I have a sign I keep in my Pastor’s office at the church that humorously reads:“If at first you don’t succeed, then skydiving is not for you!I suppose that is true; skydiving is unforgiving! However, that is not the case with most things in life. Usually when failure throws you down, you don’t have to stay down. You can get up and try again. You can get off your seat and get back on your feet. Tha...  Read More

Some days it rains. There seems to have been a lot of those lately. Have you noticed? Frankly, it may be my fault. The sprinkler system went out at my house and the installation team for the new system has delayed in coming for a while. I am waiting patiently for them. However, I have also prayed earnestly for a lot of rain so that I don’t have to water my yard manually. Prayer has been working! S...  Read More

I do not know whether you have noticed or not, but the Bible says a lot about perseverance. For example— “Let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith… (Hebrews 12:1-2).“We know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character, and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out His lov...  Read More

“The desert and the parched land will be glad; the wilderness will rejoice and blossom” (Isaiah 35:1). A little girl walking in a garden noticed a particularly beautiful flower. She admired its beauty and enjoyed its fragrance. “It’s so pretty!” she exclaimed. As she gazed on it, her eyes followed the stem down to the soil in which it grew. “This flower is too pretty to be planted in such dirt!” s...  Read More

“Be still and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10).This is, undoubtedly, one of my favorite verses in scripture. I think about it almost daily and meditate on it regularly. I suppose we all get the value of this admonition spiritually. However, perhaps we often forget the biblical context in which it is given. In the verses that precede it (v. 8-9), the psalmist pictures a battlefield after the host...  Read More

Today I am writing about the subject of guilt…Do you ever feel guilty? Personally, I hate that feeling! How about you? I suppose we all live with a bit of guilt, real or imagined, and like anxiety, we have to come up with a plan of what to do about it.The Bible teaches that the Holy Spirit convicts us of guilt (John 16:8-11). But the guilt God gives us is an expression of His grace to us. He will ...  Read More