On the afternoon of May 2, 1990, I heard holy things. I was visiting Larry Hildreth, a father and husband from our church in Pennsylvania. He was in his thirties, but he was near death from cancer. I was at his home to serve him Communion, because he was too weak to come to church.

Larry was a deeply thoughtful man, and as he spoke that day, slow and deliberately, I realized I was hearing extraordinary ...

In May of 2009, author and speaker Gordon MacDonald was invited to spend a weekend at the Mount Zion Baptist Church in Nashville, Tennessee. Mount Zion's pastor, Bishop Joseph Walker, III, had invited MacDonald to preach to his congregation on a day devoted to honoring those who were graduating from one level of education to another. In an article for Leadershipjournal.net, MacDonald shares how the ...

After successfully separating numerous Siamese twins and continuing to refine the techniques of several complicated surgeries, Dr. Ben Carson has become known throughout the world as a premiere brain surgeon. What many do not know is that because of an uncontrollable temper as a child, Dr. Carson's career was almost over before it began. In his book Take the Risk, Dr. Carson writes about the day he ...

I went to my first black funeral when I was 16 years old. A friend of mine, Clarence, had died. The pastor was incredible. From the pulpit he talked about the Resurrection in beautiful terms. He had us thrilled. He came down from the pulpit, went to the family, and comforted them from the fourteenth chapter of John. "Let not your heart be troubled," he said, "'You believe in God, believe also in me,' ...

Most kingdoms do anything they can to protect their king. This is the unspoken premise of the game of chess, for example. When the king falls, the kingdom is lost. Therefore, the king must be protected at all costs. Another notable example comes from the Allied invasion of Normandy on D-Day, June 6, 1944. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill desperately wanted to join the expeditionary forces ...

A cloud of doubt hangs over home run king Barry Bonds. On August 7, 2007, Bonds hit number 756, the home run that broke Hank Aaron's record. Most of the talk about the new record, though, is whether it really should count, because Bonds is alleged to have used steroids. Sports buffs say if his name goes in the record book it should be accompanied by an asterisk. The asterisk, of course, means that ...

In January, 2008, a story made the rounds about a 15-year-old girl in Australia named Demi-Lee Brennan. Brennan became the world's first known transplant patient to change blood types from O negative to O positive, taking on the immune system of her organ donor. At first the doctors assumed someone had made a mistake, because it's always been assumed that a change like that can't happen. Now they ...

What oxygen is to the lungs, such is hope to the meaning of life.

—Emil Brunner, Swiss theologian (1889–1966)

When the prayer made in faith is not answered, and the healing for which many have sought does not come, we are not to look for someone to accuse of failure in faith. Rather we are to remember that besides faith there is hope. Hope has to do with God's promises that are still future and hidden, just as faith has to do with God's promises that are here and now. To the person who has believed for today ...

As a child, I was captivated by Jesus' words on prayer [in Matthew 6:5–6]. …

In the wee ranch house where I grew up, my bedroom was my sanctuary. But my real "inner sanctum," the only space that made me feel uninhibited enough to unload my youthful angst onto God, was my closet. Crouched in its dark, tiny confines, I'd spill tears of anger and words of confusion over childhood slights and perceived ...