Ecclesiastes 12:10

       If you try to teach your children about what is right and wrong after they have left your home it’s too late.    If you tell your loved one that you appreciated them while standing on their grave it’s too late.   If you wait to ask after they’ve already made their decision, it’s too late   If you apologize for your behavior as they are walking out the door, it’s too late.   If you wish you hadn’t done it after you already done it, it’s too late.   If you wait to serve till the service is already going, it’s too late.   If you start to prepare when the moment of action has come, it’s too late.   If you wait to be a leader until there is no leadership, it’s too late.   If you refuse to move until everything is just perfect, it’s too late.   If you start to build the new home after the old house has fallen down, it’s too late   If you wait to obey until the Day o...

 Robert E. Lee had his choice of his command in the Civil War.  The commanding general of the Union Army, Winfield Scott, told Lincoln he wanted Lee for a top command. With the Civil War looming, both sides wanted this top general to lead their forces.   So why did Lee make the wrong choice?   It wasn’t because he was on board with the Confederacy.  Lee was against the idea of succession seeing it as rebellion and betraying the work for the founding fathers.  He even recognized the issue for the war, slavery, “ as an evil institution’ , that was a cancer harming ‘ not only to the black population but to the white as well  ’ and believe the institution would eventually come to an end.   If he didn’t believe in the act and wasn’t set on the cause why did he betray his country?   In his own words, Lee said " I look upon secession as anarchy. If I owned the four millions of slaves in the South I would sacrifice them all...

  They understood the problem. So when Jesus asked the disciples, “ Where are we to buy bread, so that these may eat ?", they were stumped.  There wasn’t enough money, even if they had some place to buy food from.  Jesus knew that He just wanted to see how they would handle it.  Then Andrew spoke up. " There is a lad here who has five barley loaves and two fish, but what are these for so many people?" (John 6:9)   It wasn’t much of a suggestion. Andrew talks himself out of it before he finishes his sentence. It won’t work. It’s absurd. It’s not practical.   Yet it did. Jesus made it work. That ‘bad idea’ became a miracle that every gospel writer mentions.   A solution is better than no solution.   I often noticed in the work of the church people are experts in why things will not work. Ideas are picked apart.  Plans are shot down before even fully formed. Yet, no other suggestion is given; no course of action is pro...

  It seems nowadays everybody got an opinion on everything.   Well, maybe that has always been that way but we didn’t have all the ways to express it in such a public manner. Facebook, Twitter, blog posts, email chains.  Whatever issue happens to pop up in a given day, I see so many folks quick to spew out their takes as if they were the end all and be all of the matter.   I think us preachers are the worst.  Maybe we get so used to people listening to us each week we think that it is us they are coming to listen to.  That just because an idea came into our head, its a gold plated diamond that must be given to everyone to look at and admire.    Truth is just because a man is a minister of the gospel it doesn’t make him an expert in every subject.  He’s not a political expert, business leader, constriction whiz, social guru, dietary genius, genius psychologist or great thinker.  He just a man tasked with repeating and rem...

    Abraham Lincoln was once quoted about prayer by saying: “ I have been driven many times upon my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go. My own wisdom and that of all about me seemed insufficient for that day”    I often have remind myself when I am faced with the confusion of choice about the old hymn, Did You Think To Pray ?   Foolishly, I’ll wait till I have made up my mind to then go and ask for it from God. In all my debate and decision, I don’t factor in the Lord till the end.  But why wait?  The best decisions come when we let God make them.     Consider what Jesus did when he had a big decision to make. In Luke 6:12-13, we read: “ It was at this time that He went off to the mountain to pray, and He spent the whole night in prayer to God.  And when day came, He called His disciples to Him and chose twelve of them, whom He also named as apostles ”   ...