Ecclesiastes 12:10

    A running joke in our family is when the wife will be trying to identify a person and she will give the clue, “He was in that movie with the person who did the thing that made the news”. Of course, the kids will be clueless, but I can often guess correctly. When you've been around someone that long, you can guess what they are saying even when they can’t really say what they mean.    In Romans 8:26, we read, “ In the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words ”. Here we are told that even when we don’t know what to pray for or even how to pray, the Spirit of God is there for us, saying what we can’t say.  Yet that can only work when we have a relationship with the Spirit.    If we think our prayers are not what they should be, a great way to correct that is to draw close to God. When we get spiritually minded, the Spirit can hel...

  We all ask the question that we really don't want the person to answer, “ How are you doing ?”. It's not meant to be a question, it's meant to be a greeting. If someone actually does tell us how they are doing after we asked, we normally are taken aback. They are not to respond with details. It supposed to be a simple, “Fine. How are you” . It is a feint in interest, not a necessarily a true concern.   So with that being said let me ask “How are you doing?”   Are you feeling well? Is the family OK? Are you happy at your job? Can you pay the bills? Did the doctor say you were back to normal?  Most of the time, we associated the physical in our tallying how well we are doing. A clean bill of health, a raise at the office, the kids are making you proud, all mean I am doing well.     But is that all there is to doing well?   Let’s consider for a moment the greeting of 3 rd John 1:2. Here John writes, “ Beloved, I p...

  If you ever find yourself in position of a $10,000 dollar bill you may not recognize the person depicted. His name is Salmon Chase. He was an American politician and jurist who served as U.S. Senator, the 23 rd Governor of Ohio, as the U.S. Treasury Secretary under President Abraham Lincoln and as the sixth Chief Justice of the United States.   Before all those accomplishment, Chase had seen his share of tragedy.   His father died when he was only nine years old, forcing him to live with his uncle. He suffered the loss of his first wife during the birth of their daughter. Tragedy struck again only five years later when that daughter died from scarlet fever.   He described the experience as ” one of the heaviest calamities which human experiences can know ”.   He told friends that, “ no language can describe the desolation of my heart ”.   Grief can certainly feel that way. But the Bible tells us that God still can understand us even when we can’t exp...