Ecclesiastes 12:10

  Ok, I know you have seen the image. A lion tamer enters in the cage of the beast and forces it to obey his commands using a whip, a gun and a chair. Now you can see how the whip and gun could come in handy but you might be wondering why a chair would intimidate an animal as powerful as a lion? Clyde Beatty taming a lion with a chair   It's not that the lion is afraid of the chair -- it's that the lion is confused by the chair. Cats are single-minded, and the points of the chair's four legs bobbing around confuse the lion enough that it loses its train of thought. Casually put, the chair distracts the lion from wanting to claw the lion tamer's face off. The powerful creature could destroy the chair in moment’s notice but instead it is distracted into submission.  It’s not too much different than how Satan controls us today. By the power of God we could overcome anything that he would use to subdue us. We can overcome the evil one (1 st John 2:13-14). ...

   In 1997, Reed Hastings returned a rented copy of the movie Apollo 13 to Blockbuster Video.  He was dismayed when he was told he owed a $40 late fee, more than double the cost to buy the movie. The next year he founded Netflix as an alternative to the movie rental change.  By 2010 Blockbuster was bankrupt and out of business and Netflix was worth 20 billion dollars. While Netflix didn't shut down blockbuster, it did steal the market that Blockbuster needed to move into. Abusing one customer destroyed them in the end.    We may not think much of the slights we give to others. The rude comment to the waitress, the person we cut off in traffic, the people we cut in front of in the checkout line, the man we shortchange in business; but we always need to be careful because we never know when those small slights may cause big damage.  I hate to think of the examples of people that refuse to come to worship services because that is where “so & s...

 It is sad but our society has turned the business man into a villain . Watch any movie and chances are the villain will be the evil business man. News reports are always emphasis the evil corporate greed and their unfair practices. The truth is those stories are mostly the expections and not the rule. The true backbone of most communities is the business people that sell and trade in there .    Rather than a villain they are often he heroes of the town. Because of their efforts we are blessed with jobs and goods and all of things that make our life better.  Proverbs 11:26 instructs us: " He who withholds grain, the people will curse him, But blessing will be on the head of him who sells it. "   Don’t forget how blessed we are to have those that provide the thing we need to live and thrive . Our local businesses are a blessing to us and we should be grateful for them!

    Back in the day of the old general store, a farmer would come in and trade his eggs or milk or butter for an equal measure of some other product. Once a owner of the store noticed however, a farmer's recent contributions had been more on the short side. Upset he vowed to confront the farmer the next time he came in. Sure enough his products were all just short of a pound. The upset store owner accused him “just how do you think that is a pound? The farmer replied well we are just simple ordinary folks, we don’t have a scale to measure, we simply take the pound of sugar or meal we get from you and place it on a balance and we add our goods until it matches up. You see the short measure wasn’t coming from the farmers end.       Proverbs 11:1  A false balance is an abomination to the LORD, But a just weight is His delight . Some in business don’t think anything of shortchanging the customer.  The public may not figure out the ruse, but be ce...