I am in the Tucson airport headed home from a cactus filled few days in Arizona where I spoke at a pastors conference. The lineup of speakers was great and included: Skip Heitzig, James MacDonald, Pedro Garcia, Gayle Erwin, Don McClure, and Alistair Begg. We all spoke on different segments of the life of David and it was awesome. Not only because of what a privilege it was speak to 1,000 pastors and leaders from all over the country but also because of the opportunity to listen and be ministered to myself.

My favorite was hearing from Alistair Begg last night. He is one awesome Scotsman! His passionate and genuine conviction that the Bible is the actual word of God shows on his face as he speaks and you can’t help but feel like you are almost getting to go back in time and listen to Robert Murray McCheyne who preached, “with eternity stamped upon his brow.” Alistair is also a full on wordsmith and busted out yoda-esque pearls of wisdom like, “even the best of men are men at best.”

Getting to spend time backstage, between sessions, with guys like Alistair is worth more than gold. And you can be sure I worked on getting him to bring his radio show, Truth for life, onto fresh life radio. James MacDonald’s show, Walk in the Word, will be coming on later this year and I hope to hear some sweet scottish preaching soon too.

with Alistair Begg

My message was on David’s time hiding from Saul in the caves (I called it Beverly Caves 90210) and how he had to trust God’s promises even when they seemed super unlikely. I love preaching on David. He was just a punk kid who God used in major ways because he had a special heart. Normally in life having a heart condition disqualifies you from certain things, but it was David’s heart condition that qualified him to be used. Not that he was perfect (far from it) but he was a man after God’s own heart.

I am headed home for skull church and will be prepping my message on the flight–praying for God to move!

After a great weekend of ministry at Harvest Christian Fellowship my family and I ran into a mouse wearing a tuxedo while on an excursion to Disneyland. Alivia and I decided to say hello but Lenya, my younger daughter, was a little sketched out and kept her distance.

As much fun as the magic kingdom is I can’t help but think how much better Messiah’s Kingdom will be at worlds end. When Christ rules with a rod of iron the whole earth will be the happiest place! Lions and lambs will be high-fiving, crooked places will be made straight, and I bet churro’s won’t cost 5 bucks either, it’s going to be epic.

On Wednesday at Skull Church, in addition to a special message from Greg Laurie, as a bonus we were joined by Seattle rockband The Myriad. They get tons of play on fresh life radio, have a song on the game Rockband and have even received a good amount of attention from MTV. A few years back we had them at an O2 Experience event and I really dig them. They are super cool guys and musically they are awesome, without a doubt one of my favorites that have played at Skull Church so far–just good clean rock and roll.

After they played Greg gave a great message on how to know the will of God and we saw a number of people respond to the invitation, making professions of faith, at both the Strand and Liberty theatres. I love Greg’s preaching skillz (and his nunchuck skillz* too) he is passionate, easy to listen to, thoroughly Biblical, and hilarious. The next day we flew to SoCal and I spoke at his Bible study in Orange County. I gave a message called Flour Power on the story of Elijah and the Widow of Zarepath from 1 Kings 17 and then promptly ate at in-n-out. Today we spent some time with another super cool pastor who also lives in Seattle but more on that later. The boarding door just closed and I need to make some progress on this weekend’s NUCLEUS message.

*Napoleon Dynamite Reference
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I am on a plane in Salt Lake City headed home to Montana where I will be speaking at Skull Church tonight on the life of Elijah. My wife and I spent the last few days with some of our favorite people on the earth teaching the Bible and enjoying the beauty of autumn in North Carolina. (I took this photo from the front porch.)
In some areas the leaves changing made the hills look like they were on fire, (I attached a pic of that at the end of the blog) it was overwhelmingly beautiful and refreshing.

Greg Laurie, Pedro Garcia, Don McClure and I all spoke 2x each during a seminar on Christ’s Return at the Billy Graham Training Center at the Cove. There was also music at each session by the always enthusiastic Dennis Agajanian and worship by Marty Goetz. It was a really sweet blend of hanging out and ministry. Everybody brought their wives and Greg brought his whole family along and we all had a blast drinking sweet tea, eating delicious Southern cooking and meeting all the friendly people that were there on retreat. Skip and Lenya Heitzig were supposed to be there too but due to Lenya’s cancer treatment they had to stay home in Albuquerque–we missed them.

BIlly and Ruth Graham’s vision for the Cove was that it would be a place for Christians to go and be rejuvenated in the Lord and in His Word and be equipped to be used by God more powerfully when they went home. Their vision certainly became a reality, and everyone (there were people from 23 different states) who attended–including those of us who were there to serve–seemed to really be blessed.

Here are a few more pics:
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