For Our People For Our City

2 Samuel 10:12 “Be strong, and let us show ourselves courageous for the sake of our people and for the cities of our God; and may the Lord do what is good in His sight.” This is part of one of King David’s speeches as he and the people of Israel were preparing to fight […]

2 Samuel 10:12
“Be strong, and let us show ourselves courageous for the sake of our people and for the cities of our God; and may the Lord do what is good in His sight.”
This is part of one of King David’s speeches as he and the people of Israel were preparing to fight the people of Ammon.  This is the speech he gave to the men of Israel to inspire them to fight. A man will put up a fight when he has something that he is fighting for. What are we fighting for? When we fight against sin, what are we fighting for? When we fight against the powers of evil, what are we fighting for?
Two things we need to do for the people we love. We need to be strong men and we need to be men of courage. We need to be strong to defend them against all kinds of evil. We need to be courageous to defend them against all kinds of evil that threaten their souls.  King David asked his men to be strong and courageous. I pray that we can become men who will be strong and courageous.

Faith On a Shelf

I have this hat that my dad brought back to me from a business trip to Atlanta when I was 9 or 10 years old. You can see that I’ve worn it a lot. In fact, I wore it to just about everywhere I went during the summer when I was a kid. Church camps, grandparents’ house,...

“Jesus Loves Me”

After being led in this song by two of our young men Sunday night, I was reminded of a quotation from Karl Barth. On April 23, 1962, Karl Barth (the renown 20th Century Swiss-German, neo-orthodox theologian) spoke at Rockefeller Chapel on the campus of the University...

That’s Not a Candle

Several years ago, there was story shared about a woman from Connecticut whose power had gone out during a storm. She left her house to go to a local hardware store to purchase some flashlights, but the store was closed. She returned home and found what she thought...

The Post-Christian Problem

I attended the New Day Conference in Murfreesboro, Tennessee at the end of last week with a small group from Riverchase. It was a good conference and I left encouraged about the opportunities we have to fulfill the call of Christ to make disciples. On Friday evening,...

Josiah’s Reform

In the thirty-one years of his rule, King Josiah proved to be a faithful man of God and a great king of Judah. He served God from the beginning as a young king and grew into a greater understanding of God’s will and a determination to follow that will. He made a...

You Are What You Eat

You Are What You Eat You’ve heard the phrase, “You are what you eat.” Simply defined, it means that you should eat healthy if you want to be healthy. This phrase can trace its roots back to the early 1800’s. It came from the 1826 work The Physiology of Taste, in which...

It Is Well

Above the piano in our house is a large wood sign with the phrase, “it is well with my soul” on it. Kimberly and I purchased it during a season of our life together where we were not completely sure what the future had in store for our little family. Since then, the...

Do Over

  I messed up on recording my recent radio programs. The sound quality was so bad Mark could not run them on the air. So, I deleted them and recorded them again.   I sure wish I could do that in real life with all the other mistakes I make. Just delete them...

Don’t Believe Your Preacher

Everyone who goes on ahead and does not abide in the teaching of Christ, does not have God. Whoever abides in the teaching has both the Father and the Son. (2 John 1:9 ESV) Here is the test. The “teaching of Christ” is, of course, the very word of God. So, if your...

Balloons Belong in Church

I would like to share with you an excerpt from a poem written by Ann Weems. The beginning of it describes a four-year-old child that brought with her a balloon to church one Sunday. When her Sunday school teacher saw the balloon, she mockingly said to the girl, “We...