Stephen De La Vega

  Leave your rifles in the rack. You won’t need them when the battle is insurmountable. Has anybody ever told you that? Sometimes we can go to battle without breaking a sweat or calling upon those heroes who are somehow larger than life. But, of course, we should call on the Almighty Hero. God will be our Hero when we let Him. This is the 3rd  post about kings and kingdoms within our larger series of New Years Resolutions based on every 20:24 and 20:25 verse in the Bible. Regarding kings and kingdoms, we first resolve to stand for God’s government . When we do so, we support His choices for who sits in office, and we ultimately trust and obey His commands. Then we are prepared to step forward, and follow Him through the highs and lows of life, including battles we can't win. We can remain committed to His plan despite any difficulty or hardship because our battles are God’s battles when we lean into Him. He will go before us and do the heavy lifting if we let Him, which is...

  2020 has been a year of change, difficulty, loss, and unrest. Thankfulness is not in that list, but we are thankful – we try to be, anyway – because God is our God. This post is an autobiographical review of the last several months and I express my gratitude for our God who never withholds His favor towards His people. It’s easy to trudge along and overlook Thanksgiving, but Thanksgiving is always worth a pause. Will you join me in giving thanks to our loving God?   When COVID-19 hit hard, our IT team hurried to make working at home a reality for our busy public health department. We did it. We deployed significant successes. Though some employees still go to the office, we’ve become very capable in our homes. Many of us have different stories with financial hardship and loss. But God is our God. He favors us even when life is hard to bear. Thank you, Lord, for providing for my family and for meeting our every need. Thank you especially for nurturing us as we grow ...

This article is a follow up to my previous post called Do We Stick It Where It Suits Us?   It’s a response mostly to alleviate my own rookie blogger mistake.  I failed to anticipate the amount of emotions generated by an article that includes the word ‘President.’  For some of you, this was perfectly fine, but it colored the message for others. [NOTE: This post and it's initiating post from 10/6/17 has been rewritten into 3 new posts beginning with  this one .] So, allow me first to apologize.   To keep the article just a little longer than a reasonable word count, I chose not to round out a couple points even though my gut told me they needed more explanation.  My points were biblically based, but I did not consider that emotionally charged words like ‘president’ or ‘government’ can compete with what I was trying to communicate.  In hindsight, I should have split the post into two articles.  I'm sorry for missing this important real...

Many of us fail to honor and respect those who hold positions of authority.  We are sometimes more interested in how they and their organizations might serve us, rather than how we might sacrifice in the name of honor and respect.  We cry, “Injustice!,” and often decry our parents, our bosses, our schools, our safety net, our government…even each other when our allegiances don’t match.  We can fight for the oppressed, yet disintegrate the cause because we don’t honor those with the authority to improve the situation.  We can rally against discrimination, and discriminate in the process.  And, at a more basic level, we can defy our parents when all we really want is their support.  Do we cry for peace and justice while raising a fist at government, at those who disagree with us, and even at innocent bystanders? [NOTE: This post and it's follow up clarification posted on 10/29/17 has been rewritten into 3 new posts beginning with this one .] If...