Ecclesiastes 12:10

    It was midnight and he was asleep after a long day. It had been messy, a near riot but he now had the two offenders in custody secure in stocks. Singing but secure in the stocks Then the earthquake hit.  And everything fell apart.  Literally.  Doors swung open. Locks fell off. He just knew all the prisoners were gone. Disaster. No way he could catch them, and it would be him in those stocks.    He feels the sword at his side, heavy. An idea hits him, a bad idea. Better to go out easy on your sword, than at the hands of the prisoners… or the one that put them there.  Then a voice speaks out of the chaos, “Don’t do it, we are all here.”   “Lights”, he cries out. He must see it for himself. Could it be true? Sure enough there they sit.  What do you ask them? How? Why? What happened?  But for this Philippian jailer, there is only one question, “ Sirs, what must I do to be saved ?”  For many folks, we never ...

  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’s the time of year for lists. Your wish list, your shopping list, the list of places you will be traveling to. The guest list, the gift list, the list of things yet to do. The list of New Year’s resolutions, a list of things to get done before the year ends and all that while you are trying to stay off the naughty list.    In all those lists let us not forget the most important list we want to be on: And I saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne, and books were opened; and another book was opened, which is the book of life; and the dead were judged from the things which were written in the books, according to their deeds. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead which were in them; and they were judged, every one of them according to their deeds. Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. And if anyone's name was not found written in...

  Scott Stallings a 3-time PGA winner was hoping for an invite to the Masters after a good performance last year. The Master golf tournament held each year at the Augusta National Golf course is one of the most exclusive golf events in the world. So, Stallings had, as he said in a recent post, “been checking his mailbox five times a day”, yet he had not received an invite   Then he received an unusual message. It was from Scott Stallings. This Scott Stalling also lived in Georgia and had a wife with the same name as the pro golfer. He was letting him know that he had received a Fed-Ex package that day with an invitation to play in the Master that year. Now the other Scott Stallings played golf but not at that level. Yet here in his hand was a package with everything he would need to attend.  He however was happy (ish) to send it to the person it was intended.   What would you do if you got that invite? A chance to play at golf heaven? Sure, you don’t belong ...

  It’s estimated that in the US that $40 billion to $60 billion is lost each year in various forms of wage theft. Wage theft comes in various forms but it basically comes down someone not getting what is due them. Any of us that have worked for someone and then found out they are not going to pay, can tell you the frustration. Yet for all of us, the greatest wages we have withheld is really for our benefit. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 6:23   This verse explains to us that what we are due, what we have earned by our actions is death. Our work has a consequence; a terrible one. Sin brings death and since all have sinned, all should get what is due to them. However, God’s gracious salvation isn’t earned it is given. We don’t demand it as a result of what we have done rather we accept it on the terms it has been given.   It’s odd however how people seem to get this backward. We seem...

   A few years back the congregation I worked for installed new dry erase boards into the classrooms. Even though we put the correct markers in the room and let everyone know to only use the dry erase markers on the boards, it wasn’t too long till someone wrote all over the board with a permanent marker.   Not wanting to have to replace the entire board, I made several attempts with various solvents and scrubs to erase the damage. No luck. Then I ran across this piece of advice: “Write over the mark with a dry erase marker and erase, it will remove the permeant markers.” I thought there is no way it could work. It too simple, but it was that easy.   Wrong made right by doing it right.   Wish life was that easy. We all have marks on our clean slate that we wish we could get rid of. We might scrub at them but what we think will take away the stain doesn’t work. It seems damaged beyond repair, forever stains with the mistake of sin.   Yet ...

  Baptism is one of the more debated and resisted ideas from scripture. When it comes to the pattern of salvation you don’t get many folks arguing about the need for repentance, or the necessity of belief or even the requirement of confessing Christ. Yet baptism is the point people resist.  Yet you don’t see that much in the first century. As I perused the book of Acts, I saw something else; “So then, those who had received his word were baptized; …” Acts 2:41  “But when they believed Philip preaching the good news about the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were being baptized, men and women alike.” Acts 8:12  “And when she and her household had been baptized, she urged us, saying, "If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come into my house and stay.". Acts 16:15  “And he took them that very hour of the night and washed their wounds, and immediately he was baptized, he and all his household.” Acts 16:33  ...

  He was a good man. He had a good family. He prayed. He gave. He treated those different than him well. He served his country. His community respected him. He was “ a righteous and God-fearing man ”   Yet there was still something he needed to do to be saved. Now there was a man at Caesarea named Cornelius, a centurion of what was called the Italian cohort, a devout man and one who feared God with all his household, and gave many alms to the Jewish people and prayed to God continually . Acts 10:1-2    So when the word of God came to him, he listened. He didn’t just listen, he obeyed. He went searching for the answer he needed. He found it in Joppa in a man named Simon. So he brought him to his house and gathered his family to hear “ all that you have been commanded by the Lord " (Acts 10:33). So Simon Peter told the story of Jesus and the need to believe in him for salvation.   Cornelius knew the words Peter spoke to him would be the ...

  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 ...

  Fritz Haber might have saved more lives than any other human history. Having one of the great minds in history for chemistry, figured out how to convert the commonest of chemicals —the nitrogen in the air— into a chemical fertilizer. With cheap industrial fertilizers now available, farmers no longer were limited to compost piles or dung to nourish their soil. Even by the time World War I broke out, Haber had likely saved millions from starvation, and we can still thank him for feeding most of the world’s 6.7 billion people today.   Yet Haber was a monster. He cared little about fertilizers. He actually pursued cheap ammonia to help Germany build nitrogen explosives. But his most deadly work was in chemical weapons. He created the formula, Haber law, to calculate just how much poison was need for how much time to be deadly. He created and oversaw the use of deadly gas attacks in World War I. His wife so horrified by his actions she killed herself. Haber didn’t even...

  I got to thinking the other day that the things in my life that cause me the most stress are the things I can’t do. Waiting on other people’s response, a problem I can’t solve on my own, a task I’m not equipped to perform.  If it is up to me I can do it or not do it and it really doesn’t bother me either way since I have the control. But when I don’t have control, when I too weak, too incompetent, too dependent, it bothers me since it emphasizes my weakness. I stress since I’m so helpless to do the thing I know needs doing.   I wonder if that is why the Scriptures tell us over and over again to trust in the saving power of Jesus. If there is anything we can’t do it is to save ourselves by ourselves. We are too sinful, too weak, too lacking. I can try to my utmost but I will always be lacking. Yet with the sacrifice of Christ, I can make it.  For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likenes...

 I first noticed it on a trip, my phone had been plugged in the car but it was almost dead when I arrived. Weird. I figured the car charger was on the fritz. Then one night it didn’t charge. I began to see that something was wrong with my phone, my relatively new phone that I paid a lot of good money for. So I called the company.   You know how that went. I tried to talk to a person that wasn’t a native English speaker while they said my name over and over and they were going to be helpful. I just wanted my phone fixed. They said they would send me a new charger.   I wasn’t happy. I'd tried several different chargers on the phone and it had the same problem. Why weren’t they helping me! So after some voice raising, they agreed to send me a new phone.   I still wasn’t happy. Now it was going to be a week without my phone! So I tried to plug it in one more time.   You know what happened next. It charged perfectly. I tried again. It worked again....

  It is greater than God yet also more evil than the devil. The poor have it, and the rich don’t want it. If you wear it you show everything, if you speak it you remain quiet and it you buy it you save money. The blind man sees it, the deaf man hears it but if you eat it, you’ll die.    What is it?   Nothing   Nothing doesn’t sound like it is much of anything but in reality it is something. Doing nothing can get you fired. Saying nothing can help you out of trouble. Seeing nothing make you look ignorant but revealing nothing can make you seem wise.      Some folks believe when Jesus says nothing about a subject means he’s saying he approves of it even though He has said nothing at all. Likewise there are some that believe in doing nothing wrong they have done enough to “ hear well done good and faithful servant ”.     Yet the scriptures are clear nothing is a very dangerous thing.  In the three parables of Mat...

  If you ask most people about Napoleon Bonaparte and they will tells you two things. He was a French general and he was short.   Any movie, show, or cartoon that has Napoleon in it is real big on pointing out he was rather diminutive.  We even have the so called “Napoleon Complex” named after him, describing men who have an inferiority complex because of their height.  It seems his height was a defining characteristic of the “little corporal”.    Expect he wasn’t all that short.   The myth that he was short stems primarily from the fact that he is listed as 5 feet 2 inches tall at the time of his death.  However, this is 5 feet 2 inches in French units.  In modern international units, he was just shy of 5 feet 7 inches.  At the time in France, the average height for an adult male was about 5 feet 5 inches in modern international units.  So in fact, he was quite tall for his day.   His nickname Little Corpor...

  A few years back the wife and I took at mini vacation to go skiing.  We no sooner arrived at the slopes when a large storm moved in.  We hurried back into town, knowing we better stock up since the blizzard might keep us trapped inside for a few days.  After grapping some basics, we thought we would grab what would be our only hot meal for the next few days.  The only problem was that all the restaurants were shutting down in anticipation of the weather.  Only one place was open, so we went inside to get something.   That was a mistake.   I don’t know if it was always this way or they just knew we had a captive audience but the only thing on the menu was lasagna, for forty five dollars !  No sides, no salad, no bread, just lasagna.  Now it wasn’t bad lasagna but for forty five dollars I was expecting it to be the best thing I ever ate.  It wasn’t.  l I look back and think that was probably the most expensive food ...

As John Adams said, “Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence .”  In our world today, we hear a lot of opinions and thought on many subjects without a lot of facts.  But what is the truth on those matters?  Jesus told us that God’s word is truth (John 17:17).  With that in mind here are a few facts to consider: We can't become more Godly by becoming more worldly. James 4:4 The amount of your faith will not save you if your faith is wrong person.  John 14:6 You will be persecuted if you do the right thing. 2 nd Timothy 3:12 What you say matters even if you don’t “mean it” Matthew 12:36 Those that are engaging in sin will not go to heaven. 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 Baptism is an essential part of salvation. Mark 16:16; 1 st Peter 3:21 We are not saved by faith alone James 2:24 Most people won’t go to heaven....

     One of the more comical moments in Scripture for us (but I’m sure at the time was terrifying for them) occurs in Acts 19:13-16.  Here seven of the sons of Sceva, a Jewish high priest, were attempting to cast out an evil spirit.  Apparently it had become common for some exorcists to try and ride on the coat tails of Jesus and his followers by casting demon in the name of Jesus.  After this man tires to remove the spirit by “ Jesus whom Paul preaches ”, the demon gives a humorous response. “ "I recognize Jesus, and I know about Paul, but who are you?"      The spirit then uses his power over the man, to use the vernacular, but a major league whooping on the boys. They flee beaten and thoroughly walloped.  It seems their level of connection with Paul and Jesus didn’t give them much respect in the demons eyes.     There are still lots of folks that like to use Jesus and his followers for their creditab...

           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!        ...

   A couple of years ago some friends and I attended the Fort Worth stock show and rodeo. While we were waiting for the rodeo to start we went to the exhibit hall to look around. One of the girls stopped by a booth one of the local radio stations that was having a drawing to win a Ford Ranger. She had always wanted that kind of truck so she and her boyfriend began filling out entry forms. As we walked around, she continued filling out as many entry forms as she could in order to better her chances. Turns out it worked!    The next week she gets a call from the radio station telling her she is their grand prize winner. She was ecstatic. That afternoon when she when to claim her prize her joy turned to sorrow. She discovered that she was not eligible for the prize after all. Apparently on the back of the form she had filled in the fine print, it required the winner to be 18 in order to win the truck. She was only 17 at the time. Instead of coming home with a new t...