Blog: March 2022

In our Bible story today, we see not just mercy, but courageous mercy. Rahab by faith, courageously trusted God and hid the Hebrew spies. Mercy is not courageous until being merciful costs us something. Rahab's mercy was pushed to the testing point. She had compassion and, in doing so, risked her life. She showed mercy; as a result, she received mercy. Mercy is compassion or forgiveness shown toward someone whom it is within one's power to punish or harm. Mercy was one of the marks of Jesus’ ministry. He modeled it for us on earth. There ...

The first petition of Lord’s Prayer is “hallowed be your name” (Matt 6:9).  Priority one in prayer is pleading with our Heavenly Father to take action for the hallowing (i.e., honoring, exalting) of his name.  Jesus is saying:  when we pray, our driving passion should be to see God’s power and love and wisdom and purity and grace and splendor and comprehensive glory be magnified! And so, if our prayers are all about my feelings, my wishes, my comforts; if we pray and imagine God basically as someone to fix my life to make it nicer, have we ...

Palm Sunday, April 10: Worship Services, 8:30 and 11:00 a.m., Sanctuary Children's Palm Processional, 11:00 a.m. (meet at 10:50 in the Fellowship Hall) Childcare for pre-K and younger during 11:00 service; Kids Time Celebration for grades K-4 during the sermon in the 11:00 a.m. service; during the 8:30 service we have a "Parent-Child Nursery." Good Friday, April 15: Worship and Communion, 7:00 p.m., Sanctuary Meditation on 1 Peter 3:18, "Why Jesus Died" Childcare available for ages 3 and younger Easter Sunday, April 17: ...

In 2 Timothy 3:16-17, Paul points out that Scripture is enough for us. It is our source for godliness and our final authority in matters pertaining to doctrine. The confessions of every Protestant denomination affirm the sufficiency of Scripture. Why does this matter for kids? We need to teach our kids that even though the Bible may not mention everything in life, it mentions everything we need to know about God, His plan to save us, and how we can live a holy life to please Him. It is important in a world that has become increasingly ...

During our weekly Prayer Gathering this Wednesday, the Lord used Psalm 77 to grab our attention and help us in two ways: First, with pleas that were exceedingly frank.  Asaph, the writer, says, “I cry aloud to God… In the day of my trouble I seek the Lord; in the night my hand is stretched out without wearying” (77:1-2). Here’s a believer desperate for God’s presence!  Asaph goes on: “You hold my eyelids open; I am so troubled that I cannot speak” (v 4)—in other words, he’s lying awake in turmoil; sleep eludes him, and God seems distant.  ...

The children of Israel often gave in to worry and bitterness. Their attitude revealed deeper heart issues: their belief that God had failed to take care of them and would fail in the future. It was in the 40 years of wandering in the desert that God showed them over and over that He was worthy of their trust. Yet they still did not trust Him. When God provided supernatural food for them to eat, they craved the food of Egypt. (Num. 11:4-6) When they first encountered the inhabitants of Canaan, they were filled with fear because they didn't ...

Smartphones arrived in 2007—that’s when the first iPhone came out.  Before that time, the internet age had already been in high gear for a couple decades, but when so much digital power went mobile on a pocket-sized device, impacts of various kinds accel­er­ated and proliferated.  The smartphone has changed the world. And it has changed us.  No longer do we need to wait until we get to our desk to check email or social media:  we can go online anytime, anywhere.  And this immediacy impacts how we think:  we can learn about traffic and ...

We often think that fear is the absence of courage, and to some degree, it is. However, true courage is not someone who is free of fear. Courage comes to us most often, and especially when we are young, from the presence of another. In C. S. Lewis' The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Lucy, the young heroine of Lewis' stories, was on a boat that went into the dark night of a cave where their worst fears were realized. Going into the cave, they all were afraid. Inside the cave, their fears were realized. They were in the middle of the night and ...

When the news broke last week that Putin had, indeed, launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, I had déjà vu—reminded me of 9/11 and that pit-of-the-stomach feeling.  Some­thing ominous had taken place.  What will happen now, where will it all lead? These are reasonable questions; one is justified in wonder­ing what may come of it all.  But the big question for us, as followers of Jesus, is whether our wondering will morph into chronic fear and anxiety that dominates our view of the future? Yes, Jesus teaches us to be realistic:  In ...