Early in my career as an educator, I had the opportunity to provide a series of workshops for some school administrators. I was fresh out of college back then and, of course, with my new degree in hand I supposed I knew all there was to know about teaching. My motivation was to make a little extra money to help my young family with expenses.
The workshops went well and I think my clients were pleased—until I attempted to extract the last farthing.
I’m amazed at the willingness of Americans coming together to help in great times of need. The horrendous flood in Houston and beyond is a classic example of people—regardless of race, creed or political affiliation—lending a hand to those who have suffered loss. Christian and non-Christian alike have pitched in, all because human beings are made in the image of God, and his communicable (transferable) attributes like love, goodness, and kindness transcend prejudice and policy.
Remini ...
SOMETIMES PEOPLE DON’T LIKE ME.
As a pastor I try to be winsome, gracious, friendly and understanding, but on occasion it’s not enough; some will not like what I have to say when it comes to talking about the full message of Christianity, so they don’t like me.
Fine. Kill the messenger.
“It remains to be seen what God will do with…the man who is fully consecrated to Him.” I’d been mulling over this statement by Henry Varley spoken to a very young D. L. Moody in the early part of the 19th century as I read a portion of his biography.
Moody thought to himself, “He said a man; he did not say a great man, nor a learned man, nor a smart man, but simply a man.
When my youngest brother, Dale, was but a toddler, he was perched on the sink one day watching my mother strain the fresh milk she had just brought into the house after milking our little Jersey cow. As small children are wont to do, he tumbled off the cabinet and landed head-first in the milk bucket.
Ten days in the rain forests of Costa Rica sounds like a great vacation, but for ten Johnson City high school students and four adults, this was no picnic.
“We were on the job-site by eight in the morning,” recalled Rusty Weirich, one of the adults from the First United Methodist Church.
“We sweated in the tropical heat until three in the afternoon, when the day’s cooling rain came, then sweated some more in the higher humidity the rain left behind.
A few years ago after eating a meal at Applebee’s, getting the check and leaving a tip, a misguided pastor, wrote this on the receipt after leaving an 18% gratuity for a party of ten: “I Give God 10%! Why do you get 18?” A photo of the receipt went viral, the waitress who posted it got fired and the pastor ended up humbly confessing that it was a “lapse in my character and judgment.”
My daughters, DD and Laurel, are servers at the excellent dining establishment East Main Grill in town ...
When our bodies start to slow down and betray our minds, our Spirit is still strong. It is a knowledge that we are more than just our physical body. Our mind is something that is eternal. No disease can steal that from us not even Alzheimer’s or Dementia.
When someone was raised in a religious home they are always uplifted by worship services and pastoral visits.
“CAN I DANCE NAKED ON A BARSTOOL since I don’t have to follow any rules to be a Christian?”
Last week I wrote that religion is no fun. By “religion,” I mean the man-made, “Can’t do that/thou shalt not”-rule-keeping-to-please-God type of stuff. Ya know, the kind of “faith” no one likes, wants or lives.
Remember that Jesus reserved his strongest condemnation for religious leaders who enforced rule-keeping as a way to have a relationship with God.
THE INCONVENIENT TRUTH ABOUT CHRISTIANITY is the fact that not everyone goes to Heaven, not every belief system is correct and millions of people stand condemned already. This bothers me. It also bothered Senator Bernie Sanders when he grilled Russell Vought, President Donald Trump’s nominee for deputy director of the White House Office of Management and Budget last week.
