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Psalm 23 A psalm of David. 1 The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing. 2     He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, 3     he refreshes my soul. He guides me along the right paths     for his name’s sake. 4 Even though I walk     through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil,     for you are with me; your rod and your staff,     they comfort me. 5 You prepare a table before me     in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil;     my cup overflows. 6 Surely your goodness and love will follow me     all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord     forever. Our complete security in Christ is wonderfully displayed in the 23rd Psalm. It’s a security that is non-conditional and flows from our relationship with Jesus. He is Shepherd. We are sheep or followers. It’s not dependent on our performance as sheep. It’s expressed in series of positive statements. Our eternal security in heaven is the last ultimate facet of our security, but by no means the only facet. We will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. The basis of our security is provision. We shall not want. We are promised […]

  I have written this blog since 2009. I have mentioned “fear” a lot. I’m not embarrassed by this. I find myself in good company. Jesus mentioned it so much that it became part of his usual greeting, “Fear not.” It’s equivalent has become a common greeting among believers, “Peace be with you.” We mention fear so often because it is such a huge problem. We have lots of fear. We fear disease, death, destruction, loss of family, loss of income, hell, and loss of salvation. Fear is Satan’s greatest weapon. If you are saying to yourself, “I’m not fearful.” Consider this, do you worry? Are you anxious? Do you have concerns? Those are just other ways of expressing fear. The opposite of fear isn’t courage or bravery; it’s peace and security. As much as fear dominates our lives; we truly seek peace and security. This is why I am so adamant about Eternal Security. It’s what Jesus came to give us. It’s not the same as “once saved always saved.” If we are secure in our marriage, it’s not that we think we could never be divorced. We just think it’s highly unlikely. If we are secure in […]

On Sunday our Pastor preached about The End Times. It was interesting because we don’t hear a lot of preaching on the subject. I’m certainly no End Times scholar. My End Times theology is very simple. I believe Jesus is coming back to reign, that will be wonderful, we don’t know when and until then things will get a lot worse before they get better. I don’t find hardly anyone who disagrees with me on these basics. With that theology I am motivated to tell others about Jesus and wait with joyful expectation. The fighting starts with things like the Rapture. Will it happen? If so when? I do mean fighting because if you google “the rapture” you will read some of the nasty things said by one group of Christians about another. People are really serious about their opinion. The truth is there is support for most opinions in the scripture and no solid proof of either. I find a direct connection between one’s basic theology and their opinions about The End Times. Grace people tend to be pretrib rapture folks. By “grace” people I don’t mean people who talk about grace, but I mean people who are comfortable […]

Life is a walk, for Christians a walk with God. Looking back on the long path of my walk, one characteristic predominates: faithfulness, not mine, but God’s. There has been much along the path: eleven years in the military without injury or fear, law school in my thirties, loss of a child, false allegations, challenges of all kind. Through it all my God has been faithful. My family has never gone hungry. I have enjoyed a beautiful family, faithful friends and a decent career. I have often wandered from the path, but God has stuck with me. Looking around at where I am today on the path I have to wonder. Is this where I should be? Was this God’s plan A for me or are we on plan B or even Z? I have walked a long way, but should I have walked faster or even run? How many times have I been turned around or had to double back? Did I fully understand and appreciate all the beauty along the way ? Have I more often helped others or stepped on toes without thinking? Will my passing be remembered with smiles or frowns? Looking ahead I can […]

It seems we are often unsatisfied or discontented because we make poor decisions. It’s understandable that this can happen when we don’t have all the facts. The strange thing is that often these poor decisions are based on bad information about ourselves. I read an interesting article yesterday about things we should know about ourselves.  Here’s my take on that. 1. Whom do you serve? We all serve someone. The problem is that we don’t always realize it. It could be ourselves, our employer, our checking account, our spouse, or someone else. We need to know the real answer to that question. 2. What do you love? At least once a day we find ourselves saying that we love something or someone. What or whom do we really love? Shouldn’t our decisions be based in significant part of whom we love? 3. What makes you angry? At least once a day we find ourselves angry or upset about something. These emotions guide us often unconsciously. It is wise to recognize what gets under our skin. 4. What motivates you? Great leaders and coaches are terrific at identifying and utilizing the motivations of others. We aren’t always that good at recognizing […]

A Methodist pastor friend of mine lost it on Facebook this week. He went after the non-denominational churches questioning whether folks who go there know what the church  believes and accusing some of these churches of “sheep stealing.” As one Facebook post said this week “It’s now what you believe, but whom you believe.” What you believe is important, but if you believe the right one that works itself out. Further, they are not our sheep. They are His. It’s easy enough to understand his frustration. Main line denomination churches have lost folks for years.  Lots of reasons have been given. They have become too liberal or too political or not political enough. Some blame the secularization of America. The free love period of the sixties had an impact. Church scandals haven’t helped. Now even some “conservative” denominations are feeling the pinch. The Catholics are feeling a bump aided by a new pope who seems to get it in terms of what people are looking for, but may not get it in terms of theology. Some churches are doing great. The ones that do often get targeted as being “seeker friendly” or watering down the message. I think that’s […]

We all have our favorite sins. In fact, I believe we have two categories of favorite sins. We have our favorite sins that we like to commit. We don’t believe they are really bad sins. In fact, we may not think they are sins at all. They are really just little missteps. We don’t think they really hurt anybody so they are of the no-harm-no-foul variety. We know we would be better off without them, but there are certainly much worse sins out there.  One of these days we will get around to stop doing them. Probably when we are old and they aren’t so much fun. Some of us call them venial sins. “Venial” means “slight” or “pardonable.” These sins tend to be sins of the mind or perhaps sins that occur in private. That’s one of the reasons they are our favorites. We really don’t like people to know we have sins, or should I say faults. We like to keep such things private. They are really nobody’s business. That brings us to the second group of favorite sin: the sins others commit. They tend to be much more public and everybody’s business. After all that’s how […]

5 The purpose of my instruction is that all believers would be filled with love that comes from a pure heart, a clear conscience, and genuine faith. 1 Timothy 1:5 The one thing we all really want is love. We want to love and to be loved. We may try substitutes of all kinds but nothing else will do. What we really want sometimes seems unattainable.  It doesn’t seem like a big thing, but three big things keep us from it. Who we are. What we’ve done. Where we’re headed. We spend our lives trying to change these three things about ourselves. We know who we are and we know we are unloveable and incapable of really loving others. We know what we’ve done and no matter how deep we bury that or how much dirt we shovel into the hole, we can’t cover that up. We know that we are headed no where. We know that no one would be willing to join us on that hopeless journey. As to number 1, who we are, we seem to have only a couple of options. We can improve ourselves or we can lie about who we are. The problem is […]