Contributed by Johnny Wilson on Aug 11, 2009
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EYES AND TOES
There is a terrific story I once heard in a taped message from a marvelous Baptist pastor named Ron Dunn. Dunn's parable suggested that once upon a time there was a body where the eyes convinced all of the other parts of the body that the gift of SIGHT was the only important gift.
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Contributed by Johnny Wilson on Aug 11, 2009
BUYING THEM BACK
We're told about a gift of grace (singular) and informed that it will help us to build up the church in LOVE. Do you see a pattern, here?
Whatever we have to use in God's service comes directly from God.
It's a lot like a former colleague experienced at Ziff-Davis Publishing. He
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Contributed by Johnny Wilson on Aug 11, 2009
BEGINNING AND ENDING
A Connecticut Baptist named A. Roger Williams (a modern pastor, not the one who founded Rhode Island) once preached, "It is true that if religion begins with the individual--it begins, but if it ends with the individual--it ends." [A. Roger Williams, "The Kingdom of God," in
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Contributed by Johnny Wilson on Jun 27, 2009
REVELATION AND OVALTINE
The word often translated "revelation" or as I translated it, "unveiling," could also be understood as "decoding." Ever heard of those Ovaltine Decoder Rings in the '40s? Ovaltine drink advertisements used to have a coded message on them (as did some of the Ovaltine radio
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Contributed by Johnny Wilson on Jun 27, 2009
I want to give you a silly illustration of one way this can work. When I was a teenager and just starting to enjoy coffee, I liked to take a cup of coffee with me wherever I went. Of course, those of you who’ve seen me play softball are well aware that I have trouble walking and talking at the same
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Contributed by Johnny Wilson on Jun 27, 2009
HEAR O ISRAEL: LISTEN UP!
I served in a volunteer capacity as an unofficial chaplain to the Redondo Beach (California) police force. About seven or eight of us who were ministers would rotate so that we rode entire shifts with some of the officers.
Police work is a contrast between tedium and
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Contributed by Johnny Wilson on Jun 27, 2009
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SERVANTHOOD: THE SOLOIST
There was an interesting movie recently. It bombed at the box office, but it was a very interesting film. "The Soloist" was a true story about a Los Angeles Times columnist named Steve Lopez who discovered a homeless person on the street who, in turn, was a Julliard School
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Contributed by Johnny Wilson on Jun 4, 2009
Here’s the question. Do we really want to get rid of all the devious, carnal, and despicable people around us? C. S. Lewis suggested in his Reflections on the Psalms that we are really only opposed to the enemies of God when they cease to amuse us, flatter us, and serve some utility for us (p. 74).
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Contributed by Johnny Wilson on Jun 4, 2009
Verse 14 (where the psalmist calls God awesome and says he needs to fall down to the ground in adoration of God) is often misunderstood, though. There is a scene in a very cynical, satirical movie that applies to the world’s misunderstanding of praise. It is a scene from a Python film called "The
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Contributed by Johnny Wilson on May 25, 2009
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OBJECT LESSON: HOLY SPIRIT
I have a children's sermon to try to explain the Holy Spirit. It isn't original to me or to the first person I heard use it, but I think it's powerful.
I take an empty glove and tell the kids that it's a magic glove. I tell them it is amazing because it can pick things
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Contributed by Johnny Wilson on May 21, 2009
I didn’t get an allowance when I was in high school and any kind of paying work was few and far between. My parents expected me to come to them when I needed money for lunch money, class rings, yearbooks, books, gas money, dates, or anything. Instead of being thankful that they wanted to give me
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Contributed by Johnny Wilson on Apr 26, 2009
LEGACY: THE AMAZING RANDI
How many of you have heard of "The Amazing Randi?" He was a stage magician, "mentalist," and escape artist (in the tradition of Houdini). He once escaped from a block of ice and once escaped from a straitjacket while hanging upside-down over Niagara Falls. He once broke a
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Contributed by Johnny Wilson on Apr 19, 2009
TOURNIER ON FAITHFULNESS
Faithfulness means that we admit our sin whenever we are tempted to depend upon something other than God. In this admission, the first step toward authentic repentance, something marvelous takes place. As Swiss psychologist Paul Tournier once shared, "The sense of guilt is
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Contributed by Johnny Wilson on Mar 30, 2009
DOVES AND DIRECTION
God’s people in the northern kingdom were acting like a dove, quite senseless and flitting back and forth between Assyria and Egypt as their protector—in spite of the fact that Yahweh, God of Armies ("Lord of Hosts") wanted to be their shield and defender. This is a powerful
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Contributed by Johnny Wilson on Mar 30, 2009
VICTORY HILL
Remember, our plotting is unfinished, but God’s training and strength-conditioning is already there for us. I want to talk about this chastising, sometimes translated as punishing, and which I have translated as "training." I have something in mind. The Hebrew verb means to provide
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Contributed by Johnny Wilson on Mar 30, 2009
The tannur (oven) did need to be hot in order to bake the bread, but if there was too much heat when the dough was supposed to be rising, it would kill the yeast and stop the process. I get it. Wailam, my wife, laughed at me when I made a cake and forgot to put any baking powder in it. It ended up
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Contributed by Johnny Wilson on Mar 30, 2009
When we are no longer alert as God’s watchmen, we have a tendency to be insensitive to all the dangers around us.
I can’t help but be reminded of a frightening experience we had when my eldest son was working the late shift at a bakery. He came home dead tired one night and I was already asleep.
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Contributed by Johnny Wilson on Mar 30, 2009
It’s sort of like the fable that evangelist D. L. Moody used to tell. It seems there were two eagles. One of the eagles won every race and the other eagle was jealous. One day, the jealous eagle overheard a hunter say, “I’d bring down that eagle if I had decent fletching on my arrows.” The eagle
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Contributed by Johnny Wilson on Mar 23, 2009
THERE'S ALWAYS MOUNTAINS
In the Broadway musical, The Scarlet Pimpernel, the 18th century (fictional) hero encourages his followers by reminding them of David vs. Goliath. The song goes:
"David walked into the valley
With a stone clutched in his hand
He was only a boy
But he knew someone must
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