Robert Noland – Page 5 – Robert Noland

The Last One Standing

I have confessed on these pages before that prayer has never been my strong suit spiritual discipline. My mind races. I get easily distracted. And I have never been able to sit still. Even while relaxing, something on me is moving. But the past 18 months or so, I have been faced with situations where […]

Stress vs. Strength

In a late-night-hanging-out-in-the-kitchen talk with one of my adult sons, we began a discussion on the difference between doing things we believe the Lord wants us to do but striving, struggling, and stressing to make it happen in our own strength versus walking and working with Him as we go and doing the things He […]

Fuel vs Fire

Abraham did it. Moses did it. Saul did it. Even David it. Skip over to the New Testament and the disciples did it too. Today, churches do it. Pastors do it. Para-church ministries do it. Christian authors do it too. What is the “it” to which I am referring? Trying to create the fire of […]

God’s Bucket List

The last decade or so the term “bucket list” has become a buzz phrase. People use this to describe the things they hope to do before they die. So often it involves thrill-seeker activities like jumping out of an airplane (with a parachute) or extravagant trips like going to Europe. But I wonder if each of us […]

Friday is Always Before Sunday

Life is full of patterns. But an omniscient, omnipresent, all-powerful God doesn’t need patterns. He created them for us because He knows we need them. Days and nights, years, seasons, awake and asleep, life’s hills and valleys, on and on. There is one pattern that Jesus alone had to create that took care of our sin […]

Turning the Table

A book I just finished and would highly recommend is Louie Giglio’s Goliath Must Fall: Winning the Battle Against Your Giants. It’s a new spin on the legendary David and Goliath account with a focus on 5 common giants in our lives: fear, rejection, addiction, anger, and comfort, all well tied to the narrative of […]

Connecting Context

My wife and I were eating in a chain sandwich shop one Saturday and being the strange hyper-aware observer of life that I am, I did a double take when I saw this sign attached onto the door of their bottled water cooler. There are just 4 simple words in this entire message but 1 of them […]

The Tale of Two Carpenters

There were two young men whose father sat them down and told them it was time to choose a trade, a skill, a livelihood, a life’s calling. After careful consideration and discussion, both made the decision to become carpenters. They wanted to have the opportunity to create, build, and see the hard work of their […]

Free To Be

Just a few miles from our home at the northeast corner of an intersection of an interstate and a major thoroughfare, there’s a Kia auto dealership. It is prime real estate, especially for auto sales, with high visibility and easy access. Thousands of people pass by there every day. This past week as I drove […]

4 Steps to Personalizing Britain’s Counter-Terrorism Strategy

As I watched Britain’s Prime Minister Theresa May give her press conference early Sunday morning following the horrific terror attacks in London Saturday evening, I was struck by her strong, definitive, and un-politically-correct language, the likes of which I haven’t seen or heard in politics in far too long. After the speech, I went on-line […]