Disciples Who Hear God's Voice

This coming Sunday, June 1, we have a big change coming to the church. We're going to try out this prosperity gospel thing and see how we like it. Just kidding. This Sunday, we will install three new overseers to the church. Travis Maxwell, Scott Stephens, and Glen Campbell have completed an elder apprentice process that lasted well over a year, and they will be installed as overseers of the church. I say this is a big change because as these three guys join the voting elder board, it will necessarily change that group of elders. 1 Timothy 5:17 (depending on the version you read) implies that elders govern the affairs of the church. 1 Peter 5:1-2 says that elders should be shepherds of the flock and exercise oversight. Jesus says that a true shepherd is one who lays his life down for the sheep.  For these reasons, adding three new men to the elder team is a big change. At the same time, it's not that big of a change because these three guys have already been doing the work of o...

I’ve been thinking about this season we find ourselves in where leaders continue to be exposed as having major sin, manipulative practices, cover-ups, etc. It seems to be dividing the church in some ways, maybe in good ways.  I’m not for division, but I am for God purifying his bride, preparing her to be presented to himself without spot or wrinkle. One example of division that is on our doorstep is as simple as whether or not we believe this season of exposure is actually from God or if it is an attack from the “accuser of the brethren,” designed to take down Godly, innocent leaders.  Some churches are calling the many moral failures we’ve been seeing just that, a demonic attack, designed to falsely accuse innocent leaders and cast their ministries into disrepair. I disagree. I think what we’re seeing is real, and I think God is bringing this about now because he is calling the church to righteousness. A test I believe we are receiving is this;  are we willing to call an...

This week, our church has been rallying in prayer around one of our Elders, Douglas Coco. As of the writing of this post, he is in the ICU in the cardiac unit of Baylor Hospital in Dallas. On Thursday, he went to the ER with dizziness that was bad enough that he made the right call and went to the hospital. The first hospital diagnosed him with a serious issue that would need emergency open-heart surgery, so they careflighted him to Dallas. As it was getting late, we were told that he was being prepped for surgery.  I don't know what all happened with everyone else that night, but I know what the night was like for me. I fell asleep praying after the last text update came out. I woke up randomly at 3 am and checked my phone, expecting to see another update after the surgery, but there was no update. I really started feeling the gravity of what was going on, and I started wondering if no update actually meant something very bad.  I ended up getting up and reading scripture and ...

  Throwback picture from a Remnant episode filmed at Wellspring in 2019 with Kathy Gray (Left), Josh Lewis (center), and Michael Miller (right). Part 1 Are you a dreamer of dreams? Maybe you are, but you don't know it. Maybe you suspect that you are, but you're afraid to sound like a weirdo. Well let me be the first to say, dreams are a normal way God speaks to his people... you might still be a weirdo, but it will have to be for other reasons! On May 18, at 6pm, we have a Well service focused on dreams and dream interpretation. I've invited Kathy Gray to share about the scriptural foundation of dream interpretation and the practical ministry she has been doing for 20 years. Kathy is a member of The Village Church and was featured on Remnant Radio in 2019. Here's the link to the episode which is pictured above:  Dream Interpretation: How to Interpret Dreams . It was a bit surreal to listen to this episode, by the way. At the beginning, Miller tells a story from the 2019...

Last Sunday, we opened the Mark 16 "can of worms." Perhaps you've stumbled across this can of worms yourself when reading the last chapter of the book of Mark. After verse 8, you will find an editor's note like the picture above. The note in the ESV says, "Some of the earliest manuscripts do not include Mark 16:9-20" In the sermon, we talked about two camps: 1) those who believe the longer version is not original to the text and 2) those who believe it is. The majority of scholars believe that what we have today was not originally in the text; however even within THAT camp, scholars are split.  Some believe that the original text ended with the abrupt verse-8 ending: "And they went out and fled from the tomb, for trembling and astonishment had seized them, and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid." Others in that camp say that the longer ending is not original but that it was added to replace the original longer ending that has been lo...

I'm sure you've heard that Easter is named after a goddess named Ishtar or the Germanic goddess Eostur and that celebrating Easter is a deception brought into Christian practice that pollutes our worship of Jesus. I used to believe that myself, but here's why I don't anymore. And guess what, the answer is deeply linguistic, so buckle up! You can find a good amount of this explanation in this video by Wes Huff, but I will connect a few more dots in this post. It would be better to read this explanation BEFORE watching Huff's video:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q31k28_rdTg ____ What does Easter have to do with Ishtar. Literally nothing. The words just sound the same. Huff's video goes into a little more detail, but basically, the word "Easter" only shows up in Germanic languages, and Ishtar is not from Germanic origin, so it's a far cry to assume that ONLY the germanic speaking people adopted a holiday to celebrate a goddess from another language...

  The fourth day of the Kenya trip was not really the forth actual day on the ground, but it was the fourth day of ministry. We gathered for prayer, ate breakfast, and went to the final part of the conference, but on this day, we didn't have any workshops to teach, so we booked A LOT of ministry outside the conference.  We went with Kariz and his Count Me In team to Dandora, the slum of Nairobi. Kariz is from the slum and has gone back to start churches. The first stop on our trip was an outreach at Kariz's church. The team brought school children from somewhere in the slum, and we got to minister to them in Kariz's church building. We sang and danced to start things off. Then Drew Scott preached. It wasn't the first time he preached on the trip, but this was the first time I heard him. It was a good, compelling message, and at the end several kids gave their lives to the Lord.  Dancing at the beginning of the service Drew, preaching in Dandora Praying with several kids...