“It Is Finished!”
Because of modern medicine, we’ve lost the opportunity to hear the last words of dying people. Most who are about to slip into eternity are drugged to make them comfortable. The only problem is this also puts them in a coma-like state, thereby prohibiting them from speaking to us. We are left wondering if they are hearing us, […]
“Why Have You Forsaken Me?”
High noon. It’s the time in the classic western by the same name when a brave sheriff, played by Gary Cooper, single-handedly took on a ruthless gang of evil men to save a once peaceful town from their criminal influence. High noon. It’s the time when 2,000 years ago, another man of courage and principle took on the […]
“Woman, Behold Your Son…”
As I think about our Lord’s final statements from the cross, my soul can readily identify with the words from Stuart Hine’s magnificent old hymn How Great Thou Art. And when I think that God, His Son not sparing, sent Him to die, I scarce can take it in; that on the cross, my burden gladly […]
“Today You Shall Be With Me In Paradise…”
In 2017, one of my cousins finally succumbed to the disease which ate away at his body. His name? Jimmy Bowers. He was the son of the oldest of my father’s sisters, Beatrice, so he was always considerably older than the rest of the cousins. So, when I was a kid, he was a young […]
“Father Forgive Them…”
Final words. They have a way of sticking with you for a lifetime. The year was 1981. The month was a cold, foggy January day in Stockton. I was a twenty-two-year-old newlywed working for a landscape company as I awaited acceptance at Dallas Theological Seminary. The call from my father in San Diego caught me […]
Psalm 81
How important is it for you to corporately worship the living God? Jesus educates us when He took the disgruntled, envious Pharisees to task on the glorious day of His triumphal entry into Jerusalem: 37 As soon as He was approaching, near the descent of the Mount of Olives, the whole crowd of the disciples […]
Psalm 74
What are God’s people to do when their institutions are devastated by ruthless enemies? How should Christians respond when the culture implodes and into the power vacuum steps ideologically driven people bent on silencing the Church, the voice of truth and morality? In January of 1933, Hitler was basically a low-level politician nobody really listened […]
Psalm 73
Some questions, based on how God deals or doesn’t deal with various people and issues in your life, can become like a cancer eating away at your once vibrant faith. Yes, when God doesn’t act in a fashion you expect based either on what you know about Him or in relation to what you feel […]
State of the Church 2021
Per our Constitution, the Senior Pastor is asked to give an annual appraisal of the State of the Church, this church. Today is that day, so we will come back to our study of the Psalms later. Right now, however, it is important for us to look forward to 2021 and ask where I believe, […]
Psalm 56
When you are in a threatening situation, the last thing you want to do is freeze up in fear. Take a young, single woman in my last church as a case study. Driving along a levee road near water which was over 30 feet deep, she suddenly had a blowout. Immediately, her car careened off […]
Psalm 55
I mentioned the old hit Backstabbers last week by the O’Jays, and only a handful of people remember this song and this tune. It’s worth recalling the lyrics since many of us have faced, are facing, or will face those people who oppose you for your Christian walk, thinking, and stance. What they do . […]
Psalm 52 – Part 2
Several years ago, at a growing church in San Diego, Donna the Dragon used her sinister methods to grab power while trashing those biblically given the power to lead. After she demonstrated her in depth knowledge of the Bible as a parishioner in a variety of women’s settings, leadership eventually gave her a large women’s […]