Picture a king walking into the temple like he owns the place. Because, in his mind, he does. His name is King Uzziah. He’s been on the throne for decades. He’s built towers, dug wells, raised an army, and his fame has spread all the way to Egypt. He’s the most successful man in the nation. And one day he picks up a censer and heads for the altar of incense, a place God reserved for the priests. Azariah the high priest and eighty other priests stand in the king’s way. Azariah

I’ve sat at a lot of kitchen tables. And I’ve watched something happen so many times it’s almost become a law of nature. A friend works up the courage — and it does take courage — to say the hard thing. “Hey, I’ve noticed something. And I’m only saying it because I love you and I love your marriage.” Gentle. Honest. The kind of thing you can only say when you actually care. And I watch the other person’s face change. The shoulders come up. The jaw sets. And out it comes — the

When I met my wife, I was living in a 1981 brown Volkswagen Vanagon. The kind with the roof that pops up like a tent. There was a little fridge that ran on propane, a two- burner stovetop, and one pot. Every single day of my life, that pot held chunky soup. There’s no sink in a Volkswagen van, so I had a system for washing that pot. My system was a paper towel. I’d wipe it out, put it back in the cupboard, and get on with my day like a man who had solved something. I thought

God does not truly own a man until He has tested a man. Anybody can say I've given my life to God. Millions do say it. The phrase doesn't even appear in Scripture — it's a slogan our generation is fond of, but to describe the average North American Christian as somebody who's actually ‘given his life away’ is a stretch of the imagination. There are multitudes who believe in Jesus. Multitudes saved by Jesus. Very few in all of history have actually surrendered everything to Je

I'd picked David Green up at the airport and was driving him to Drayton Valley where he would speak at a gathering my wife and I had planned for business leaders. I was talking his ear off, as I tend to do. I had the undivided attention of a billionaire, one of the wealthiest Christians on earth, and I wasn’t going to waste a second of it. About twenty minutes into the drive, David smiled and looked at me sideways, the way a man looks when he's just worked out a puzzle. Like

About six months after Cara and I started Zinger Rentals, we landed our first job. It was small, but it was something. Then a second job, also small. And then… nothing. Our two light towers came back and sat in the yard. I'd look out at them, and they'd look back at me, and I swear they were saying the same thing every day. There's something you don't know. One day it finally landed on me. There's something I don't know! I realize how obvious that sounds. But sitting there, b

There's a verse most of us read right over the top of. "Therefore, having these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God." (2 Corinthians 7:1) Did you catch that? Let us “cleanse ourselves.” Us? Not Him? Yes. Us. Somewhere along the way we got sold the idea that we've got no part in this. Jesus did it all, so let’s not do a thing! We’ll just sit here on our duffs and grow by accident. Is that h

I've got hard news, friends. We prayed it wouldn't happen. It happened. Bill C-9 is law. Since 1970, Canadian law said a man couldn't be convicted of hate speech for expressing, in good faith, an opinion based on his belief in a religious text. That was the shield over your pulpit. Fifty-six years it stood there. It's gone now. Here's what that means in the real world. Almost anybody can file a complaint against a pastor, a preacher, or you for saying something they've decide

Sin might be the most misunderstood thing in the church today. Most think sin makes God mad at them. It doesn't. Scripture couldn't be plainer — God loves sinners. He loved you at your worst, on your worst day, doing the thing you'd never tell anybody about. But here's the part we skip: understanding what sin actually is changes how you deal with it. And that difference matters a whole lot more than many realize. What Does Sin Really Mean in the Bible? The New Testament word

I'll say this up front: I was drunk when I made this vow. I probably wouldn't have had the nerve sober. It was 2008. The housing collapse in the States had sent shockwaves everywhere, including straight into the Canadian oilpatch, and our young business was hanging on by a thread. Jobs cancelled. Invoices unpaid. Debt climbing like a monkey up a tree. I'd lie awake staring at the ceiling, running the worst case over and over. I spent my evenings out in the disaster I called a

I was halfway up a steep hill on the outskirts of Drayton Valley, sweating, legs complaining, with a Scripture scribbled on the back of my hand. Many of my clearest moments with God haven't come at a desk. They've come with my lungs burning on a run. I'd been chewing on the same verse for twenty minutes, chanting it in time with my feet hitting the pavement like a song stuck on repeat. If we ask a-ny-thing according to His will He hears us A hundred times. Then a hundred mor

By 2010 I'd crossed the million-dollar mark. Five years earlier God had told me plainly: if you do what I tell you to do, you'll be a millionaire in five years. And He did it. Right on schedule. The business grew, the net worth climbed, and I could stand there and point at the number. Here's what else was true in 2010. I was drunk every night. I'd been drunk every night for five years. I smoked constantly. I weighed over two hundred and sixty pounds and I was tired all the ti

On the last day of March one year, the Lord said something to me that made me laugh out loud. In April, I want you to give away everything over twenty thousand dollars. Now, to understand why that was funny, you need to know about breakup. In the Canadian oilpatch, breakup is when winter finally lets go. The snow melts, the roads soften, and the province throws on road bans to keep heavy equipment from destroying the highways. It can last a couple of months. For us that meant

A few years ago I was in my prayer cabin at The Altar — the place where I spend my mornings — when a picture opened up in my spirit. I saw a Christian businessman. Sharp suit, nice watch, the whole package. He loved the Lord. He'd given his life to Christ, and now it was time to be baptized. He was stepping down into the water where I was standing, waiting to baptize him in the name of the Lord. I started lowering him into the water. And halfway down, he remembered his wallet

A couple of years back, I was driving to Edmonton on a Sunday morning to preach for my friend Rodney Forton at Church in the Vine, and I spent most of the drive repenting. It was March. If you work in the patch, you know what March is. We were understaffed, I was driving constantly, and I'd been putting in strings of eighteen- and twenty-hour days for weeks. I had not prepared one thing. Not a note, not an outline, not a verse. I hadn't prepared mentally, I hadn't prepared sp

On March 29, 2025, at forty-nine years old, I got my first tattoo. It isn't much to look at. A little grasshopper on my hand. My friend did it. It took no time at all. I got it because I knew myself well enough to know that if I didn't put something where I'd have to look at it, I would break my word to God again. I'd already done it for seven years running. To explain that, I have to take you back. In 2018 I was on day thirty-nine of a forty-two day fast. If you've never don

In 2018, my wife wanted to move. You need to understand what that sentence does to me. I hate moving. The word by itself raises my blood pressure. My wife, on the other hand, would move every year if I let her. She loves making a home. She loves design, she loves decorating, and she is so good at it that people keep buying our houses out from under us for more than we paid. She has never once been wrong about a house. I still hate moving. So when she started asking me to go l

July 24, 2014. I was out for a run. The Holy Spirit said, You're gonna quit smoking today. And I said, "No. I don't think I will." He said, Yes, you will. Now understand, I wasn't being rebellious. I was being reasonable. So I started making my case, the way you do when you've got a good one. I said, "I love You, Lord. And You know I've been drinking a lot less than I used to. You know I haven't looked at pornography in a very long time. I've given You a lot of ground. But le

I know a man, and so do you, because some mornings he is you and most mornings he is me. He has been asking God for one thing for about two years. And he has worked at it. He has a prayer list in a black notebook and a second copy in his phone in case the notebook goes missing. He has read the books. The one on breakthrough. The one on the courts of heaven. The one his buddy swore by that he never got past chapter three of. He keeps a book of declarations beside the bed and a

If you’ve ever opened your Bible, stared at the page, and thought, “I don’t even know where to start”—you’re not alone.