Wade Poe

One of my favorite passages from scripture is out of Isaiah 40:28-31.  We sang it as a song when "growing up in church" and the band U2 even did a version of it back in the day... Do you not know?      Have you not heard? The  Lord  is the everlasting God,      the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary,      and his understanding no one can fathom. 29  He gives strength to the weary      and increases the power of the weak. 30  Even youths grow tired and weary,      and young men stumble and fall; 31  but those who hope in the  Lord      will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles;      they will run and not grow weary,      they will walk and not be faint. It's a chapter written long before Jesus came along and it points to...

I'm still amazed when reminded what God is like.  All the grace, the overwhelming love and acceptance.  It does seem too good to be true.  But it's not. Recently was studying through things I'd learned in the past and how I see them with a different slant today - in other words, normal, healthy growth - and was surprised at how simple it was/is. For example, all the teaching in the New Testament, after the New Covenant comes in - all of it is about NOT treating people, especially other believers, in any way that is harmful, abusive, etc. Growing up, sin was about NOT offending God and NOT breaking rules about worship services activities or how a person was baptized - things like that were heavy, important sins. Now I see that they are likely things we were making up.  Mind you, we all had good intentions and want to follow "God's book", but we kind of missed the point at times. God came into the world to show us that we can't and don't keep The Law - a...

No one wants to have the longer conversation. Or so it seems. Or maybe they don’t know the value in having it and so they just don’t. Political discussions, religious discussions, social discussions – they all have at least a couple of sides and a lot of emotion built into them. For the sake of time and fear of losing a moment to “score one” for a particular side, arguments are stacked up for and against a short list of people, ideas, and actions. Few people, at least in my experience, take the time to understand their own side, much less the “other side(s)” in any discussion or rhetoric. Maybe it is because we know that IF we actually look into our own side, we know there will be some inconsistency found or clarity showing that other people have a point. Maybe it’s because we just enjoy being for something and against something else – like it gives us meaning and we don’t necessarily want to know all the details. Often, in my experience, it’s because we don’t want to change something ...