone who would take them. The van was covered with Bible verses all around and had big megaphone speakers mounted on the top. Sometimes he would even play Christian music through the loudspeakers.

Chapel Hill had never seen anything quite like Bob Eckhardt. The students considered him to be a joke, an idot, a complete buffoon. Some would curse at him or spit on him. They would ball up the tracts he had given them and throw them back in his face.  He became the laughingstock of Chapel Hill. But Bob was fearless and bold. No amount of ridicule or abuse could dissuade him from doing what he believed God had called him to do. He was faithful. Saturday after Saturday in the spring of 1971, he would stand there on Franklin Street, handing out the gospel to whoever would listen.

I had seen Bob a few times but had always tried to avoid him. When I couldn’t, I would politely take one of his tracts (because I felt sorry for the man) but I would never read them. I started referring to Bob to my friends as the “weirdest man in the world.”  But one Saturday as I was out walking my dog Noah, he got into a fight with another dog right there in front of Bob’s van. So I found myself eye to eye with Eckhardt, trying to stop this dog fight. All I wanted to do was to get away. So, after exchanging a quick hello, I walked off with Noah.

But that short encounter had a profound impact on me. At that moment, looking into Bob’s eyes, I knew that this man had what I was looking for. Call it peace, wholeness or the fullness of Christ – I did not know or have a name for it, but I knew it when I saw it. Something about Bob Eckhart was different.  It was a dramatic moment.

Standing there, for the first time, was a person who had what I had been searching for. None of the other religions, the drugs, the alcohol, the women – had impacted me like this. It lifted my hopes that my quest for peace and the meaning of life was not an impossible one. It made me confident that the answers were out there and attainable. If Eckhart had it, then I could have it too.

Of course, if you know my testimony, I went on to accept Jesus as my personal Lord and Savior. Bob’s full obedience and saying yes to God's call on his life, made an eternal impact on my life and thousands of others. God used the unlikely to accomplish His will.

Friends, our time here on earth is short. What is God calling you to do today? Where is He asking you to trust and obey? You have no idea what eternal impact your zealousness and full obedience to the Lord will have when you just say yes to God.

Preach the word! Be ready in season and out of season. Convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables. But you be watchful in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry. 2 Timothy 4:2-5  

Lon and his daughter Jill.

The well-known author Kurt Vonnegut once said: “The truth is, we know so little about life, we don’t really know what the good news is and what the bad news is."

Now, for followers of Jesus Christ, this is not true on either the micro or the macro level.
On the micro level, God tells us in the Bible that "ALL things work together for GOOD to those who love God and are called (in Jesus Christ) according to His purpose." (Rom 8:28)   All things in themselves may not be intrinsically "good" but the Bible says that God  promises to make the end result into good for every follower of Jesus. So this is "good news" on the micro level.

On the macro level, what Kurt Vonnegut said is also not true for believers in Jesus. The Bible says  that "he that believes not the Son of God shall not see life; but the wrath of God abides on him." (John 3:36) This news is about as eternally bad as it gets!

But hey--John 3:36  also says that "Whoever believes in the Son has....present tense...eternal life ....right now"! Now that is good news! That as a follower of Jesus, you and I have as much eternal life, right here on earth, as we are ever going to possess. Heaven is merely the place where people who already have eternal life through Jesus go after they leave this life. This is as eternally good as it gets! This is why the Bible calls this message "the Good News", which is what the word "Gospel" literally means.

The Bible declares: "And this is the testimony: that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life. These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life, and that you may continue to believe in the name of the Son of God." 1 John 5:11-13

So literally, here is the good news and the bad news of life patently laid out for Kurt Vonnegut and all who will believe the Bible.

Now, the SO WHAT? of all this is the following: the "bad news" of life--namely, our condemnation as sinners before a Holy God, would exist regardless whether the Lord Jesus had come to earth as a baby and gone to the cross for us. But, because the Lord did come on Christmas Day and pay for our sins on the cross, He created the "good news" that we humans so desperately needed.

The real question of Christmas is whether we will embrace and believe it. May the Lord help us all to accept the greatest good news this Christmas: JESUS!

Merry Christmas!

When I was a very young believer in the early 1970's, I attended a very strong and vibrant Bible church in Arlington, Virginia. There was a man there whom I saw virtually every Sunday. I remember one of the first times I met him, I asked him the standard  hello question: "How're you doing?" But to my surprise, he failed to give me the standard reply of "fine" or "good." Instead, he simply said: "Better than I deserve."
 
His answer caught me off-guard. But the more I thought about it as the day went on, the more I realized what an incredibly appropriate reply. "Better than I deserve." Indeed, anyone who really understands the teaching of the Bible should resonate with his statement. With God being as utterly holy as the Bible says He is--and with us being as utterly sinful as the Bible says we are--any good things with which God has blessed us far exceed what we deserve!

In fact, the Bible actually declares that GOODNESS is one of God's essential attributes.
 
Psalm 149:9 says, "The Lord is good to all and His tender mercies are over all His works."

Psalm 52:1 says, "The goodness of God endures continually."

And again in Psalm 34:8 "O taste and see that the Lord is good."
 
It's like Chris Tomlin sings: "You're a good, good Father; That's who You are."

Now, an "attribute" is not something God DOES--it's something that God IS. This is a most important distinction. If goodness were something God DOES, then at any moment God could decide not to do it. But if goodness is something that God IS, then He cannot be anything but this way lest He cease to be God. And this is why Psalm 23:6 says "Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life."
 
The SO WHAT? of all of this is that we will always find God's goodness and mercy embedded in everything that happens in our lives. No matter how bad the tragedy or how deep the loss--no matter how acute the pain or how unhappy the situation--God's goodness/mercy is always there if we will simply look for it. Always!

The car accident could've been worse. At least we have the money to pay for the repair. At least there's a medicine to treat the infection.  At least my child got sick while I wasn't out of town. At least the Lord took her home quickly. You get the idea: dig deeply enough into any circumstance, and we will always find God's goodness and mercy there. And yes, it's true: sometimes His mercy/goodness is so hidden that at first we can't see it. But this is where we must walk by faith and trust God and wait for His goodness/mercy to rise to the top like cream always does. And rest assured, it always  does and it always will.

As I look back over my almost 50 years of walking with the Lord Jesus, I am constantly humbled by the goodness that He has showered on me and my family. As time goes by, and as the Holy Spirit uses the Word of God and His own personal ministry to my heart to reveal to me how corrupt my fleshly nature really is, I become more and more overwhelmed by God's kindnesses to me. And I try to be like the one leper (Luke 17) who came back to say "thank you." But how can we ever thank God sufficiently for something so magnanimous and undeserved?

So, this Thanksgiving, may I suggest, when someone asks you "how are you doing?", that you give them the correct and accurate and biblical response: "Better than I deserve!", thereby pointing  them to the Lord Jesus instead of yourself--so that He can receive the credit and the spotlight that He so deserves.
"And  as Jesus was getting into the boat, the man who had been demon-possessed begged to go with him. However, Jesus did not permit him, but said to him, 'Go home to your own people and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you.'" Mark 5:18-20

Happy Thanksgiving from our family to yours!

As many of you know, I have a wonderful daughter Jill. She suffers from severe physical and mental disabilities. She and my wife Brenda are the loves of my life.  

One of the things Jill loves to do is to ride in the van with daddy in the evenings. We hold hands and listen to Christian music and sing along together. She cannot speak but she can make verbal sounds and sings using those sounds. I cherish this special time with Jill.

As a result, I have become somewhat of an expert I suppose on contemporary Christian music, after having listened to hundreds of hours of it. I have noticed that there seems to be a steady thread through much of this music, and that is the ambiguous way in which these songs treat Jesus and Biblical truth, leaving such truths (especially the hard truths) open to interpretation by the spiritual bias of the listener.  

Please allow me to explain. I love the song “Look up Child”, by Lauren Daigle. It lifts my spirit every time I hear it. But I know who I’m looking up to. I know it’s the God of the Bible. The holy, faithful, just, righteous, gracious, God that the Bible tells me about. However, since the lyrics of the song fail to make that perfectly clear, it occurs to me that someone else might think that they’re looking up to Allah, or Buddha, or mother Mary, or whatever spiritual entity they might believe in. The song leaves a lot of ambiguity to the listener.

Another example is the song “Fear is a Liar”, by Zach Williams. The song is about not believing the lies of Satan when he accuses us as Christians and seeks to cause fear and insecurity in our lives as children of the living God, adopted through Jesus Christ, and safe in the arms of Jesus. But here’s the problem: fear is not a liar because fear is not an animate person. Satan is the liar. As Jesus said in John 8:44 - Satan is the father of lies. So why doesn’t the song simply say that? It is possible that this song was originally written that way and maybe a producer said the song would never sell using the Devil’s name since many people believe he’s a myth, so they used the word fear in instead. Perhaps it didn’t happen this way, but in any likelihood, Satan is the proper subject because Satan is the liar, not fear. Well enough of the semantics – – what’s the point? Or as I always like to say “SO WHAT? “

The so what is simply this: these kinds of lyrics reflect a disturbing trend in the theology of the evangelical church in America, namely, our aversion to declaring the Bible in a clear, unapologetic way, regardless if it offends or not. Not every preacher or teacher has this approach, some do preach the WORD, clearly and concisely, but it is becoming disturbingly far too common, especially among some of our younger preachers and teachers. These people, both men and women, seem to be overly obsessed with making biblical truth palatable and friendly, trying to avoid any offense. The truth is, whether it be millennial's, GenXers, baby boomers, or senior citizens – – biblical truth never has been, nor will it ever be, palatable to unbelievers or sometimes even to believers who are living lives that are out of step with it.
When we as followers of Christ attempt to soften or water down the preached or sung Word of God, all we succeed in doing is at worst distorting biblical truth or at best leaving biblical truth open for personal interpretations based on the spiritual whims and maturity of the listener. The Bible says in 2 Timothy 4:2-4, that we need to “preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction. For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.” Sadly, it seems to me, that this is where are we are in the Evangelical world today. Trying to please the itching ears, afraid to offend or convict, instead of correcting, rebuking and encouraging. 
One thing that I noticed over many years of listening to Billy Graham preach, is that his most common phrase was simply “the Bible says “, after which he would fearlessly and clearly say exactly that without leaving room for ambiguity. It seems to me that what we need today is a new generation of preachers and teachers who are willing to stand up and simply declare “the Bible says” and then have the courage to finish the sentence with the same definiteness that the Bible has on the issues of life and eternity. The Word of God tells us that we will be unpopular as we do this (John 15:18) and so there should be no expectation to the contrary. In fact, if everyone likes the content of our preaching something is wrong.

I am certainly not calling upon us to be offensive for the sake of being offensive. But as Paul wrote, there is an offense to the gospel (Galatians 5:11). That includes those who do not believe it and to Christians who are living their lives like they don’t believe it. If we seek to remove the offense, we are helping to distort the gospel of Jesus Christ.

“For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” 1 Corinthians 1:18

It is hard to believe that 50 years ago this week I was at Woodstock.

As August 1969 rolled around, some of my friends told me about a music festival that was coming to the Catskills in a couple of weeks. One of my fellow dining room workers at the hotel that I was working at during the summer, suggested that since I had already earned enough money to pay for my next school year,  we should quit our jobs and rent a house near the festival grounds in White Lake, NY. Even though I had no idea what Woodstock was, I thought it sounded like a good idea. The two of us along with two other friends, rented a house for the month less than one mile from Max Yasgur's farm and the Woodstock Music Festival.

I had no idea what was about to take place all around me. For the next two weeks, prior to the festival, I would drop acid, smoke hashish, and wander up to the site of Woodstock for the day. I interacted with the workers who were feverishly building the stage. I hung out with the people from the farm who were working on the infrastructure for the festival.  

Then on Thursday, August 14, 1969, the people started coming. And coming. And coming. I could not believe my eyes as over 400,000 young people poured into town. Most of them had to trek by our rented house as they headed for the festival and before long our rental was packed with all sorts of people that we had invited in.

I spent the entire weekend tripped out and stoned. I specifically remember seeing Janis Joplin, Santana, Jimmy Hendricks, Richie Havens and a few others. But most of the weekend was lost in a blur of drugs and trips. My experience at Woodstock cemented my commitment to go back to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for my senior year as an outspoken promoter of psychedelic drug use. At this point, I had lost all interest in going to class or becoming a research chemist. In fact, I lost interest in just about everything except discovering the spiritual answers to life: Why I was here on earth? What was my purpose in life? What was going to happen to me after I died? These thoughts began to dominate my life and I believed that I would be able to discover the answers through my drug use.

It is true that LSD had altered my outlook on a lot of things, but most notably myself. I had been forced to confront the reality of what I really was on the inside. I had come to understand that I was not the wonderful and nice person I had believed myself to be. I began to realize that I was selfish, immoral and completely without conscience. I realized I was lost.

I thought I could “fix” myself by delving into eastern religions, becoming an avid reader of Zen Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, and Hinduism. I even went to Washington, DC and hooked up with a Hare Krishna branch there. But even though I threw myself into each of these religions with abandon, every one of them left me feeling empty and with unanswered questions.

It was then that I met a preacher on the streets of Chapel Hill, proclaiming that Jesus was the only way. Being Jewish, this was the last thing I would ever consider!  (you can listen to my entire testimony here). But through God’s grace and transforming power, I turned my life over to Jesus Christ, and I have never been the same.

If you have never accepted Jesus as your personal Savior, God’s Word says that today is the day of salvation. Don’t waste your time like I did on dead ends. Jesus is knocking at the door waiting for you to come to Him. All you need to do is answer.

“Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me." Revelation 3:20