“When I preach I regard neither doctors or magistrates, of whom I have above forty in my congregation; I have all my eyes on the servant maids and on the children. And if the learned men are not well pleased with what they hear, well, the door is open.” I have to admit that I…
Mark Maddix writes about what should be, not necessarily what is. In so doing his exhortation brings a couple of things to mind. First, I am coming to believe with more certainty that our denominational backgrounds, culture, and personal desires play a much more profound role in our interpreting of Scripture than we would ever…
The Lord has been doing a good work in my heart and mind in reference to the work of the Spirit in the life of the church and its’ individual members. We’ve been working through 1 Corinthians for the last two and a half years on Sunday mornings and have just come to chapters 12-14…
Don’t allow Christ’s sufferings to be simply a theological concept . Too often we distance ourselves from the suffering’s of Christ. We place blame on Judas or the Jews or the Romans. True, Judas betrayed Christ. He was a zealot with a passion to see Christ take Rome by force and was motivated by greed.…
We must conquer, some of us especially, our tendency to levity. A great distinction exists between holy cheerfulness, which is a virtue, and that general levity, which is a vice. There is a levity which has not enough heart to laugh, but trifles with everything. It is flippant, hollow, unreal. A hearty laugh is no…
“Many people fail to make progress in the spiritual life because they are attached to activities that seem to be important . . . blinded by their desire for ceaseless motion, for a constant sense of achievement, famished with crude hunger for results, for visible and tangible success, they work themselves into a state in…
I have often thought and even verbalized, “I don’t want to assess someone’s character in the midst of their worst moments.” I suppose some of this was out of compassion for that individual and a desire to extend grace, but it likely included a healthy dose of wanting others to extend the same consideration to…
My Struggle We near the end of the vacation and I sit at the kitchen table looking out over the lake and wonder – what did I accomplish? As I look I realize I have not once gone out on the boat, alone, and just enjoyed the beauty of God’s creation and had a time…
Mike and I took a few of the girls to the Marina to get a broken part for the tube, and we quickly realized that there seemed to be a part of boating culture of which we had been previously unaware. To get to the Marina we had to cross our lake, go through one…
What do barnacles, rotten wood, sand, and grandma’s glasses all have in common? They were at the bottom of the lake near the pier this afternoon. Papa and I took turns pulling the kids around the lake on the inter-tube and grandma lounged on her new blow up raft – yes, we have a lot of new…
Crowdedship 