Pastor's Blog (Page 7)

Pleading the Mercy! When someone you know has taken some ill-advised turns in life and then comes up against some degree of crisis, how do you pray? I’ll confess that sometimes I pray rather consequentially. “Lord, so & so has done such & such and now the consequences have arrived. Plow deeply, Lord, that he/she may learn the lessons well and not take those…

Do you remember the man from whom Jesus cast out Legion, a whole host of demons? He was so ecstatic over his deliverance from demonic bondage that he pled with Jesus to allow him to accompany Him. But Jesus did not permit him to do so. Instead, He said to him, “Go to your home and to your people and tell them what great things the Lord has done for you, and how He…

Are you familiar with the unpleasant experience of being interrupted? Most of us know the feeling all too well. We find such inconsideration and rudeness quite distasteful. It was at Cornelius’ home that Peter, having just begun to communicate the message of salvation in Jesus Christ, was very forcibly interrupted. In his own words, “As I began to speak, the Holy Spirit…

My 8-year-old granddaughter Hosanna has discovered harmony! Visiting this month from Africa, she has taken a keen interest in the piano and has been learning to play the melody of Christ The Lord Is Risen Today. Melodies are great, but they just beg for harmony. So the other evening when she was practicing her song I knelt down beside her at the piano and showed her…

In the latter part of Acts 9, two men from Joppa came the 10 miles or so to Lydda to find Peter. They earnestly entreated him to come back with them to Joppa right away. Tabitha, a beloved disciple, had just died. Step into Peter’s sandals for a moment. If you were Peter, when do you suppose you would have begun to notice the similarities between this event and that…

Do you sometimes find yourself drifting toward despair concerning our nation’s spiritual state? I do. Look around. The moral decay is accelerating at an alarming rate. Some decades ago we as a nation grew to be a people of spiritual apathy. Then, over time that apathy became god-less-ness. We operated as if God just wasn’t in the picture. We did whatever we pleased.…