Daily Challenges Archive

I have a stream, or a creek (I’m never sure what the difference is), running through my property into our lake. It’s very steady. However, after a big rain, it rushes by and makes for a great sight and sound that is very soothing. Deep waters and ...

What are the benefits of age? Hopefully figuring out who is smart and who is not in your journey. Smart people tend to do basically smart things, and the foolish ones obviously reveal that distinction by what they do as well. When you have an open...

We bumped into this truth a little bit yesterday. God has the power to influence not only His children’s hearts but even those of non-believers. The fact that they will operate at peace with those who please God does not mean they will be trustwor...

As with all of Scripture, there are many ways for a truth to play out. That is not to suggest that the truth is malleable or anything less than 100% solid. Truth is not relative. We don’t create or define truth. We simply accept it and live by it,...

Even though this was written about 950 years before Jesus roamed the Middle East, there is an adjacent story Jesus tells. Solomon’s point is that wise people build and, with God’s wisdom, care for and establish their home—and, even more broadly, t...

When I was a young believer, I heard a speaker at a youth conference say that if God said there was no wall next to me, yet my eyes said there was, then my eyes were wrong. That’s actually pretty dumb. God doesn’t play those kinds of games. Howeve...

The word for prudence in the original language is sekel. It literally means “having good judgment, understanding, and the mental clarity to grasp how actions affect real life.” We know it is how we decide the best course of action by looking ahead...

I didn’t exactly choose this verse; it chose me. Well, sort of. Twenty-one years ago today, my sweet bride took her last breath on earth following an awful battle with cancer and breathed her next breath with resurrected lungs in the presence of h...

Hatred and love. Is there a clearer contrast than these two? Darkness and light. Definitely close, but Paul writes to tell the Corinthians that Satan can disguise himself as an angel of light. Hatred reveals itself as the sickness and brokenness i...

There are so many great parallels between this chapter and the New Testament. Specifically, in this verse, we see a foreshadowing of the great wedding feast (Matthew 22) that Jesus talks about and the Great Commission (Matthew 28) that He gives al...

If you’re in ministry long enough, you will eventually get questions about people who never hear the gospel and therefore end up going to hell. Because I spent decades in youth ministry, I heard that question pretty regularly. There are theologian...

I have a granddaughter who, whenever she has a vulnerable moment and I poke her in the side, jumps back and squeals. Her younger brother, in the same situation, turns and starts swinging, not even knowing where the poke came from. They’re both equ...