April 2018 Blog Posts (30)

God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging. The Lord Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress. -Psalm…

If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that…

In recent years I have posted serious prayer requests on social media – twice for my wife’s surgeries, related to her fractured pelvis, and hip replacement, and once for my brother’s multiple bypass surgery. Friends replied in large numbers, many with encouraging, and supportive comments. Some however, simply responded with the word, ‘praying.” Perhaps I’m the only one who feels a bit empty when these one-word replies appear. If so, attribute it to twenty plus years of trying to teach…

Can you see an orchard with trees covered with luscious fruit? I'll let you decide what kind of fruit you see. Whatever the fruit, those trees were almost certainly grafted. Any fruit tree has the DNA of two kinds of apple or apricot or whatever fruit. So the desired variety must be grafted into the existing root system either by budding or scion grafting.

Something like that happens as God's word is grafted into…

Grandparents Day of Prayer and National Grandparents Day are similar but not the same. To understand their similarities and differences, we need to examine both, starting with National Grandparents Day.

National Grandparents Day

After a three-year battle that began in 1970, West Virginia housewife Marian McQuade convinced her state Congress to commemorate grandparents with a special day. This commemoration honored grandparents,…

A powerful Scripture relating to hope is Romans 15:4.

“For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.”

Think with me for a moment about the…

I just finished writing a book on AGAPE, The Infinite, Ultimate Love of God (Not yet released) So I was especially attracted to Mary Harwell Sayler's Prayer-a-Phrase of 1 Corinthians 13, The Love Chapter, applying it to the writing life in her book, Christian Writer's…

Prayers are not our last resort. They are our first line of defense. I recently encountered a spiritual battle that kicked me in the gut. Most of the battles we face, by the way, are spiritual. We tend to think of things in the natural, but spiritual battles are going on all around us.

One of the dilemmas I faced recently had to do…