Our lives are fulfilled by having a vision for something better, then finding ways to achieve those goals so you can live in that better place. That’s your promised land and it’s a lot better place to live than from miracle to miracle. It takes hard work, but if hard work alone meant prosperity, every coal miner in West Virginia would be a billionaire!

There are two major myths about your mind. The first, is that your brain didn’t come with an instruction manual. The truth is, it did – the Bible. The second myth, is that you are not responsible for your thoughts. 
That line of thinking says you are an animal, akin to a smart ape with a cool thumb, and animals are not responsible for their thoughts. They are ruled by instinct and so are you. Who told you that?

Here’s a truth that is unpopular, yet it’s truth nonetheless: Behind every great person of God is great affliction.
I dare you. Pick your favorite Bible person from any of the 31,175 scriptures and see if you can find one man or woman – no matter how close they were to God – who did not have pain.
 

For many, it’s a revelation that miracles are not God’s best for you. In fact, just needing a miracle means you are neck deep in a mess. God would much rather prosper you by rewarding you for your hard work and generosity.

Wouldn’t you rather live in a house that is paid off than prosper in a miracle while your house is being repossessed and sold off to someone else? 

Have you ever been facing north on a southbound train? I have, and it’s pretty strange. 

From my seat, I could see where I had been, but not where I was going. All I could perceive was what had already passed me. You know a lot of people sit just like that through their Christian lives. They are so fixated on their history, they forget to look for their destiny.

I have a lot of respect for the Demoniac of Gadara, whose story is told in Mark, Chapter 5 and Luke, Chapter 8. I even dedicated my book Soul Invasion to this man who, in so many ways, is like us today.

SOUL FOOD AND SPIRIT FOOD

Like John at the last supper, people who live their life with their head on the chest of the Lord, in rhythm with the heart of God, are people with great revelation.

People who are after revelation are bold, childlike and prepared to go wherever He sends them.

I have noticed that there is a balance to be taught concerning the working of miracles.

Hear me on this: just because God does a miracle, does not mean it’s His stamp of approval over somebody’s life. Nor is the lack of a miracle God’s stamp of disapproval. God’s mercy is revealed in all sorts of ways, miracles being only one of them.

When my kids were taking their first steps and they fell after only a few inches, I didn’t scold them and tell them not to fall down again. No. I clapped and cheered, celebrated and shouted, “Check that out. He took a step. He’s moving forward! Isn’t that amazing!”

For many years, I was pushing 400 pounds. Not quite there, but still, it was closing in. 

Then, on a trip to Jerusalem with Leanna, we met a couple who pastored a church in Enid, Oklahoma. These people, it turned out, were not your ordinary pastors. He was a doctor and a college professor, and they were both gifted in the area of physical training in a way that glorifies God. 

One of my favorite songs was written by my good friend, Pauline Wick of a band called The Wicks. At the doctor’s word that her father would certainly die from a fatal heart attack, the Lord gave her another word that said, “It’s not that big of a deal.”

The goodness of God overcame the evil of the heart attack and the song “Paper Tiger” was born.

I believe with all my heart that a lot of Christians are seeing the best part of their lives corrupted, dishonored, degraded and ruined simply because they don’t know how to confront the beast within — their soul. Instead of being led by the Spirit of God, we tend to be driven by terrible thinking patterns that need to be invaded by Almighty God.

If you ask 100 people to define the days we’re living in, you’ll get 100 different responses. For the unemployed, they are fiercely competitive days. For those in the military, they are troubling days. For the businessman, they are likely days of opportunity. Ask any Bible thumping Christian to describe the days we’re living in and they’ll likely tell you “the Last Days.”

There was a time in my life where the importance of upgrade was not on my radar. I was busy running a church, a food bank and flying all over the world on mission trips building water wells and orphanages. While I thought I was on the right track, God proved that He didn’t….

It is no exaggeration that my buddy Jamie Cashion and I both would have lost our lives today, along with 8 others, if it wasn’t for the miraculous power of the Lord Jesus Christ. A TRUE MIRACLE TOOK PLACE TODAY!

Financially, I’ve never been a rich man. In fact, there were years where our ministry was small and struggling, and my wife, Leanna, and I didn’t have glass in our windows or electricity in our fixer upper. 

Yes, I’m talking years. My beautiful bride stuck by my side through some truly thin times and did more than make the best of things. Leanna made poverty into a party…

On October 7th, 1995 Waylon Jennings returned to Clear Lake Iowa the same way he left 36 years before – by bus. More than 2,000 fans packed the Surf Ballroom to see a world famous performer, initially made famous by not being on the plane that killed Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper. It was something that Waylon had avoided doing for more than three decades.

I travel a lot. Having orphanages on three continents, I’m on a plane almost every month. One thing I can tell you, I always know when we’re over U.S. airspace. I know it sounds crazy, but over the past few years, I get a sick feeling in my gut coming home to America. The atmosphere is ripe — anger, bitterness, violence –– I can literally feel it 2,000 feet up.

Turning on the news or looking at Facebook, it seems the wheels are coming off our society. America has seen some tumultuous times, but what we’re experiencing today has a truly ugly vibe.

The boys at NASA have done it again. They have gone and blown our minds with another giant discovery about the universe.

May 11, 2016: “Kepler scientists announce a major increase in confirmed exoplanet numbers.” Yes, the smart guys here on planet Earth say they have found 1,284 new planets using the Kepler planet-hunting telescope. They are speculating many of them could be inhabitable…..

In 1982 a bunch of my knucklehead teenage friends and I swarmed onto my mother’s house like a cloud of locusts. We ravaged everything in the refrigerator, fell onto the couches and turned on the tube…

There are some really smart people in this world. Unfortunately, I am not one of them. I am however, aware of stupidity which might make me a little higher on the cerebral food chain. Maybe not, but my lack of being able to comprehend real smartness, probably allows me to think so. My stupid detector went off at an airport in Uganda on one of our mission trips.

1989 was an exceptional year, I think. Not just because Taylor Swift was born, but because of things like The Berlin Wall came down, the world wide web flickered on, and I began a crazy cool marriage to the love of my life. 

Back in the day, two guys in Nashville joined with some songwriting buddies at the famous eatery called Tavern on the Row. They ate a bunch of food, drank a round of drinks, and threw song ideas back and forth, as you would if that was what you did.

I had been giving away little Bibles at prison and found out they were using the super thin pages for rolling paper. So I began to make them promise me something. “If you promise me you will read this before you use it, I will still give it to as long as you promise me you will read every single word and read it out loud.”  One young brave man said, “Yes, Sir. I promise.” I told him to smoke his way through the book of John…

I really like Francis Ford Coppola. The Francis Ford Coppola Winery near Geyserville, California, is one of my favorite places to visit in that part of the world. His movies, such as Patton, The Godfather and The Outsiders, have helped shape American culture,but one of his most successful movies was one of the worst in terms of filmmaking disasters….

For more than twenty years I have often visited the shrine of Texas independence on the date of the anniversary of the final siege. It means a lot to me. I especially appreciate the anniversary service that happens just before day light. A somber ceremony with bagpipes, women holding thirteen candles, speeches in both Spanish and English, and rein-actors from the San Antonio Living History Association.

The drought that affected Texas beginning somewhere around 2008-2009 crept up on us through the years like a slow cooking brisket. It was terrible. Our creeks dried up, our ponds went dry, the rivers quit flowing, and our lakes, well, I had never seen anything like it.  You could drive your car on the dirt road that used to be your favorite fishing hole. Farmers had to send to other states for hay. I remember in 2010 passing hundreds of flat bed trucks in Georgia with round bales headed west…

Abraham Lincoln was 6’4” and with his stove pipe hat he was a seven footer. You can imagine how he was considered to be gigantic to people who didn’t leave the farm very often.

When addressing a crowd at Niagara Falls he mentioned real giants saying, “When Columbus first sought this continent- when Christ suffered on the cross- when Moses led Israel through the Red Sea- nay, even when Adam first came from the hand of his Maker- then as now, Niagara was roaring here. The eyes of that species of extinct giants, whose bones fill the mounds of America, have gazed on Niagara, as ours do now.”