Ecclesiastes 12:10

  Even though it is one of the most plentiful substances on the planet, water might be the strangest, at least chemically speaking. H20 makes up seventy percent of the earth and seventy percent of our brains, yet it stands apart from everything else in sixty-six different ways. For example, any other gas combined with hydrogen just produces another gas, only when combined with oxygen will it make a liquid. Nothing else is found in nature a solid and liquid and gas at the same time. Most substances shrink when they cool but water expands. Water will dissolve almost anything but unlike other solvents, it doesn’t eradicate what it dissolves. You can put your hand right through it yet water is difficult to compress, essentially making it making it bulletproof.   Yet what might make water even more unusual is that it can save you from your sins. … when God's patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were ...

  My wife often will ask me “Are you upset”? I will reply, “No.” Then she will exclaim, “Then tell your face.” Sometimes my facial expressions don’t always match my mind.  As it says in Ecclesiastes 7:3, For when a face is sad a heart may be happy .   Yet there should be some reaction to the things we feel inside. A repercussion to the thoughts in our head.  When we show what we say in a meaningful way. Things that shine forth like a smile on our face that tell the world around us what is going on in our hearts.   How about our thankfulness?   Sure we might throw the standard, “thank you” around, though oftentimes it is done in formality rather than sincerity. But I am talking about actions that show our gratitude.  In a season where we talk about thankfulness, do we show it? When offer thanksgiving to God, does it seem like we mean it?   Sadly, many don’t look a Christians and see a thankful people. Consider our worship. People often ap...

    The single biggest thing the London Underground did to improve satisfaction among its customers was not to make the trains cleaner or faster or run quicker. It was the introduction of display signs that would tell you the amount of time till the train would arrive.   People were happier waiting nine minutes for a train knowing when it was coming, rather than waiting four minutes in uncertainty. They wanted to know. Knowledge made the uncomfortable more tolerable.   I think we need to understand that when we deal with others. Our tendency is not to tell people things we think will upset them. We gloss over, avoid the subject, and leave folks in the dark.  Rather than help it makes the issue worse.  Sometimes it is not intentional. We just fail to communicate things to others and then wonder why they are frustrated and upset.  Sometimes “ Speaking Truth to One Another ” is making sure we are speaking! Our lack of communication might be saying...

  In Matthew 7:21 Jesus makes an important statement: " Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter.”  Just because you call Jesus  Lord doesn’t mean you are part of his kingdom. You may profess Him but that does not mean you part of his possession.   Consider the next verses as well: " Many will say to Me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?'    "And then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you; depart from me, you who practice lawlessness.'  Notice these are not insincere professors. They are ones who are not actively doing things in his name. We can’t dismiss them as non-commits, or liars. They are doing things that would seemingly make you think they are fully engrossed in the cause.  But he does not claim them because he does not k...

  It seems every election we go through is billed “as the most important ever” and “will change the future of the world as we know it”.  But if you look throughout history, you will see leaders come and go, powers rise and fall, and what we think of as important, stable, and unchangeable really isn’t.   In Daniel 4 we read of a leader that was warned about his hubris. Though he was on top of the world, it did not mean he was going to stay there. Warned in a vision, he was told to realize, “ That the Most High is ruler over the realm of mankind, And bestows it on whom He wishes And sets over it the lowliest of men."(vs19).   It might need to be a lesson we need to learn as well.  As much as we think we know who will or won’t be in charge in the coming years, we need to consider that the one that places all those in power is in Heaven. As Nebuchadnezzar concludes about God, “ All the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing, But He does according to...