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Showing posts from February, 2017

Supernatural Speeding

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Christians are living epistles according to 2 Corinthians 3:3. Non-Christians carefully observe the actions of professing believers to see if they are “walking the walk” as well as “talking the talk.” One thing that leaves a bad witness is when God’s people don’t obey traffic laws. Imagine what an unbeliever thinks when he sees a Christian speeding with a “What Would Jesus Do” bumper sticker on the back of his car. I’ve met a few Christians who tried justifying their need to speed but still found themselves in trouble. One morning I rode with a pastor who was running behind schedule and drove well over the posted speed limit on our way to his church. Despite having a radar detector in his car, this pastor got pulled over. Since I was from out of state, the patrolman searched my luggage to make sure I wasn’t transporting drugs. Fortunately for the pastor, all he got was a warning ticket. In spite of this, we arrived at his church much later than had he obeyed the speed l...

Me Is Exalted

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People called to full-time ministry often face the temptation of making things happen by the arm of the flesh. I’ve heard stories about messes ministers created when trying to expand their ministries ahead of God’s timing. Jesus said in Luke 14:11, “For whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.” I’m willing to help a brother or sister advance in their calling if the Lord leads me to. Romans 12:10 talks about “giving preference to one another.” Still, I find it annoying when preachers promote their ministries on my web pages without asking first. A few individuals had frequently done this on my Facebook Wall despite my asking them to stop. That prompted me to change my account settings so people could only write comments in response to my articles and praise reports. Then one pastor started posting announcements ( irrelevant to my writings) about various endeavors he was involved in. The first two times I simply removed his posts. A...

Failure Isn’t Final

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Originally I didn’t plan on watching last Sunday’s Super Bowl. I wasn’t fond of either team playing and had no interest in seeing Lady Gaga’s halftime show. But after practicing a sermon, I decided to walk over to a nearby church that previously hosted a Super Bowl party. The church itself was closed but some men living in the dormitories were preparing to watch the big game and I got to join them. The channel was changed during halftime to briefly watch the Harlem Globetrotters on ESPN2. We ended up seeing a historic game. The New England Patriots came back from a 25-point deficit to beat the Atlanta Falcons in the first Super Bowl that went into overtime. The Patriots overcame two costly turnovers to win their fifth Vince Lombardi trophy. The game illustrated that failure isn’t final…or in the famous words of Yogi Berra, “It ain’t over till it’s over.” The Bible has accounts of people who made major mistakes but God still used them to advance His kingdom. Moses killed an E...

The Anti-Christian Liberties Union

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Certain activists have campaigned to have the Ten Commandments and other religious materials removed from government and public properties in America because of “separation of church and state.” Contrary to popular belief, that phrase does not appear anywhere in the Constitution. It originated in 1802 from an obscure letter then-president Thomas Jefferson wrote to a group of Baptists in Connecticut. He assured them a state religion would not be enforced upon all citizens. Nevertheless, numerous legal cases have come up to undermine the Christian values this country was founded upon. One organization responsible for this is the American Civil Liberties Union. While the ACLU has defended religious people in a few cases, many of them were groups expressing views contrary to biblical Christianity such as Jehovah’s Witnesses and Westboro Baptist Church.  If anything, the American Civil Liberties Union is known more for their anti-Christian stances. Their lobbying resulted i...