One evening I went through an intersection near home and right there was a police car, lights flashing right at me. I pulled into a nearby parking lot where several others were waiting with me for their respective turns with the city's finest. 

I was thinking the other day about the scripture that states that if we do not forgive, we can’t be forgiven. It is found in Matthew 6:14. Well, it struck me that this can be applied to whether or not we forgive ourselves.

I find it easier to forgive others than to forgive myself, and I realized that by not forgiving myself, maybe I have kept the Father from forgiving me also. I may be stretching this scripture in Matthew, but the Messiah is pretty bold; He says if you “forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (Matt 6:14)

Our God is a patient sort, and that goes for our prayer lives too.  As Paul once wrote, “The Spirit also helps in our weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.”  (Rom 8:26-27 NKJV)  That’s like saying God sees our hearts even if our tongues don’t say it right.

Fear: a state of overwhelming anxiety that zaps all signs of hope and faith away, making one to feel panicked. That’s my definition. It is a mind-tingling sensation that destroys all my rational thought, and heightens my emotional state.

For hundreds of years, people have been saying that the story of the census in the Gospel of Luke was a fable. But all that changed in 1947 when Luke's account of the birth of Jesus was verified by a publication from the University of Chicago.

God doesn’t always speak through his prophets. There are at least four instances in the New Testament where God’s message is made known through what we might think of as surprising sources.

Bullying is in the news nearly every day. It is a problem our schools are trying hard to deal with, and access to the Internet has simply provided an additional outlet for this behavior. It is a multi-layered issue that must be addressed on every level.

I cannot tell you what to do about “bullies” at your child’s school, but I can tell you a lesson I recently learned from my grandson about dealing with bullies.

Today, I want to write a more personal blog rather than the style I have been writing because I want to share my week. I had a really testing week this week. I wasn’t tragically tested. My test this week was more about not quite reaching a major family goal.

With the end of summer upon us, another school year begins. Our children are back at school. Many of our young adults are off to institutions of higher learning or out in the work force trying to make a place for themselves in this world. As they embark on their journeys this year in a world vastly different from forty, thirty, or even twenty years ago, what place does righteous character have in today’s secular, fast-paced, lawless, postmodern world? 

I spend a lot of time every spring and summer digging up weeds from my lawn and mulching them in my garden.  The weed I dig up the most is the dandelion.  It and its pretty yellow flowers just don’t belong in my front yard.

I would like to ask a question: How many people do you think feel satisfaction with their lives? How many of you are self-satisfied with your life? Is there anything you wish you could change?

My wife’s uncle used to run cattle, and whenever we visited him, he would take us to his acreage in his old Jeep and we would drive around looking for the livestock.

I was soon to learn that he had a unique way of finding the cattle and we never even had to go inside the fence.  He pulled up to his barn, walked over to the gate, and Uncle Sammy simply cranked up his lungs and yelled, "Calves!  Calves!"  In a just a few minutes a dozen or so beasts appeared over the top of the rise and came right up to the fence, where he fed them a nutritional treat. Read More...

We must have endurance if we want to reach any type of goal. When I am getting my garden ready, I can’t just throw some seeds outside on top of the ground, and hope that I will have an awesome garden. No, I have to till the ground first, make rows, then plant the seeds, and after that is done, there is watering, weeding, and waiting for growth. Work and endurance, the desire to keep going even when we are tired and frustrated, have to go together in order to create a good work. Read More...

“Fool! This day your life will be required of you!” (Luke 12:20)

Once there was a rich fool, Jesus tells us. We don’t know if he started off as a fool, but for certain something happened that made him that way. One year his farm was so productive that his barns were full, his storage bins were full, and his silo was full. His harvest was so great that he was dumping it on big heaps on the ground. Read More...

The news these days has been rather disturbing and depressing. I found myself really feeling anxiety this week with all that is going on in the world. In fact, I think I am going to take a break from the news for a while because it seems that 99 percent of it does not have the traits that are listed in Philippians 4:8. In fact, usually the news is just a joy stealer. Read More...

We won’t always get it right, so why do we try to reach perfection? Isn’t this self-seeking idea what the serpent promised Eve in the garden? If we were to become perfect at everything, then why would we need salvation? Therefore, since we are not perfect, and we seriously need grace and favor from God, then we need to accept the reality of the situation; we won’t reach perfection right now. Read More...

Have you ever known someone who, if they didn’t have anything to worry about, would worry about not having anything to worry about? I know I sometimes find myself wondering when the “next shoe is going to drop.” But that isn’t how we are supposed to live our lives. Read More...

Is it really true that “God will not make you go through more than you can handle”? You may not agree with me, but I do not think this is true. The idea comes from 1 Corinthians 10:13. Let’s look at what it really says Read More...

How do we keep hope within us when it seems that the world around us is falling apart? Since the Scriptures state that there is “nothing new under the sun,” then we are not experiencing anything worse than generations prior to us. So, how do we become “set apart” from the world around us? Read More...