October 2, 2020 Hello Church Family:  Let’s start this week with a true or false question.  True or False:  The world is hostile to Christians, their beliefs, their morals, their ethical standards and their worldview?  What do you think?  Hopefully, you answered this question with a resounding, YES!  The Church in Ephesus in the first century was undergoing the same type of persecution but with gr...  Read More

September 25, 2020 Hey Church Family:  How do you see Jesus?  How do you understand, realize Jesus?  Have you let the secular world, or even elements of the “Christian world”, with some of its books, songs and teachings create a make-believe picture of Jesus in your heart and mind that does not exist?  Have you slowly tamed the Jesus of the Bible to look nothing like He really is?  Have you made H...  Read More

September 18, 2020 Hello Church Family: If you were to write a letter to encourage a struggling people what would you write?  If the people were being persecuted, their families were run from their homes, and some were even martyred for standing firm in their faith.  How would you encourage them?  This is why Jesus gave us His revelation.  He desires us to remain steadfast, to persevere, filled wi...  Read More

September 11, 2020 Hey Church Family:  We will be stopping, for several months, our Sunday morning study of Luke to receive some timely encouragement from the book of Revelation.  Revelation is a book of apocalyptic prophecy.  What does that mean?  It simply means that you have to read it differently than other genres that make up the other Bible books.  The ancient meaning of the Greek word for “...  Read More

August 30, 2020 Hello Church Family:  What makes Jesus perturbed?  Angry?  Upset?  What do you think?  This week in Luke 11, we get to see Jesus being angry and not sinning.  What is making Jesus angry?  He really does not like works-righteousness!  He never hesitated to offend religious people who thought of themselves as self-righteous on account of their own petty works.  Jesus always took the ...  Read More

August 21, 2020 Hello Church Family:  Have you ever found yourself seeking for a sign from God so that you can determine if He really is real?  Do you ask God, show me a sign that Jesus really is Your Son?  God, give me a sign that Jesus really is the sacrifice for my sins and the power of eternal life?  God, how can I be guaranteed peace with You?  God, can I really be assured of salvation becaus...  Read More

August 14, 2020 Hello Church:  Do you struggle with a bad habit that does not please the Lord and impacts your life and relationships?  Have you ever been dominated by an active, habitual, life-dominating sin?  Do you want to escape these habits and sins?  Our culture provides and encourages many opportunities for us to engage in to escape the pain and destruction of those habits.  There are suppo...  Read More

July 31, 2020 Hey Church Family:  If you stopped eating food today do you know how long you would live before dying of starvation?  We usually get a reminder every 3-4 hours that our bodies cannot survive very long without food.  Usually our bodies can only live 30-40 days without consuming food.  Our physical bodies must have physical sustenance to survive.  What about spiritual starvation?  Have...  Read More

July 24, 2020 Hello Church Family: Have you ever asked God for things that you have never received?  Are you mad that you have never received what you have asked of Him?  Have you ever said, “I asked God for this or that and I did not get it so I stopped asking.” Jesus wants us to clearly understand from Luke 11, that to pray the way our Heavenly Father wants us to pray is to pray with shameless p...  Read More

July 17, 2020 “Contingency plan," government and businesses all seem to have one today.  A contingency plan is a plan devised during times of crisis and are often developed to explore and prepare for any event that, though unlikely, would have catastrophic consequences.  I believe that as followers of Christ we are called to have a contingency plan against temptation and evil.  Submitting to tempt...  Read More

July 10, 2020 Hey Church Family:  Do you struggle with sin?  As believers we will continue to struggle with sin until the day we leave this earth which means that we are people who live in the need of forgiveness every moment of every day.  We cannot go one day without needing God to forgive us and at the same time us needing to forgive someone or seeking to ask for forgiveness from those whom we ...  Read More

July 3, 2020 Father, please give us this day our daily bread.  Church family, this is such a simple prayer that we can speak quickly throughout the day without stopping and realizing that we are absolutely totally dependent upon God’s provision for everything in our lives.  And you know, we love some food, specific foods.  So much so, our American food culture has made us really picky.  Did you kn...  Read More

June 26, 2020 Your will be done, Father, on this earth and in my life today.  Church, please stop and think about all of the implications that come when praying that prayer.  This is third petition in the Lord’s prayer.  Each petition is building on the previous petition.  Each petition is focusing more intensely on the heart of man.  Whose will is naturally carried out in my kingdom?  My will.  M...  Read More

June 19, 2020 Father!  Your Kingdom Come on earth as it is in heaven!  Yes, this is a prayer about the return of Christ, but that is not the only point of this great petition.  This prayer can be realized today!  This is the good news of the gospel.  The Father's Kingdom can be experienced in our hearts and the hearts of others today.  This prayer can create absolute change today in all areas of o...  Read More

June 12, 2020 Hey Church:  Have you used the word “hallowed” recently?  “Hallowed” is one of those ancient words that has for the most part dropped from our modern vocabulary and really has not been replaced with any other word like it.  “Hallowed” means to make holy or to set apart as holy.  Have you ever set apart something in your life as holy?  For example, when I set apart my mouth as holy, I...  Read More

June 5, 2020 Hey there Church Family:When Jesus teaches us to pray by giving us the Lord’s Prayer there becomes some very clear elements of the prayer that are glaringly obvious.  Jesus teaches His disciples and us to pray by immediately beginning with a pronoun that is to direct our heart during prayer.  The pronoun that He begins with is also the only pronoun used throughout the entire prayer, “...  Read More

May 29, 2020 Hello Church Family:  When you think about prayer do you think about it as some abstract practice that Christians are just supposed to do?  And then one day you think, “I need to get better at praying, how can I get better at praying?”  And then you come up with certain techniques on how to have a better prayer life.  OK, stop, let me be clear… that is not what this summer series on p...  Read More

May 22, 2020 Church family:  Every generation since Jesus Christ has been taught how to pray by Jesus through His model prayer.  That is such an amazing thought to me.  That means that if I could take a time capsule back to any period of time in the last two thousand years, in whatever time period I would end up, the believers would have the same model of prayer that we would together be engaging ...  Read More

May 15, 2020 Hello Church Family: Have you ever noticed how quickly our delightful duty in the Lord can turn into bitter frustration with Him?  In Luke 10, Martha shows us that life-altering frustrated self-pity can happen in about the time it takes to prepare and cook a meal.  Can you imagine the Son of God physically coming to your home?  What would you do?  What would you think Jesus, Himself, ...  Read More

May 8, 2020 Hello Church Family:Throughout Scripture, we as believers are called to love our neighbors.  In fact, Jesus says that the entire Law and the Prophets can be summed up in two commandments, love God and love your neighbor (Matthew 22:37-40).  Then in Luke 10, Jesus was asked by an Old Testament lawyer, “What shall I do to inherit eternal life?”  What was Jesus’ answer?  “You shall love t...  Read More

May 1, 2020 Hey Church Family:Do you rejoice in what YOU DO or who YOU ARE?  Followers of Christ, your name is already written in heaven!  In Luke 10:17, the 72 disciples come back from an amazing time of being used by god to declare that King Jesus has come.  They announced in many villages and towns that The King is near and He is coming to their town.  They announced that the Son of God put on ...  Read More

April 24, 2020 Hey there Church Family:  Can you imagine getting a letter from Jesus saying, “Hey, I know that you think that you are following Me, but you really are not following Me, this is what I need you to do to be My follower, one of My Disciples, fit for the Kingdom of God.”  Would you listen?  Would you make changes to be fit for the Kingdom of God?  This is exactly what happens to severa...  Read More

April 17, 2020 Hello Church Family:  If God said that the only way this pandemic would end and get things back to “normal” would be through prayer, how much effort would you make to pray with frequency and fervency?  How is your prayer life during these days of pandemic?  Have you found yourself coming to the Lord more frequently and fervently or have you become dull and delayed in prayer?  Or has...  Read More

April 10, 2020 Church Family:  We can feel conflicted about calling the day of Christ’s crucifixion, “good.”  The fact that there had to be a day when Jesus Christ would take the judgment for our sin is not good at all.  But the wonderful reality that our Lord Jesus Christ would freely, fully, and gladly give Himself for us on the cross, is never-to-be-surpassed in goodness. It is exemplary, unpar...  Read More