Author: Jon Gauger

Recently, a student asked me if I use an electronic Bible in church.  I told him no. Before I give you my reasons, let me first tell you that I love (even depend on) electronic Bibles and commentaries for sermon preparation, crafting devotionals and researching biblical issues.  The ability to click with a mouse, swipe with my tablet or peruse with my smartphone is a huge time saver.   But when I attend church or speak in church, I never use anything electronic.   Here’s why. First, the Bible is not like any other book.  It is unique in every sense.  Actually,…

When it comes to geography, Americans are notoriously ignorant—and curiously unbothered about it. Whether looking at a globe or a U.S. map, most folks just don't care. Take my home state, Illinois.  For those who live in the city of Chicago or its suburbs, their knowledge of the state's western borders ends at the city of DeKalb, home of Northern Illinois University.  But about half of the state lies west of this point—the half where my wife grew up.  It's the half that rarely makes the news. Yet I say you have not lived until you've been there and cruised…

She alone witnessed the crime.  Peering across the room, her intelligent eyes tracked his silent motion toward the door, observing his catlike ease in slipping behind it.  Her acute sense of hearing registered his cruel deed.  When she could take it no more, she blurted out, “No, no, no!”  Over and over she screamed it. That's when Lucy's mother walked over to the shouting 16 month-old, asking what it was that so upset her.  The pantry door—now open—revealed the crime and the criminal:  Lucy’s two year old brother Caleb had snitched a number of snacks, the sound of the crinkling…

It’s amazing what you find in the paper.  Recently, I picked up a Wall Street Journal and read Barton Swain's review of Thomas Kidd's new biography, George Whitfield. Born in 1714, Whitfield was just 21 years old when—as he put it— after enduring many months' inexpressible trials by night and day… God was pleased at length to remove the heavy load and to enable me to lay hold on his dear Son by a living faith. George Whitfield’s spiritual journey caused him to deeply ponder the subject of conversion itself.   This passion pushed him toward further study, ordination, and an…

Have you ever felt like you haven’t been properly rewarded for going the extra mile? I’m guessing Robert Ford might have felt that way.   Captain Ford was piloting a Pan Am Boeing 317-B just two hours out of Auckland, New Zealand, when his radio officer relayed the news about the bombing of Pearl Harbor.  Opening top secret instructions, Captain Ford was told that his aircraft (essentially a flying boat able to carry 74 passengers) was a strategic military resource and must not get into enemy hands.  Toward that end, he was ordered to take “the long way home” to…

“What’s in your wallet?” So goes the popular ad campaign.   But I have a different question for you: “What’s in your heart?” With Valentine’s Day in the rearview mirror, I’m reminded of Proverbs 4:23:  “Above all, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.” Puritan John Flavel once claimed, “The keeping and right managing of the heart in every condition is the great business of a Christian’s life.” Peter Moffett staunchly advocates, “Rather look to the defending of thy heart, than to the defending of thy house.”  To a culture like ours, the keeping of a heart seems…

Red hearts…dark chocolate…diamond rings: Valentine's Day. With so many getting engaged on February 14, I could hardly resist sharing the findings of a new report from Atlanta's Emory University.  Titled, A Diamond is Forever—and Other Fairy Tales, the report features a survey of 3,000 once or still-married American couples. Maybe you've heard the “two-month's-salary rule” that jewelers love to foist on couples.  According to this “rule,” you are supposed to save up (or at least spend) two months of your salary for an engagement ring. Turns out that little rule has worked well for jewelers.  Not so much for couples….

I am about to ruffle some feathers. Forgive me. Here’s the issue: I am personally uncomfortable with our commitment to comfort during church.  More to the point, I have a problem with the emerging assumption that drinking coffee or water during the church service is normal—almost a right. If worship is what we are supposed to be about—the total investment of our energy in the magnifying of another—then where is there room for satiating our own thirst?  Understand, I’m preaching to myself, too, because I enjoy a bottle of water. Recently I attended a Sunday morning service where communion was…

It was foolish.  Not even a two-year old would have made the mistake. May I tell you about it? Trekking along a pathway in the Sonoran Desert's Saguaro National Park, Charlie, Kathy, Diana and I were struck by the landscape.  No other place on the planet has as many Saguaro cacti . Nor was the Saguaro the only cactus around.  There were dozens of varieties.  Deserts, I am learning, offer a strange beauty—and I was determined to capture it all on my Nikon…or die trying. Convinced I had framed up a pretty cool shot, I asked my wife to smile…

Six degrees Fahrenheit.   Walk a mile and a half in that kind of weather and you discover an alternate meaning to the expression, “chill out.”   Though our day began in the windy city of Chicago, it ended in the warmth of Arizona. Our friends, Charlie and Kathy, were kind enough to host our visit and drive us down to Tucson's Saguaro National Park.  What a contrast to the snow and ice we'd left behind.   Midwesterner that I am, it took a while for me to process that we were driving through an honest-to-goodness desert.   Red rock formations, gray dust and…