The older I get, the more legacy matters to me. I hope it's not just an ego trip, but rather to leave behind something that matters and thus, will last. As a servant of Christ, I want His name, gospel, and values to be understood and lived-out by people I've had to influence. My wife and I have even decided that our gravestones will simply read, "Joel & Karen Rissinger...They Served Jesus." Now don't get me wrong, I want a couple more decades to work at this--I'm not ready to

I was reading the story of Sampson's parents this morning in Judges 13 and I was struck with this question: "What's it gonna take for people to believe?" God does and has done so much for us and has provided so many miracles and proofs of His existence, mercy, love and purpose--what WILL it ultimately take for men and women to believe? Sampson's father Manoah is a great example of what I'm talking about. Manoah's wife had been unable to become pregnant. But after his wife see

As an early Mother's Day gift, I bought my wife a "squirrel- proof" bird feeder. The design was truly ingenious. The feeder was a rectangular box with multiple feeding stations--essentially, little holes for seed to drop into next to perches. The seed was gravity fed into the holes. The real "kicker" was that the outside of the box would slide down and cover the holes if anything heaver than a small bird steped on any of the perches. It was brilliant! Literally! But nobody to