Ecclesiastes 12:10

   When you read Joel 2:30-31, (" I will display wonders in the sky and on the earth, Blood, fire and columns of smoke. "The sun will be turned into darkness And the moon into blood Before the great and awesome day of the LORD comes .) you might be wondering what he is talking about.   A fireworks display? A great battle of a war? The end of the world?   But Peter tells us what he is speaking of in Acts 2. These visuals describe the Gospel.   Now, we might not see it that way,y but he is exactly right.   What is more spectacular than the Gospel? What defeats the biggest enemy of man? What changes the entire world? What completes the work of the Lord more than the story of Jesus' life, death and resurrection?   I am sure that in the coming days, you will probably see a fireworks display. I bet that for many of us it kind of becomes old hat. Yet imagine what that would appear to be to a person that has never seen it before. It would be shocking...

    I recently learned a new word -“demotic”.  It means “ denoting or relating to the kind of language used by ordinary people; popular or colloquia l”. I heard it use in reference to an idea about language and grammar. Specifically how some believe that a native speaker of a language can never use a word wrongly if that usage is accepted. In other words that as long a word is demotic, that is popularly accepted, then it is right.   As a person that can butcher the English language, I think that ain’t a bad idea. I literally put me on cloud nine and I could care less if you don’t like it   It seems some think the same principle applies to the scripture. A demotic Gospel. One where doctrine is determined by the masses, not God. If everyone says the way to heaven is by the sinner’s prayer, even if that prayer is not found in the New Testament, its fine. If society changes its mind and says divorce for any reason, sexual relations outside of marri...

   In the twenty-fourth chapter of Acts we read of a sermon that was delivered to Felix; But some days later Felix arrived with Drusilla, his wife who was a Jewess, and sent for Paul and heard him speak about faith in Christ Jesus. But as he was discussing righteousness, self-control and the judgment to come, Felix became frightened and said, "Go away for the present, and when I find time I will summon you." Acts 24:24-25   Although Felix was just looking for a payday (vs 26) this sermon seemed to have an effect on him.  It probably bothered him since Felix didn’t have much self-control and wouldn’t seemly fare well in the judgment to come.  Felix was there with his third wife Drusilla, a woman he had seduced away from her first husband.  These convoluted marriages seem to be all the rage in these ruling circles (Mark 6:17),  but the truth Paul preached didn’t jive with this type lifestyle.  So Felix sent him away for a mor...

  The Judean Desert is a barren stretch of land that extend from east of Jerusalem to the Dead Sea. It’s the wilderness where John the Baptist preached and David fled from Saul.  Not a lot of things grew in that wasteland but up until the 1 st century there was one tree that was plentiful, the Judean date palm.  It was so well know that the Romans even put it on a coin known as the “Judaea Capta”     Yet sometime before the year 500, the Judean date palm disappeared from the area—and, therefore, the world.  The tree would have been lost forever but for Herod the Great.  He built a fortress on top of a mesa called Masada that is still there today. In the mid-1960s, excavators working on the site found some seeds nearly 2000 years old, yet still well preserved in ancient pottery.  The seeds were kept in storage until 2005, when it was placed in a special, hormone-infused soil. Those seeds would eventually sprout, and five years later, there...

Dan West was serving as relief worker during the Spanish Civil War. His job was divvy up the rations of powdered milk to hungry families. Each day he was forced to decide who would receive the limited rations and who wouldn't – literally, who would live and who would die. The same starving children came everyday asking for help and there would never be enough to go around. This kind of aid, he knew, would never be enough. Then a simple idea hit him; Give them a cow not a cup . So when he returned home he started by sending seventeen cows to malnourished children in Puerto Rico. The idea was to end hunger permanently by providing families with livestock and training so that they "could be spared the indignity of depending on others to feed their children.”  Each family would be given cow with only one catch . When each animal gave birth, the first newborn cow had to go to another family. The gift had to continue. So an idea grew. An idea that is now estimated by the ...

Rick Reilly recently had an article on the oddest game in high school football history. It occurred last month down in Grapevine, Texas when Grapevine Faith hosted Gainesville State School. What made it so odd? Well for starters, when Gainesville came out to take the field, the Faith fans made a 40-yard spirit line for them to run through. They even made a banner for players to crash through at the end. It said, "Go Tornadoes!" Which is also weird, because Faith is the Lions.  As the game got under way, more than 200 Faith fans sat on the Gainesville side and kept cheering the Gainesville players on—by name.  You wouldn't expect another parent to tell somebody to hit their kids but they did. What is even weirder is the coach for Grapevine Faith Kris Hogan is the one that gave the idea for the fans to do it. Why? It’s not because Gainesville is a great team. They were 0-8 for the year and had only scored 2 TDs all year. Faith has 70 kids, 11 coaches, the l...

          The town that I grew up near had an annual event called the “World’s Largest Garage Sale”. Each year half the town would take all their old junk and put it up for sale, while the other half would root around in it looking for a find. (I always said those people would wait till next year and sale the same old junk back to first group.) One person trying to get rid of something, another man is searching for the same thing.  One man’s junk is another man’s treasure.           This adage isn’t just true for garage sales. One person quits a dead end job that is making him miserable; another person comes along and takes that same job he sees as exciting because it of its great potential. One person dreams of moving out of the city to the country with open spaces and no one to disturb him.  Another person wants to move into town where everything is and things are going on. One p...