Throughout the years, the church has faced the same situations, crises, pandemics, and disasters. The first-century church dealt with the persecution that became so severe that Christians were thrown into the Roman arena to be eaten by lions. At one point, Caesar has so many Christians crucified that they ran out of trees in the […]
Help Wanted
The other day I was walking into a business and notice a help wanted sign in the window. I thought that I had been seeing them more and more, so I began to look every time I went into a place over the next few days. I noticed that in almost every place I went, […]
Confidence in Uncertain Times
As we come upon the Easter season, I am all way filled with excitement. Easter is a time of life, resurrection, where things that seem to have been lost are now brought back to life, or that is how it looks to me. I was thinking this morning of how it must have been for […]
A Prepared Place
In John 14, we find Jesus at the last supper with His disciples (upper room pictured above), and He is giving them the last lesson that He will give them before the cross. Jesus has, in chapter 13, showing them what it means to serve one another as He had demonstrated what a leader in […]
It is Just Not the Same
This week I had a conversation will a high-ranking member of the school board about the challenges that COVID has played in education. We talked about in house learning compared to virtual learning from home and the greatest differences that he saw. He told me that no matter how good the system was for virtual […]
The Early Church Theme
Over the past few months, I have been doing a deep dive into the first-century church. I wanted to know how they operated and study the way the church was formed. I got deep into this because I truly believe the best way for us to learn what the church should be is to look […]
The Online Experience
Well, 2020 has had its challenges for all of us, and we are all trying to figure out how we can navigate through it. One of the things for me as a pastor is not seeing people in worship the way that I have been used to over the year. I mean, church attendance is […]
A Place for Everyone
This past week, I heard a pastor make the statement of an older couple that left the church, “they never fit into what we were doing anyway.” Immediately I thought what a sad statement was that there were people, Christian people, that did not fit into the church. I understand there are different styles of […]
You Never Know Who is Listening
Ezekiel 37 has all ways been one of my favorite stories in the bible. The story of the prophet’s vision in the valley of dry bones is powerful, but for me, it is more personal than just that. Let me explain. I grew up in a very non-Pentecostal church where we believed in living holy, […]
Gospel According to John
In the last several weeks, we have been talking about the Gospel and the four narratives that make up the Gospel or the ministry of Jesus. The truth is that we cannot say there are four gospels in that all four accounts give us a complete picture of Jesus, and so we must conclude there […]
The Gospel of Luke
The Gospel of Luke is one of the synoptic gospels along with Matthew and Mark as it seemingly goes hand and hand with the two. Luke is part of the two-volume set along with Acts that the writer writes telling us about not only the ministry of Jesus but the effects that He had on […]
The Gospel of Mark
There is great evidence that Mark was the first of the four gospels written, is that over 76% of the book is used in Matthew and Luke. Only 3% of Mark is unique. Mark starts his gospel off by letting us know that Jesus is the Son of God. Mark then begins through the words […]
The Gospel of Matthew
The Gospels When studying the gospels, we find four distinctive viewpoints of the life and ministry of Jesus. Some have said that there are conflicts with the differences of the gospels. Still, the truth is that each one of them wrote their gospels for a specific audience and a particular reason. Each saw things in […]
The church and politics
Several weeks ago, I heard a powerful sermon preached by Pastor Loren Livingston, of Central Church of God in Charlotte North Carolina, on Revelation 14 about Babylon. He made the point that the system of Babylon is politics and how politics is an evil that was orchestrated by men and not by God. God created […]
The Church we Leave Behind
Several days ago, I was in a conversation with three other pastor friends of mine about the state of our world and the church. We were talking about the spirit of the antichrist. How that it has been around since the days of Jesus. As we were coming to the end of the conversation, one […]
Build up Your Faith
Hey everyone, so glad that you have taken the time to read this, and I pray that you get some encouragement from it. Today we are coming to the end of March, and it has been one of the most unusual times in my life and more than likely yours as well. With the Covid […]
The Process of Anointing
In Matthew 4 and Luke 4 and Mark 1, we have the story of Jesus being led in the wilderness by the Holy Spirit. The word led is in both Matthew and Luke, and it is αναγο (anago) in the Greek, and it means to be offered up or pulled out too. Mark 1 says the Spirit […]
The Gates of Hell Shall Not Prevail
The picture above is a picture of the mountain cave at Caesarea Philippi. At the foot of this cliff was a temple built to the god Pan. Pan was a half-man, half-goat Greek god that was a god of the shepherds and a god of fertility. The temple was built over the spring that flowed […]
Let Me see what He sees
Yesterday we got into a boat, nothing like the boat of Jesus’ day, and we went out into the Sea of Galilee. The weather was a little breezy, and it had been raining throughout the day. They have gotten a lot of rain here this year, and the Sea is up very high. So much […]
Never Turn our Back on True Worship
In 1 King 12, we find the story of Jeroboam, the first king of the Northern kingdom of Israel. After the death of Solomon, his son Rehoboam took over his kingdom and took unwise counsel to make life harder on the people. As a result, 10 of the 12 tribes rebelled and started their kingdoms […]
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