Ecclesiastes 12:10

   Sometimes I have a problem letting things go. I am not talking about throwing away an old blender or the kids' art project from 1 st grade but letting go of the feeling when someone did you wrong. Maybe I am not alone in that.   Let’s consider what we read in Hebrews 12:15;  “ See to it that no one comes short of the grace of God; that no root of bitterness springing up causes trouble, and by it many be defiled;”. Here is a warning to us about a dangerous under-the-surface growth that can bring trouble and ruin, bitterness.  Bitterness is the lingering resentment that comes when are angered or disappointed. At first, it seems natural but the longer it stays the more it overtakes.   However, notice why this happens, it is when we come short of the grace of God. Grace is the forgiveness we get that we do not deserve. When we do not fully grasp that we have been forgiven, it keeps us from forgiving. We cannot let go of what another did to us ...

   I happen to like the clever touchdown dance. Since the National Football league relaxed its rules the last season there have been some pretty entertaining ones. However, there does seem to be too much over celebrating in football in general. The guy that jumps up and struts when he has made a routine tackle. The player that bows up on a hit when his team is down by twenty. The receiver that acts like making a normal first down is the greatest play in the history of football. It seems a bit juvenile.   Of course, the rebuke you always hear to these antics is “act like you have been there before”.  Only a rookie behaves that way. A true experience professional knows how to behave. Instead of making a fool of yourself, behave like you what you want to be not what you are.   Paul uses a similar phrase in Philippians 3:16. “ However, let us keep living by that same standard to which we have attained ”. In a section where he is encouraging us to tak...

  Edwin Booth was one of the greatest actors of his day. Coming from a famous acting family, Edwin toured throughout the United States and the major capitals of Europe performing Shakespearean plays. Some theatrical historians consider him the greatest American actor, and the greatest Hamlet, of the 19th century.   But that fame turned against him because of His brother John. The brothers had shared the stages from time to time but they, like many families of their day, disagreed over the Civil War. As the war went on, John increasingly quarreled with Edwin, who declined to make stage appearances in the South and refused to listen to John denunciations of the North and Lincoln. John Wilkes Booth showed his hatred when he went to Ford theater in April of 1865 and assassinated the President.   The assassination forced Edwin Booth to abandon the stage for many months. He disowned his brother, refusing to have John's name spoken in his house. Yet the damage was done....

   In May of 1940, German forces were on the verge of capturing the entire Allied army. Nearly surrounded, British and French soldiers fought their way to the coastal town of Dunkirk in a desperate bid to escape, but there was no place to go. Trapped between the sea and advancing German army, there seemed to be little hope.  Yet hope came in the form of the British citizenry. The British Admiralty put out the call for every small craft it could find to help stage an emergency evacuation . Yachts, fishing boats, motor launches, tug-boats, any vessel that could pull men off the beaches. Despite constant attack by German bombers, this motley fleet managed to rescue more than three hundred thousand men and bring them back to England. Winston Churchill called it a “miracle of deliverance.”   One of those that answered the call was a sixty-six-year-old retiree named Charles Lightoller. He navigated his small motor yacht to the battle and he crammed more than ...

   One of those new buzz words we see in our world today is zero tolerance. The school has zero tolerance policy with those that bring a weapon onto the campus. The NFL has a zero-tolerance toward domestic violence. The company has zero tolerance when it comes to discrimination.    The idea is that certain behaviors are so reprehensible that there will be no mercy or acceptance. No grace will be given, any wrong doing will be fully punished, no one will get away with it.   I for one think zero tolerance policies are foolish. Not because people don’t deserve to be punished, but because of the hubris that we think there can be no exceptions. Situations are rarely cut and dry.  There are unseen consequences. Life has more shades of gray than we care to admit.  We don’t know everything or understand all the ins and outs of every possible occurrence. In our desire to punish the guilty we leave no room for redemption.   If there ever w...

   If I called you a Nimrod, how would you feel?  If you are like most people you would probably feel insulted.  The popular definition for a nimrod is an inept person, an oaf, a maroon, an ignoramus.  The original name Nimrod really meant to be a skillful mighty hunter.  Its origin is found in Genesis 10:8-9:  “Cush begot Nimrod; he began to be a mighty one on the earth.  He was a mighty hunter before the LORD; therefore it is said, "Like Nimrod the mighty hunter before the LORD. " How did the mighty hunter become an inept oaf ? Well, it’s all Bugs Bunny’s fault.   Ok, maybe not all his fault.  You see in the popular cartoon featuring Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd, Bugs often times will refer to Elmer Fudd as a “little Nimrod”, a sarcastic reference to the mighty hunter of the Old Testament.  The writers might have gotten the joke but the general public didn’t.  They assumed, in their ignorance, the word was an ins...

    There is no doubt that we have become a “throwaway” society.  Between the start of New York City waste collections in 1905 and 2005 there was a tenfold rise in "product waste" (packaging and old products), from 92 to 1,242 pounds per person per year.  We throw away so much more than we used too, even food.  In 2004, a University of Arizona study indicates that forty to fifty percent of all edible food never gets eaten.  Every year $43 billion worth of edible food is estimated to be thrown away.  Products are not even designed to be repaired anymore.  Try to find a TV repair shop; they have gone the way of the dodo.  It’s cheaper and easier for most people to buy a new one than to have it repaired.  We waste because we want for not.  We have cheap products; why not get rid of the old stuff? The new model is out; why mess with the old one?  We have an abundance of food, why eat the leftovers?    ...

  There are many things I am not very good at.  Spellling.  Ignoring a strange attributes for politeness sake. (Yes, that woman has spectacularly hairy arms, but quit staring at them.) Wrapping presents.  Dealing with awkward situations.  Faking your way thru not remembering someone’s name.  Preaching (according to some who would know good preaching if they heard it, but they won’t hear it because they are too busy talking in the foyer to hear it!)  Letting go of criticism.  Pronunciation.  Ending phone conversations.  I could name many more things I am bad at (and you could probably do even better), but I made my point.  However, I can’t really say that I am " the worst " at anything. Dead last, absolutely worst is a singular achievement that no one really wants.  We can admit our shortcomings, but to think of ourselves as the worst is a little too bold.   But that’s just what Paul does in 1 st  Timothy 1...

A teacher in Bible class I attended recently pointed out something I had never noticed before in Paul’s writings. Every book he writes begins and ends with a greeting of grace. For example, he says “ Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ ” at the start of his letter to the Romans (Romans 1:7).  He ends his letter to Timothy with “ The Lord be with your spirit. Grace be with you .” (2 nd Timothy 4:22) The word grace was a common expression among the Greek speakers. To some it may be thought of as only an expression, such as how people today use “God bless you” or “have a blessed day”, but to Paul it was so much more. He understood the vital nature that grace has in the life of a believer. Without grace we could not be saved (Ephesians 2:5, Titus 2:11).  Grace strengths our hearts (Hebrews 13:9). Our words are to be measured by grace (Ephesians 4:29, Colossians 4:6). It allows us to be capable of good works (2 nd Corinthians 9:8). Grace is ...

           Two words can be your finical ruin: Minimum Payment. As many Americans struggle with making ends meet some have been tempted to “save” money by only making the minimum payment on their credit cards. The common thinking is that it might take you longer but you can eventually pay them off, but in fact, the math just doesn't work out.  If a person has the average amount of credit card debt ($10,679) with rate around 24% (a common rate for those with a bad credit) after ten years they will have paid $26,930 yet still owe $11,790, even if they haven’t put anything else on the card! After 50 years of paying, they still would owe $17,515 although they have paid $165,729. If you lived for a 1000 years and never missed a payment, you would have forked over $5.1 billion to the credit card company, yet still owe them $212 million. You will never be able to pay off your debt!        ...

Anyone that has ever read a super hero comic knows the importance of a good origin story. Everything you need to know about a character should come thru in his origin story. If you want to know why Batman is the “dark knight” or why Spiderman puts up with all the grief he receives, you need to read the origin story.  Similarly, if you want to understand the apostle Paul, all you need to do is look to his origin story and his conversion to Christianity.  The events on the Damascus Road in Acts 9 shaped Paul into the man we see throughout the Bible.  When Paul is put on trial for his actions as an evangelist, his defense is the re-telling of his conversion (Acts 22:3-21; 26:9-23).  Paul doesn’t start out the hero of this story however; he is the main villain.  In the beginning, Paul is the chief persecutor of the church and believed that he “ had to do many things hostile to the name of Jesus of Nazareth.” But after Jesus speaks to him on that desert road,...

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...

  At 7:25 A.M., a man by the name of Vothy Chhay was release from the Clark County Jail. By 8:07 A.M. he was back in the same jail. It only took 42 minutes for him to go and commit the same crime that had put him in jail in the first place. 42 minutes of wasted freedom. Instead of using his new freedom to go and correct his mistake, he simple went back to his former ways.    Paul warns Christians in Galatians 5:13-14 to not make this same mistake by saying, “For you were called to freedom, brethren; only do not turn your freedom into an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. For the whole Law is fulfilled in one word, in the statement, "YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF."   It we see the foolishness of Mr. Chhay actions, surely we can see understand the foolishness of a Christian that has been set free from an empty life of sin, that turn back into the sin that separated us from God in the first place. Christ has given us a new free...

It is seldom that a person under a sentence of death would refuse a pardon. Yet there is one such case recorded in the annuals of the U.S. Supreme Court. Two men by the names of Wilson and Porter had been sentenced to be hanged for robbing the U.S. Mail in 1829. Porter was executed but three weeks before his own execution, Wilson was granted a pardon by then President Andrew Jackson. But foolishly, Porter refused to accept it! The refusal to accept a pardon was a point of law that had never been raised before, so the Supreme Court was called upon to give a decision. In their decision Chief Justice John Marshall wrote the following: “A pardon is an act of grace, proceeding from the power intrusted with the execution of the laws, which exempts the individual on whom it is bestowed, from the punishment the law inflicts for a crime he has committed. A pardon is a deed, to the validity of which delivery is essential, and delivery is not complete without acceptance.” How could a person be...

  Last month I took some advice from a preacher friend of mine and created this blog to warehouse the collection of writings I have done. I figured this would be easy since I had already written all the articles; I would just have to transfer them online. But as I did, I noticed that many of them needed significant corrections. I started to panic thinking “Have my writing been that bad, had everyone seen my mistakes”? But then I remembered I have a Barbara. You see when I submit something to the bulletin, I print it off and hand it to our secretary and she will use her skillful eyes to help catch and correct my glaring mistakes. It is nice to have someone that can stand between you and your wrongs.                In 1 st   John 2:1-2 we read at how Jesus plays that role for the Christian. It reads,   “ And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and He Himsel...