A New Routine for 2026
But Jesus often withdrew to the wilderness for prayer.
Luke 5:15 (NLT)
In 2002, I spent a week shadowing Dr. Wayne Cordeiro, Lead Pastor of New Hope Christian Fellowship in Honolulu, Hawaii. I had been at Grace Church for six years and we were experiencing unprecedented growth. I honestly did not know how to lead a church that had grown by 300%. I needed lots of help and Wayne graciously invited me and three other Florida pastor friends to spend a week learning from him, his team and church.
Pastor Wayne and me in 2002
Wayne had started and led New Hope Christian Fellowship to be a model of church planting across the Pacific Rim, so I was ready to learn from this field-tested practitioner. Honestly, I went to Honolulu wanting to learn how to lead, grow and sustain a very large and complex church. But in my week at New Hope, I ended up learning how to become a passionate spiritual leader more than how to be the pastor of a megachurch.
Here’s what Wayne did while we were with him. Each morning our little group would meet with Wayne at 6:00am at a Starbucks with our Bibles, a journal and a pen. We’d read a little from the Old Testament and a little from the New Testament and then write whispers we heard from the Holy Spirit in a journal. My week doing this with Wayne and my friends changed my life. So for the last 23 plus years, this daily practice that we later called “the University of Holy Spirit” and now call “Dive Deep” has been my morning practice. My 45 to 60 minutes each morning reading and reflecting on scripture has taught me to tune my heart to hear the Holy Spirit’s promptings for my life and ministry.
For whatever reason last year in 2025, I really struggled with this reliable method. So, I started looking for a new routine late last year to “shake up” my time with God. Maybe the old saying about familiarity breeding contempt was at work. I really don’t know why this tried and true habit wasn’t working for me. I had seen online that one of my favorite authors, Philip Yancey had partnered with pastor and author Brenda Quinn on a new book entitled “The Bible Revealed: a 365-Day Journey Through God’s Word.” They suggest a regimen of reading a daily Bible selection that moves chronologically through the Bible. Then they encourage you to read a one-page commentary from one of the authors and finally respond to a question in a journal. I began this on January 1st and to my surprise (I know I shouldn't be), I am hearing from God in new, unexpected ways in these first days of January 2026. With God as my Helper, this will be my routine for my morning time with God through his Word.
Below is my journal writing response to Brenda Quinn’s question for Day 4 (January 4, 2026). It’s based on my reading of Genesis 4, the story of Cain killing his brother Abel. I hope this encourages you.
Look at Cain’s response when God confronts him. What do you think you would say if God appeared in person to confront you about your sin?
What I am noticing in Genesis 3 and 4 as God’s good creation turns sour is something about the nature of the One who confronts sin in his human creations. When God confronts them, he begins with probing questions of his image-bearing creations when they sin. Here are five questions God asks his wayward children in Genesis 3 and 4:
To Adam and Eve: “Where are you?” (3:9)
To Adam and Eve: “Who told you that you were naked?” (3:11)
To Cain: “Why are you so angry?” (4:6)
To Cain: “Where is your brother? Where is Abel?” (4:9)
To Cain: “What have you done?” (4:10)
I think these questions from God to his much-loved creations speaks to the character of the God who confronts. If A.W. Tozer is right, and I believe he is when we wrote "What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us," then what I believe about the character of God precedes the question for the day’s reading, “What do you think you would say if God appeared in person to confront you about your sin?”
This month begins 48 years of following Jesus for me. In that time I have come to “know Christ” (Philippians 3:10) as Paul admonishes. Jesus, full of grace and truth (John 1:14), has taught me about the vulgar grace and indiscriminate compassion of God. I have experienced what the Hebrew followers of Yahweh call the “hesed” or loyal love of God, again and again in my journey of obedience and disobedience. The Holy Spirit has allowed me to have many transcendent experiences of the height, depth, width and breadth of the love of God (Ephesians 3:18). So, the God I have come to experience in my nearly 50 year pilgrimage has proven himself to be a trustworthy God. At almost 66 years of age, what I know is that it is “the kindness of God that leads us to repentance” (Romans 2:10). To this kind of confronting God, I would and do say “Thank you my kind and loving Father for pointing out my sin. I know you love me and do this for my good.”
But what I also noticed in the story of “the train coming off the tracks” for the first family is that in Genesis 3:1, the serpent begins his temptation of Eve to distrust God with a question too. “Did God really say you must not eat the fruit from any of the trees in the garden?” Evil will always try to imitate God but twist what God does, but for its destructive purposes. Satan, the flesh and the world, or the “unholy trinity” as I like to call it, does not want to “ding” my life. It wants to “destroy” it. The serpent is not creative but he is consistent. He comes with questions that lure me to not trust my kind, gracious, merciful, loving and trustworthy God even when he confronts my unrighteous attitudes and actions. God’s confronting questions are for my flourishing while the serpents are for my demise.