Deano

And whoever does not carry their cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. "Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Won't you first sit down and estimate the cost to see if you have enough money to complete it? For if you lay the foundation and are not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule you, saying, 'This person began to build and wasn't able to finish.' (Luke 14:27-30 NIV) I remember visiting Thailand and seeing hundreds of unfinished buildings. The foundations had been laid, some even had the concrete framework but the buildings were incomplete. You could see the tension steel in the concrete rusting. There no evidence of workers attempting to complete the structures. The structures remained unfinished and I asked myself why weren't they able finish? Jesus doesn't make a standard sales pitch here. To follow Him one must be prepared to carry their cross. There is a cost to follow Christ. It is always exciting when people make a...

So Joshua called together the twelve men he had appointed from the Israelites, one from each tribe, and said to them, "Go over before the ark of the Lord your God into the middle of the Jordan. Each of you is to take up a stone on his shoulder, according to the number of the tribes of the Israelites, to serve as a sign among you. In the future, when your children ask you, "What do these stones mean?" tell them that the flow of the Jordan was cut off before the ark of the covenant of the Lord. When it crossed the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off. These stones are to be a memorial to the people of Israel forever. Joshua 4:4-7 NIV I remember walking a track in the Blue Mountains with my wife for the first time. We following the directions in a book and having some trouble finding the starting place, until we saw a sign. It was a heap of rocks. Rocks? There are rocks every where, so why were these different. They were not just a pile of unorganised rocks scat...

Then the Lord opened the donkey's mouth, and it said to Balaam, "What have I done to you to make you beat me these three times?" Balaam answered the donkey, "You have made a fool of me! If only I had a sword in my hand, I would kill you right now." The donkey said to Balaam, "Am I not your own donkey, which you have always ridden, to this day? Have I been in the habit of doing this to you?" "No," he said. (Numbers 22:28-30 NIV) Would you speak back to a donkey? What amazes me the most about this story of the talking donkey (and I'm not referring to Shrek), is that Balaam answered his donkey like it was a normal conversation. Balaam conversed with his donkey, back and forth, and it appeared not to surprise Balaam. Balaam was a man who believed in the supernatural. He was known for his ability to perform magic, not the entertaining illusionists today, but real supernatural magic. Balaam lived the supernatural. The supernatural was so...