Advent, The Trail Between Hearts

We are beginning a season known as Advent. It's a spiritual 'looking forward' season. Three images help us to understand the meaning of Advent: cross country skiing, the Blue Ridge Parkway and the Panama Canal.

In cross country skiing, when you are in a group moving through the woods, you…

Election Leftovers, A Continuing Look

We are experiencing a huge spiritual conflict taking place across the country. There is no question that it is being fueled by backroom dissidents whose only goal is to finance, and keep the country in, conflict and chaos. It's too well organized to escape notice. There are professional sign makers at work having been paid by hidden sources…

Election Leftovers Follow-Up, Bad News and Good News

Actually it's all about attitude. Attitude is the heart in action. Attitude shapes the world. Attitude is invisible. Attitude is the conclusion the mind makes about what the heart experiences. Attitude motivates action. Attitude is the drawn arrow of emotional reaction. Attitude is the unstable…

Now is the Hour

When a 700 year old prophecy is fulfilled, you've got to look at it, consider what it means and personally deal with it. That's exactly what the call is when we come to Isaiah 11:1-5. We cannot escape what the real focus is in this passage from the prophet that predicts the coming of Jesus. It has everything to do with how the Father restores and defines our…

The Second Time Around

What happened before Jesus preached His Sermon of the Mount gives us a way to apply a context to our own lives. Remember, Jesus was born into a human body to show what a real human being, that is, a perfect human being, was like inside and out.…

The Election Leftovers

There is one thing that has left me unsettled since the end of the election process: the way the media is scrambling to explain the election results. Their focus has been classifying voters by race, ethnicity, education and gender. There's the African American voter, Latino voter, female black voter, white male voter, urban housewife voter, inner city…

Perceived Needs or Real Needs, When Your Ears Itch

“For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears aways from the truth and turn aside to myths…

What Block Blocks the Way on the Block?

When we were kids we played with sets of blocks and created all kinds of forts and buildings. We stacked them one on one. When we built a tower we knew the higher it got the more it would teeter. It was really fun to watch it tumble and rebuild another one. Of course we had to be told to pick them up and put…

Faith 20 Welcome to My World

Remember when we mentioned that country song, “We Live in Two Different Worlds” back in Faith 11? There's another one that has the same feel. Read on. We'll get to it. But let’s continue this idea of loving God and loving our neighbor. There is a deeper meaning to the Great Commandment than we might first recognize.…

Faith 19 Putting Our Security System to Work

The security system we have been talking about is far more than just maintaining mere physical, economic and social survival. We are not here just to have the right belief and go home, shut the garage door and feel complacently self- assured. As the writer of Ecclesiastes assures us, that is simply ‘chasing…

Faith 18 Security in an Insecure World

Do you have a security system? The answer we have given is in a name and a title, Jesus, who is the Christ. Jesus the name means savior (He is a constant presence saving us from ourselves, our inclination to sin) and Christ the title means the anointed one (The way, the truth and the life leading us in every next…

Faith 17 Do You Have a Security System?

It seems that almost every show you see on TV contains an ad for a security system. In those ads there is always a frightened victim, a strong offering of protection and a system that guarantees it. Keep that thought in mind as we deal with the mind.…

Faith 16 Heart and Soul

That was the title of a Frank Loesser song from the late 1930’s. It’s romantic lean, like the song we quoted last time, narrows love to emotional longing and leaves you there. “Heart and soul, I fell in love with you, lost control, the way a fool would do, Gladly... Because you held me tight...” Note the ‘lost control.’ Keep…

 Faith 14a  When You Think About Intuition

These next three segments will open up the way we love God with all our heart, soul and mind as He directed. We start with the heart for three reasons, it’s core, it’s deceitful and it’s willful. But most importantly, the key…

Faith 15 Deep in the Heart of Me

Those are words from an old ‘40’s’ romantic ballad that describe where we begin almost all of our human understanding about love. It's our need for it and our desire to have it satisfied. God made us to love, but how? It’s right there, ‘deep in the heart of…

Faith 12 Faith, God's Love Plan

Love. Sometimes it’s vented in romantic sentiment as in the song and movie theme ‘A Many Splendored Thing’ or in its rejection that ends up on Elvis Presley's ‘Lonely Street’ and ‘Heartbreak Hotel.’ Note that every song ends up in feelings, feelings that fantasize, feelings built around wishful thinking, an imaginary…

Faith 10 Image-Conscious? I Hope So!

Are we concerned about how we look when we go out? If we appear at a party where everyone is dressed in a coat and tie and we have on jeans and a sport shirt how do we feel? Why didn't anyone tell me? And, not only that, the party is in full swing and I'm an hour late. Then we have to find someone to blame like the…

Faith 9 True Wisdom Through True Faith

Life Is What You Make It, Or Is It?

There was an old banter around years ago. It went like this:

“Life’s tough.”

“…

Why the Lord's Supper?

In a recent discussion about the Lord's Supper it was evident that the person I was talking to didn't understand where I was coming from when I said that we have to be like Jesus who was a sacrifice for others. I was explaining I believed Jesus was giving us a lifestyle as well as a way to worship Him. He was concerned that…

Faith 1a

Faith, The Light to Life Is the Right to Life

We're still on the theme of faith as it is described in…