I have kept a journal for several years. Last week on vacation, I took some time to read from my journal when I was 19.

Tuesday Jan 4 1983
Today was good. Mike came home with me after school.

I love basketball. I played in high school. I still play a couple times a week. A few weeks back I had a very rewarding game. Our team won on an easy layup by my teammate. I had set a screen for him that made him open, so that he could score easily. Setting a screen is positioning oneself to block a teammate’s defender, so that the teammate can then easily make it to the basket or be open for a shot without the defender being close to him. 

In 1986, Cheryl and I traveled on a short-term ministry trip to Uganda. We came to a country that had suffered for 15 years under two dictators who had devastated the country. Many may know the name Idi Amin, known for the genocide estimated to be more than a million, but less known is Milton Obote, who is also estimated to have eliminated more than 1 million of his enemies in genocide. Fifteen years of civil  war, corruption and genocide had left the country very different from Winston Churchill’s description of Uganda as “the Pearl of Africa.” We passed checkpoints with teenagers holding machine guns, roads that were often barely drivable, and infrastructure that was a mess. But what made it most real, however, was the day we were taken to a shed that was filled with dozens of skulls of the victims of the mass killings. 

One aspect of fire is that it is unpredictable. What was unexpected in the ’94 revival was that when the Lord came, He came in a way that many did not understand. It was not what they had expected or would predict. And this caused a lot of controversy.

Statistics say that churches in North America have seen an overall drop in attendance of 16% to pre-pandemic levels. Less people see it as important to meet together as Christians. And of those who attend, their frequency has dropped.

If in your family, there are broken or dysfunctional relationships, don’t give up hope for God to restore and heal. God is reconciling all things through Christ (Eph. 1:10) and that includes families.