Ecclesiastes 12:10

    I love a good story. Tales that inspire you to believe in something even though you know it is just the work of a creative mind. Characters that are real to you as your friends even though they just exist on paper or the silver screen. Stories have the power to excite us, to make us cry, to make us think, to make us care.   The Bible isn’t one of them.   It’s not that the Bible does not inspire, excite, or move us. It isn’t a story, in the sense of a story being a made-up or recreated tale. The Bible is a book of truth. The events it proclaims are facts not fiction, truth not tales, moments not myths. For we did not follow cleverly devised tales when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of His majest y. 2 nd Peter 1:16    We need to make sure we keep that thought in our minds as we read and study it. The folks in it were flesh and blood, the events were not exaggeration...

      It’s the summer of 1999 and I’m in college and wanting to go into youth ministry. So, I traveled with the local youth guy to a youth minister conference. One evening, I was excited because the keynote speaker was a man that I had just heard do a rather good presentation earlier that week. As the lights dim, he exclaims, “I know I was assigned this other topic but tonight I really want to talk about Y2K”. He then goes on to speak about how an Old Testament prophet was warning us about the danger that were coming. The Bible was proclaiming the danger we were all facing when the computer could not handle the new date.   I could not believe how this speaker was twisting the Scripture to justify his paranoid belief. I remember trying to look around during this to see if anybody was buying this. I couldn’t tell the temperature of the crowd (it was dark) but it seemed like the guy I was sitting beside was.  I left shortly thereafter and went to bed bumfuzzled. ...

  Nobody likes to be left out. There is a very subtle but very powerful influence on us to fit in with the group. If we are excluded, we tend to migrate to another group that will proclaim “We never want to be with those folks in the first place!”   But that isn’t true. We want to belong. To be accepted. Part of what C.S. Lewis called the Inner Ring. Those that are “In”.  We may want to be there but it might not be where Christ is. Therefore Jesus also, that He might sanctify the people through His own blood, suffered outside the gate.    So, let us go out to Him outside the camp, bearing His reproach . Hebrews 13:12-13    Christ’s mission required him to not follow the norm or go with the crowd. His sacrifice required him to ‘ go outside the camp ’. Not to do what had always been done. Not to please the keepers of the status quo. Not to be like everyone else. He had to set out to go a way that had not been done.   And ...

  No good deed ever goes unpunished.   I’m sure that is how Obadiah felt. As he was serving as the house overseer for the wicked King Ahab, he had risked his life to protect the prophets of the Lord from the wrath of Queen Jezebel. He holed them up in a cave, provided them with supplies, and divided them up so they couldn’t be as easily discovered. This act of kindness had put him in danger for years.   And then he had stumbled on the most wanted man in Israel, the prophet Elijah. “ He said, What sin have I committed, that you are giving your servant into the hand of Ahab to put me to death?”   1 st Kings 18:9     Ahab had searched far and wide for Elijah. Now Elijah wanted Obadiah to go and tell him that he had been found. Obadiah could see how bad this could go. What would happen if he told Ahab he found him and Elijah wasn’t there? What would happen to those he was protecting? Had Ahab found out about his saving the prophets? Would...