SUPREMACY CLAUSE
A number of weeks ago, I jokingly said that everyone in my family had a license for something in life. The one license my folks said was solely mine was the complaining license. Dad would say: “Stop your fussing,” and if I didn’t, he’d pick on me and saying: “I don’t like
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Contributed by Erik Stadler on Jan 12, 2011
STARBUCKS SOCIETY
Sometimes people describe today as the culture of "Starbucks" or the "iPod" society? We have been taught to look at ourselves as individuals, and the preferences of the individual are more important than the group. At Starbucks you can stand behind somebody and they can rattle I
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Contributed by Erik Stadler on Jan 6, 2011
BORN AGAIN TREE
Back when I was growing up we had a tree in our back yard. And is often the case after a storm the tree’s trunk cracked and blew down. There wasn’t anything we could do to save that tree. So my father borrowed a chain saw and cut down the tree right at the bottom so that all
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Contributed by Noel Herr on Dec 18, 2010
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A JOYFUL NOISE
You know, when our youth group went Christmas caroling, Emma was all aglow. We sang to her, perhaps not in the most angelic of tones----especially when we tried to sing "O, Come, All Ye Faithful", because the music we used wasn't the familiar tune we sang today. I felt kind of bad
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Contributed by Gregg Bitter on Nov 29, 2010
STAY FOCUSED
God's Word. That's what focuses our hearts so that we watch continuously, ready for Jesus. In a way, you might say, God's Word is like my glasses. Without my glasses, I couldn't even begin to catch a football. I wouldn't see it coming. But even with my glasses on, I still need to
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Contributed by Gregg Bitter on Nov 24, 2010
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70 FUNERALS IN ONE DAY
During a forty-year ministry, I would guess that many pastors do seventy or more burials. But this wasn't over the full span of his ministry. In fact, it wasn't even a full year. In one day, Pastor Rinkart did burial rites for up to seventy people and did the same the next
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Contributed by Gregg Bitter on Aug 17, 2010
FAITH AND PROMISE
When something is promised, you have not seen it happen yet, have you? If I promise my wife that I'm going to clean out the basement, there's no proof that you can see. There's only my word. That promise is the only evidence it will happen. And I may prove unreliable for one
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Contributed by Gregg Bitter on Aug 10, 2010
And I don't think that I'm alone in this struggle to pray. Even a great church leader like Martin Luther has said this about prayer, "At times I, who teach this and prescribe it to others, have learned from my own example that praying comes close to being the most difficult of all works"
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Contributed by Curtis Emerson on Jul 30, 2010
I was reading a blog about “who should get the credit” and I wonder if any of you have some of these same ideas.
One person wrote;
“you know this phony god of yours has it good, it gets all the credit for everything good, and man gets all the credit for everything bad ... the best of both worlds”.
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Contributed by Gregg Bitter on Jun 15, 2010
Let’s begin understanding this name, /Adonai/ (אֲדֹנָי), meaning /Lord/, by going back to the Middle Ages. Picture a medieval manor. Peasants worked the surrounding fields. Craftsmen lived in the village. The manor house, maybe with a moat and watchtower,
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Contributed by Gregg Bitter on Jun 15, 2010
Picture again the medieval manor we talked about earlier. No doubt many lords of the manor were more concerned about their own comfort and safety rather than about their people. But a good lord would defend his people. He would fight for them against marauders, raiders, bandits. He might even bleed
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Contributed by Curtis Emerson on Jun 8, 2010
PRAYER AND THE CONTINENTAL CONGRESS
We need to remember Rev. Jacob Duché who, at the first meeting of the Continental Congress in Carpenters Hall in Philadelphia on September 7, 1774, was asked to come and open that session with prayer. "He read from the 35th Psalm and prayed for three hours. John
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Contributed by Curtis Emerson on Jun 8, 2010
Have we held the line? Should those who have died rest easy because we are holding to the values that they were willing to give their lives for?
Consider this timeline;
"in 1954 churches began to grow silent;
by 1963 the Bible and prayer were removed from public schools;
by 1965 the sexual
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Contributed by Gregg Bitter on Jun 6, 2010
He claimed to "float like a butterfly and sting like a bee." Sports Illustrated crowned him the "Sportsman of the Century." His nickname was "The Greatest." He was the three-time World Heavyweight Champion, Muhammad Ali.
But where is that left hook followed by the hard right to the face that
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Contributed by Gregg Bitter on Jun 6, 2010
In the 1940’s there was race, a race to get the mightiest weapon this world had yet seen. The United States had the Manhattan Project. Hitler had his heavy water experiments. After the war it was learned that Hitler was much farther away from developing the atomic bomb than some had feared. But
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