More Than Bread

Send me a Text Message! In the midst of all the rubble, all the pain, all the conflict, all the brokenness in our world, I am reminded of this. I am reminded that God is our Unwavering Certainty in the midst of uncertainty. He is our Loving Father who covers us in his love when we are prone to fear. He's our Overflowing Spirit when scarcity whispers, protect what is yours. He is our Sacrifici...

Send me a Text Message! Are we owning our rubble? That's the question that will end this episode. Remember the BLESS acronymn that gives us some rebuilding, story-writing, principles? B is for "Be Still." L is "Look for the rubble." Nehemiah allows his heart to be saturated by the brokenness of people and causes. He looked for the rubble. But he didn't just look for i...

Send me a Text Message! You won't find much written on travailing prayer today. If you want to read about travailing prayer you have to read old books, and listen to old sermons, sermons and books birthed in revival. And yet, the Bible's pages are filled with examples of people who wrestled with God, travailed, groaned and cried out in prayer to see God's purposes birthed in their l...

Send me a Text Message! In this episode, I'll start with a question for you to ask yourself, "When I look around at a broken world, what grabs my heart? What is broken in the world, or who is broken in the world, that breaks my heart?" Another way to ask that question is, "What is my holy discontent?" Sometimes, some of us...myself  included...we want to medicate our heart...

Send me a Text Message! Over and over again, through the years, I've prayed Tozer's prayer, "Lord make me a person to whom you can entrust your glory." But Nehemiah is a reminder that we probably won't see His glory without some of groaning on our part. Awhile back, while pondering where I see God's hand in my life, I felt like He said, "Dan I can't trust yo...

Send me a Text Message! Vance Havner, a preacher and revivalist born in 1901 once wrote these words, "The early Christians did not need a shot in the arm every Sunday to keep them going. They knew Jesus and they upset the world and worried the devil and gave wicked rulers insomnia and started something that jails couldn’t lock up, fire couldn’t burn, water couldn’t drown, and swords couldn’t...

Send me a Text Message! Your story is unfinished. Sometimes we look at certain chapters of our life and we think, "That’s the story of my life. We usually say those words in the midst of hard times. Sometimes we say them in despair and discouragement as we look at the broken rubble all around us. "That’s the story of my life." But it’s not.  If you are a Christ-follower, you have th...

Send me a Text Message! You are sent to love people all the way to Jesus. It's not enough to be like Jesus, and love like Jesus, on the Jesus Way we are sent to love others all the way to Jesus. That's our purpose. That's our "why." What if the most critical issue facing Chistians today is that we don't know what counts, so we settle for a lesser life.   And in the pr...

Send me a Text Message! As we come to the end, I'll go back to the beginning to summarize. John 1. Jesus is the Word. Don’t miss this, the connection between Jesus and the Word. It's a connection that goes beyond metaphor into the land of mystical.  It goes beyond symbolic into the land of supernatural.  There is a connection between Jesus, who is called the Word, and the Word which we c...

Send me a Text Message! This episode is another weekend message from Calvary as we continue on our "Homecoming" series. It just so happens to hit John 21. Yes if you have listened to all of the episodes on John 21. You will remember that story. But it's one of my favorites, a powerful story of redemption that led to Peter living life with an amazing sense of purpose. If you weren&ap...

Send me a Text Message! I know you are probably getting a bit tired of this story in John 21. Almost done. :) But in this episode, I want to challenge you to enter the story. I want to challenge you to live your life in such a way that it attracts people to the fire of God within you. And then to let your fire burn in your communities through prayer with great dreams of what God could do, if we fo...

Send me a Text Message!  At Calvary we have a vision/mission to "build a church without walls." It's a CWOW vision. Part of our description of that puts it this way, "Envision a community so passionate about Jesus Christ and the glory of God that God doesn't just visit their community, He pitches His tent." And that's where it starts, such a passion for  Jesus an...

Send me a Text Message! What I hope you will get every time you come to "More than Bread" is something more than bread. With all my heart I believe God wants to speak to you through this time. And then if you have been with me for a bit, you know that it’s not enough to listen to His Words, we need to learn from them, and it’s not enough to just learn from them, we need to lean into them...

Send me a Text Message! Every Good Friday at Calvary we have an immersive experience that we call the Way of the Cross. It’s all about the the passion of Jesus. In the cross that passion is not just an overwhelming, emotional or even sexual desire. That's too often how we think about it. We think of lovers, physical attraction, desires so intense they give birth to physical manifestations. Ou...

Send me a Text Message! I know Luke isn't John, but Jesus is still Jesus and Luke 15 contains one of Jesus'  most well-known stories. We're living with homesick hearts. We can't quite shake this  sense that something's missing. But when Jesus walked out of the tomb on Easter morning, He was flinging open the door to the home we couldn't find. Easter isn't just ab...

Send me a Text Message! I think so often, when am I wrestling with doubt, I start asking for a sign. Have you ever done that? John said that he recorded a series of signs in his gospel, so that we would believe. Seven signs were given so that we would believe. But it's important to realize that a sign, even if we're given a sign, the sign gives direction, but it's not the destinatio...

Send me a Text Message! As we are coming to the end of John's gospel, we are coming back to the beginning of the Jesus Way. What is the beginning of the Jesus Way? It all starts with faith, believing, trusting Jesus. But sometimes believing is hard. Over and over again, the writers of scripture, Jesus himself over and over again connects an uncommonly good life, a life uncommon in both it&apo...

Send me a Text Message! At a Leadership Summit, a few years ago, Angela Duckworth laid out her research that suggests that every successful person, every person who makes a true impact on the world, has one unique charecteristic. She called it grit. And she defined grit as the child of passion and persistance. Persistance and passion together equals grit. So let me ask you, "Are you passionat...

Send me a Text Message! In this episode we are going to hear the words from Jesus, "As the Father has sent me, so I am sending you." With all my heart I believe that that message was not just made for a handful of people who saw the risen Jesus, it's for each of us. As the Father sent Jesus, Jesus is sending us. Think of all that entailed, all that was involved in Jesus' sendin...

Send me a Text Message! We think of tombs as endings, final pages of the story. But for God every tomb is a transition. Think of the amazing global transition that started in Jesus' tomb. God reset the world and life will never be the same. What if the Easter tombstone is really your stepping stone?  You know what a stepping stone is right? A stepping stone is something we need to go to a pla...

Send me a Text Message! I am recording this episode for Good Friday. That first Holy Week Friday, the one before the first Easter, no one would have called it Good Friday. Traumatic Friday. End-of-Hope Friday. Last Friday. Dark Difficult Deadly Friday. It’s only looking back that we call it good. I’m going to do something a little bit different in this episode. Mostly, I’m just going to read the s...

Send me a Text Message! Yes it appears to be a bit of a regression from John 17 back to John 13. But think of it as a recap to our look at John 14-17. John 13 is where it all started. The Lord's supper, last supper before the cross. If you listen to these as they drop, today is Thursday of Holy Week, the day that Jesus started the tradition of what we now call communion. And as we revisit tha...

Send me a Text Message! Few prayers have driven and shaped my heart and my ministry like this prayer; Jesus’ prayer.  And you know he prayed it with great fervency in the last hours of his life. It is his prayer for us, that we would be one, that we would be one, just like the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are one. He prays that we would live in such a compelling community that everyone wants to be...

Send me a Text Message! There is a prayer in John 17, a prayer between Jesus and his Father, just before Jesus goes to the cross. At the heart of that prayer is a simple request, "Father make them one. All those who will believe in me, make them one." Honestly I find myself grieved by how easily we minimize the unity at heart of his dream. He's praying that we would form a glory-sat...

Send me a Text Message! We are starting a new series at Calvary called "Homecoming" and I'll be putting them on each Monday. This episode is on the Palm Sunday story. It gives us a look at this reality. Often when Jesus comes into a city, a neighborhood, a school, he comes in with tears in his eyes and a fire in his heart. He comes in with tears in his eyes for those who are missing...