After a refreshing break from classes to celebrate both the Christmas and New Year's holidays, my colleagues and I returned to Valor to prepare for the coming new term that begins this week.  As a part of our preparations, we joined together to listen to one another's stories and to seek to hear God's present call upon our lives. Calling, like our salvation, is not a single past act by Christ.  Rather, it is an on-going work of God in us and through us to others. Even as we need to know the reality of Christ's forgiveness and restoration to life in Him each new day, we also need to listen for and obey His present call upon our life.  During our sessions together, I was given an opportunity to share with my colleagues a brief message emphasizing this truth. The audio file may be accessed here .

  As my first term is drawing to a close, a new chapter is beginning in my life abroad @ Valor.  My housemate and colleague Indy Jung and I have been moved out of our first campus house and moved into our second just across the street.  Since we had already dubbed the first residence "Bruderhof," we decided that our new digs would be known as "Bruderhof II" While the move was not far in distance, it did locate us higher in elevation on the mountain side.  As a result, the view from Bruderhof II's balcony is quite spectacular!  On a clear autumn's crisp morning, I can watch the day break over the distant mountains in the east.  I'm usually the only one up before the dawn, so I typically try to capture the moment as best a camera can, but I must confess, that all too often the camera simply gets in the way of appreciating the absolute glory of the new day's dawning. I find myself needing to be regularly reminded that each day does indeed bring a new be...

When I encounter periods of discouragement here along the path of seeking to teach the next generation the Way of Christ, I find that I receive a gift of encouragement often from the most unexpected of events.  Just this morning I was reviewing the "memories" that Facebook generates on my page and discovered this most heartening of testimonies from a student I was priviledged to teach some twenty years ago during my days on the faculty of Missouri Baptist University. "When my wife and I lived in St. Louis, I served as a youth and music pastor at a little dying church. We loved the people of that church and they loved us as well. However, the church was struggling under the leadership of a pastor who had lost his heart for ministry. I did the best I could as a 20-something to love my pastor, and support him. To help mitigate the pastor's stress, the head of deacons and I took on extra responsibilities to try to give him margin to care for himself. In the midst of this...

  "When the earth totters, . . . it is I who keep steady . . . Selah " (Psalm 75:3).  Do verses in Scripture sometimes just jump out and grab you? Stop you in your hurrying tracks and virtually demand that you pause and ponder them?  This one did to me this morning.   I had just returned late last evening from a delightful visit over the Thanksgiving break with dear friends at Handong in Pohang.  I enjoyed wonderful times of table fellowship, worship and ministry as I was invited to share a message from God's Word with the precious believers who gather at Pohang International Community Church (PICC). Travel around Korea is quite pleasant.  The highways are well-planned and always maintained to perfection, so driving across the pennisula is smooth and uneventful.  I was thankful to have been provided a vehicle again from Valor that made my trip a true joy -- no troubles, no accidents, no flat tires -- no tottering of the earth. But even when all ar...

  What is your pace of life? Do you find yourself always in a hurry? Do the pressures and demands of the immediate call you to urgency?  How's that working out?  How's your physical health?  How's your mental health?  And, above all, how's your spiritual health.  Now, I readily agree with brother Bonhoeffer when he says: Just as the Christian should not be constantly feeling his spiritual pulse, so, too, the Christian community has not been given to us by God for us to be constantly taking its temperature. The more thankfully we daily receive what is given to us, the more surely and steadily will fellowship increase and grow from day to day as God pleases. While it is true that we do not have to be constantly taking our "spiritual temperature," we would though do well, as I am learning once again through my life abroad, to acknowledge that the general pace of our life says a great deal about the depth of our life.  The more we feel that we are running,...

  This past weekend it was my true delight to travel to Seoul.  I didn't plan to tour any of the cultural sites or explore the shopping districts.  My sole objective (pun intended) was to spend time visiting with students I had the priviledge of teaching at Handong who are now engaged in a variety of callings serving others.  It turned-out to be a glorious autumn weekend filled with soul-refreshing times of fellowship! I stayed at a small guesthouse near Gyeongbokgung Palace that I had discovered last summer on my visit following an extended stay at L'Abri Fellowship in Yang Yang where I gave lectures on Luther during their summer session.  The guesthouse was very quiet and comfortable, so I enjoyed a restful night's sleep on Friday and arose energized to meet a day filled with appointments. I met my first student, Heather Moon, at a cafe near the metro station, and then we enjoyed a morning walk around the grounds of the Sajikdan Altar originally founded in 139...