Columba and Kentigern.  After establishing 30 houses of prayer in Ireland, and after making a pilgrimage to honor Martin at Tours, the hot-headed Columba created some serious problems in Ireland—and was banished from his homeland in the middle of the sixth century.  Founding the prayer community at Iona, Columba succeeded in bringing the Picts and […]

Patrick and the Irish. As a teenager, Patrick was whisked away from his home in Dumbarton, Scotland, to be a slave in Ireland.  This improbable beginning set him on a journey of prayer, which God would build into one of the greatest examples of Kingdom transformation the world has ever seen—as described by Patrick himself […]

Evagrius, Cassian and Germanus. Evagrius of Pontus, experiencing the temptations of wealth and power in the Byzantine Church, fled to the deserts of Egypt, where he became the leader of the spiritual descendants of Anthony at Nitria.  Two men—Cassian and Germanus—attached themselves to him, then carried the teaching of the Desert Fathers into Gaul, and […]

The Early Celts. The Desert Fathers, beginning with Anthony, continued to live by the original “by my Spirit” pattern Jesus modeled out for them.  Martin of Tours picked that up from the biography of Anthony by Athanasius, and passed it along to Ninian, who planted it in Scotland in 397 A.D.  Scotland became a matchstick […]

Power and Might. When Constantine moved to make Christianity the official “religion” of Rome, Pope Sylvester I assumed that he was to form an alliance with the Roman emperor.  In this way—beginning in 313 A.D.—Christianity stopped being a “by my Spirit” kingdom, and began to function as a “power and might” religion. My teaching shows […]

The Hope of Rome.  The ancient Hebrew prophecies spoke of a new kingdom that God would instigate during the fourth great world empire of the ancient world: the Roman Empire.  The great promise of that empire was this: that they would civilize the surrounding “barbarian” nations by conquering them.  Caesar began the process of “civilization” […]

For me, the four most important rewards for a life of walking with God are these: Walking with God positions us to learn our true destiny, for which He created us in the first place. It enables us to form stable relationships with people, because we learn to depend on God, not people, to be […]