I finally did it. I took a week\u2019s vacation that was not connected in any way to a ministry assignment. It took me forty-four years in the ministry before I accomplished this feat. I know, I know. Save the sermons! I\u2019ve preached those same sermons to others. But I finally did it. Joanne and I took the Copper Canyon Train tour into Mexico – a train ride through six canyons, five of which are larger than the Grand Canyon. As I sat on the hotel balcony, more than 8000 feet above sea level, overlooking the canyon at sunset (Pictures are on the Disciple All Nations web site. Click on \u201cOur Photo Gallery\u201d in the left side menu.) I remembered a passage of Scripture. I guess you can take me out of a ministry situation, but you can\u2019t take the ministry out of me. The Psalmist declared of God, \u201cYour righteousness is like the great mountains; Your judgments are a great deep\u201d (Ps. 36:6). While God\u2019s righteousness is as easily visible as the mountains in all their majesty and strength, God\u2019s judgments are often as unknown to us as the secrets of the deep canyons between the mountains. Charles Spurgeon wrote, \u201cGod\u2019s dealings with men are not to be fathomed by every boaster who demands to see a why for every wherefore.\u201d While we are privileged to walk by sight in the high mountains., we must walk by faith through the deep canyons. That\u2019s a good thought for a new year that will be filled with both mountains and canyons. Walk on!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I finally did it. I took a week\u2019s vacation that was not connected in any way to a ministry assignment. It took me forty-four years in the ministry before I accomplished this feat. I know, I know. Save the sermons! I\u2019ve preached those same sermons to others. But I finally did it. Joanne and I…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-monday-morning-manna"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=345"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}