Halfway There

Moses Ehambe is a professional basketball player and a considers himself a missionary “doing God’s work with the talents” he’s received from him. Moses grew up in Arlington, TX, whose parents emigrated from Congo and serves as a pastor in the local church. His family was always at church and Moses was the worship band’s drummer so whenever there was worship music, he was there. When it came time f...

Hugh Brandt works to “engage city leaders to help them live out their calling for the well-being of their city” with a part of CRU called Cities Project . Today he shares the journey that took him from missionary to missional. Hugh was probably always destined to be a missionary. His mother, who sacrificed her own dreams to care for others, prayed he would serve in South Africa before he was born....

Dan Rudman is an evangelist who works on campuses, prisons, and around the world to spread the Gospel. He shares how God called him to this life through circumstances that looked like failure. Dan grew up in a traditional, moralist family but didn’t really go to church and so knew nothing about the Gospel. Heading into college he was “stiff-arming religion,” and floundered his freshman year. One d...

Tim Voss taught physical education for 22 years at Trinity International University. Today he shares the story of how God called him to teaching, led him to Trinity after developing a program at Moody Bible Institute, and saw him through the most difficult moments of his life. Those difficult moments revealed just how present God. His daughter went in for a procedure and died a week before her wed...

Jill May shares how she went from struggling mom and pastor’s wife to Season 1 winner of NBC’s Strong, a reality show that paired ordinary women with trainers and set them in competition with one another. Winning a reality show is very cool. But the story of God’s leading her there? Now that’s awesome. Jill grew up in rural Minnesota to a church going family. Sometime in her late high school years...

Mark Casson of Metanoia Prison Ministries shares how he found the Lord in prison while being tried for his crime. He shares the story of how how he pleaded guilty and the ways that God honored that brave choice, how he learned to fellowship with believers of all stripes, and how God used his experience to almost immediately after he left prison to serve prisoners all over the country. Mark believe...

Today, Tonya Jewel Blessing shares how she learned to love the mess and serve with a joyful heart. It wasn’t always easy and we talk about the long process God used to prepare her for life in rural South Africa. But the process was full of moments that inspired her to trust just a little bit more. Tonya is also the author of The Whispering of the Willows (Amazon affiliate link), work of fiction th...

Today’s episode features author of Jesus Untangled: Crucifying Our Politics to Pledge Allegiance to the Lamb, Keith Giles (Amazon affiliate link which means if you buy from this link Amazon sends a little my way). How integrated should the Kingdom of God and the leaders of a nation be? The question may seem strange to Evangelical ears when the objective of some for multiple decades has been to pas...

Quentin Banks met Jesus in the St. Louis County jail. That’s just the beginning of his story. He is one of my favorite people ever to share on Halfway There because of the powerful work God has done in his life. Quentin is the definition of a man seeking after God’s heart while still wrestling with a world that is far from His ideal. The stories he shares about how he comes to trust God will encou...

What have I learned after asking over 25 people about their life with God? Trust in God is learned sometimes the hard way. Today we look at how this experience of learning to trust God over a long period of time is common, even in Scripture. I show through the Abraham’s story that he learned to believe God through the ups and downs of his own life so that by the time God asks Abraham to sacrifice...

Celebrate the New Year with these fresh start stories about how God changed the lives of three past guests of Halfway There. Many were happy to see 2016 go and a new year begin. Admittedly, the year was a strange one in many ways between a vicious U.S. election cycle featuring unpopular candidates, Trump’s win in spite of (or because of?) his political incorrectness, celebrity deaths, and an other...

In our family Christmas lasts for a week so it’s okay to add one more reflection after the official day. Today is the last of our Advent series and the focus is on love. Don Owsley and I talk about love and Simeon. Then, we finished up our series on imaginative prayer in the Nativity story. Merry Christmas, my friends! The post Advent Reflections: The Good News of Love appeared first on Eric Nevin...

On today’s episode Don Owsley and I reflect on the joy of Simeon at seeing Jesus for the first time. Of all the people who worshiped God because of the newborn Jesus, Simeon reaches furthest back to the founding promise God made to Abraham. Finally, everything Israel existed for had come to fruition. Then we practice imaginative prayer through the experience of Joseph in Matthew 1:18-25. I hope th...

On today’s episode we reflect on the peace of God and explore Mary’s experience. To help us guys understand what it’s like to become a mother, I invited a very special guest on the show: my wife Jodi! She shared the many thoughts that go through a newly expecting mother’s mind – especially the first time. Then we talk to Don Owlsey about Simeon and the kind of peace that God’s righteousness brings...

Advent is a season of waiting, expectation, and most of all hope. Today, we take a break from the usual format to explore those themes with Don Owsley and talk about the life of Simeon (Luke 2:22-35). We also spend some time in imaginative prayer to help us experience the hope from the perspective of Zechariah. If you’re looking for a way to experience the story of Christmas in a way you never hav...

In last week’s episode, Doug Hazen shared with us part of his story and his calling to the mission field where he and his wife encountered unexpected adversity as the country was torn by war. Those events changed Doug’s perspective of God and his protection for the worse. Today, Doug shares how God revealed his goodness to Doug once again, the emotional work it took to understand evil from God’s p...

I didn’t plan on this episode but decided to share with you Psalm 107 today as a reflection of God’s goodness to us. It’s all about how good the Lord is to rescue us from all kinds of trouble. It’s easy – and right – to be thankful for the good things in our lives. And it’s good to remember the hard things and that God was faithful to rescue us when we needed him. It may not have looked as we woul...

Doug Hazen serves as the National Director of Mobilization Prayer at World Venture. His job is to pray that God would bring people who want to share the Gospel around the world. Today, he shares the story of how God has led him to this position. The stories that Doug shares of the big events in his life that challenged his trust in God like resisting God’s call to ministry, finally surrendering, a...

Zac Medeiros shares his story of growing up in a Christian family in Quebec, struggling  through depression, and finding life in God’s Word again. In Quebec, evangelical Christians represent less than one percent of the population. Zac and I talked about how that’s different from the United States where there may multiple churches of varying denominations even in small town. While most people call...

Jesse Bean shares why an experience of God’s grace is more powerful than all the knowledge in the world. When all his role models fell apart, Jesse gave up all but his faith that God existed and lived “without God at all.” But God wouldn’t let him go. Even when Jesse decided to live his life working as hard as he could to be moral and just a good guy, he knew that God was reaching out to him. His...

What would you do if God asked you to do something strange for awhile? Not a small step out of your comfort zone but a huge leap from it? Today’s guest is a man of action who God has used to bring joy to many children through Joy International. Jeff Brodsky founded the organization in 1981 and he shares today several stories about how God led him to start his own ministry and how it evolved over t...

Today’s conversation is with Amy E. Patton who shares how she learned to see God in her story. While she was a believer, it took a special community accepting her faults and all to help her understand the God could accept her too. Amy began to believe that God could use her, too, which led her in the direction of missions, story, and words. We often talk about books that impact us and Amy had a un...

Have you ever been pushed to your limit? What if you got there by helping others in a way you felt called by God to do? Was he far away and distant. Or, close as you learned he was taking care of you deeply? Today’s guest is Lynn Byk who shares the experience of going to the limit of herself only to find that God led her to an unlikely relationship that changed her life. In fact, all the relations...

Today my guest is Rob Karch. Rob has served, with his wife and family, as a global worker sharing Jesus with people in Quebec for twelve years. In today’s conversation, he shares the story of how he got there, why he fell in love with God through reading Scripture with emotion, and the most recent unexpected turn in his life. Listen closely to Rob as he shares his heart of trust in God who so clea...

When you think of the mission field, what countries come to mind? Africa? South America? Maybe Asia? What about France? Today’s guest is Carol Wilson, a woman who heard God’s call to go so she gave up her beloved teaching job and took a step. We talk about how the end is never really clear until much later. Instead, you just take one step toward what you sense God calling you to and see what happe...