When my wife and I started driving toward Mount Rainier from Seattle last month, the sky was royal blue. We were pumped, hopeful we’d be able to see it. We had read that sighting the highest mountain in Washington can be fraught with disappointment, remaining elusive....

When I was attending the University of Tennessee during the early 1970s, we never could beat Auburn in football. Not much has changed since then! My boss at Samaritan’s Purse and the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association was an Auburn journalism grad, a few years...

I hate weeds. Don’t you? Oh yeah, I know, the yellow dandelion flower is pretty and all. But they’re actually insidious creatures and every spring my #1 nemesis. When I left Boone for a week out in Denver, my grass was green and looked nice. I had spread weed killer...

Is a child ever too young to pray big, visionary prayers? And then to back up their prayers with homegrown fund-raising events to help get a major ministry project off the ground? May it never be! We need more kids like Sam Anderson. When Sam was just five years old,...

If you’re up for a challenge—and want to expand your knowledge of and commitment to helping fulfill Jesus Christ’s Great Commission to the ends of the earth—then you’ll want to consider enrolling in Perspectives, an intensive course on world missions. Now, I mean a...

Discovering God’s call on your life and fulfilling His will is deeply satisfying and rewarding. As author Os Guinness says, “No idea short of God’s call can ground and fulfill the truest human desire for purpose and fulfillment.” But the journey can sometimes be...

Nothing like money to raise our anxiety level. But nothing like money to raise our trust level. As a rising senior at the University of Tennessee, I was at home in Wilmington, Delaware on summer break. Upstairs in my bedroom, I was staring at what little money I had...

What’s your favorite event on your church calendar? When I was living in Chattanooga, Tennessee, our pastor said of all the activities held at our church—and we had a lot going on—the annual missions conference was his #1. Pretty amazing! That was the time we invited...

Though I had traveled to dozens of countries to report on mission activities—some of them in challenging if not dangerous environments—I had never personally participated on a short-term mission trip. That first opportunity came in the early 2000s. I was petrified....

College sophomores can be jerks. I was one of them. One night we glued our dorm counselor’s door shut and he missed an urgent counseling session with a friend. Afterward, Larry told me he was just trying to do what God had called him to do. A year later, I went to...