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No Little Pharisees!
I have been teaching children for just shy of 50 years. That is a lot of teaching. But have I been teaching them well? In recent years, I have had to stop and reevaluate the things I have said as I quoted God’s Word to the children. In doing so I concluded that there were times that if a child followed my teaching, they would come out more like a pharisee than a believer. How many times have we as teachers and parents been guilty of telling the children that God hates sin without emphasizing His great love for the sinner? The Pharisees had God’s Words in their mouths but…
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Counterfeit Hopes
People place their hope in various things depending on their beliefs and backgrounds. The secular world finds hope in money, success, respect, security, health, relationships, work, pleasure, science, and reason. It is easy to see these things are wrong to place our hope in. Christians find their hope in God and in particular the gospel (Jesus taking the punishment for their sins providing a way to have a relationship with God and transformed lives). However, Christians unknowingly rely on other things for their hope. These counterfeit hopes replace the true hope of the life changing-power of the gospel. I recently read a book, How People Change by Timothy S. Lane…
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Sinful Heart Object Lessons- Lesson One: The Image of God
Bring out the clean mirror and talk about how when God looked into the heart of Adam and Eve, He could see Himself. This ability to shine forth God’s image was very special.
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Accountability, A Timely Lesson from Culture and Jesus
Whatever our circumstances, the hope and will of the Father is that we would use the gift of the church and our community to go through this life together. If your world feels dark, you are always one step away from the light in Jesus Christ found in him and fellow believers carrying the torch, ready to the light the way for each other.
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On the Anniversary of Dad’s Death
“Honor your father and mother,” which is the first commandment accompanied by a promise, namely, “that it may go well with you and that you will live a long time on the earth” (Ephesians 6:2-3). Today is the anniversary of Dad’s death. Dad was a complicated man, to say the least. Recently I was talking to a Christian brother and, essentially, said that when we die it might be said for any of us believers: “He was a Christian… and he was a mess in many ways.” We never outgrow our desperate need for Christ. Anyone who knew my dad knew he had struggles, but they also had no doubt…
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Loving Well in a Blame-shifting Culture
In a home full of young children, among the most common things I hear in the house is why the other sibling is most definitely responsible for wrong doing. Most recently, my eldest son ran up quickly behind my middle son for a sneak attack, smacked him on the bottom and sent him flying further then was intended. I heard the raucous just in time to see my middle son chasing my eldest son with lightning speed, armed with a heavy school backpack, which successfully gave a retribution blow to the fleeing child. Needless to say, as I approached the angry middle son first who had just hauled off and…
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Becoming Entangled in Sin
Have you ever wondered how is it that we who have the Spirit of the Living God inside of us can become so easily entangled in sin? I believe that it is easy because it is as simple as opening our mouths to speak.
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Good House Keeping for the soul: a Word of Encouragement
Sometimes cleaning the house is not pretty. We recently bought a house that had not been lived in for some time. In fact, we learned that the woman who lived here before us was a genuine hoarder. Someone had bought the house, cleaned it up quite a bit and it was totally empty. However…there was still some serious cleaning to do. We opened kitchen drawers to find ancient kitchen towels and cleaning supplies. Of course, we found remnants of bugs, namely roaches. Yeah, no need to go in to detail. Bugs are no fools, so they set up camp in a nice reliable spot, like an unused home. Anyway, suffice…
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Recognizing Sinful Patterns
here do our sinful patterns come from? Scripture is quite clear that our sin comes from the evil desires of our old nature. James 1:15 Then when desire conceives, it gives birth to sin, and when sin is full grown, it gives birth to death.
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THE SIN WHICH SO CLEVERLY ENTANGLES US
How does one come to this place? Regret. Dark places in the back corners of the mind. Thoughts and deeds done in secret. Memories hidden from as many as possible and hopefully forgotten by the few. Painful remembering of deeds done that cannot be undone. A first, that led to a second, and then a third. Patterns set in time.
