In last week’s WFTW I shared about my recent experience of having my worst fear come upon me—a stroke. I also shared how I started to experience the presence of the Lord during this time. I don’t want to imply this trial was not difficult. It was one of the most difficult experiences I have ever faced, yet worth it! The more I embraced the trial and thanked the Lord for it, the more I felt His joy.

         One thing I had hoped I would do if I ever faced a trial like this was not tolerate self-pity in...

         In this WFTW I will share a personal experience that relates to what many are going through to prepare for these times. 

         A couple years ago, the Lord spoke to me about a major problem I had that was costing me much by causing me to miss the Lord in many ways, such as divine connections and even miracles He wanted to do in and through me. The problem was my impatience.

         I asked the Lord to help me with this, and He was faithful to do so....

          If we considered Jesus’ definition of a disciple, we would likely conclude the percentage of professing Christians today who are true disciples to be less than 10%. As seen in the Gospels, far more people followed Jesus than became His disciples. So, we don’t want to discount those who do not comply with all the requirements of disciples as not true believers or not truly redeemed. As the apostle Paul said, “the Lord knows those who are His” (see II Timothy 2:19), indicating God will judge them, not us. 

          That being...

          We have been looking at the body of Christ in general in light of where we are going. As the great philosopher Yogi Berra once said, “If you don’t know where you are going, you’ll end up someplace else.” We need to have a clear vision of where we are going, but to get there, we must know where we are. A map of our destination won’t do us much good if we can’t find our current location on the map. 

          Our goal for examining where we are now is not...

       We have been addressing how the weakening of the call to follow Jesus has produced weak followers. This is not the only contributing factor to this, but it is a big one. The teaching found in most churches in the West, which focuses more on the benefits and blessings of believers in place of Christ, is another. 

       These teachings may be true, but when out of balance, they only feed the self-centeredness from which the Lord has delivered us. We will not become who we are called to be by focusing on ourselves....