SPEAKING THE SAME LANGUAGE
Back in 1991, I went on a mission trip to the former Soviet Union. Twenty-or-so of us arrived on a snowy November day in Samara, a city of more than a million people located on the Volga River. We were there for about ten days, and our mission was to help start a
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Presbyterian/Reformed
WHEN YOU CAN'T FIGHT, PRAY
Nancy told me the other day that, not too long ago, she overheard Graham praying. Here he was, near the end of his life, beset with a failing body more than nine decades old, and what was he praying for? His country. Your country. Mine. He fought for this country. He
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Presbyterian/Reformed
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POWER AND "KING OF THE HILL"
When I was a kid, we used to play a game called "King of the Hill." Everyone would get together and choose some place to be the "hill." Sometimes we were lucky enough to have a dirt mound to play on, but not very often. It might be a bed or a sofa, unless, of course,
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Presbyterian/Reformed
THE GOSPEL IS OFFENSIVE
There is something about the gospel that is inherently offensive. I don’t like saying that, and you may not like hearing it. But it is incontestable. The gospel puts some people off.
Take David and Roland, two high school friends of mine. David was what you might call a
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Presbyterian/Reformed
IN PHILADELPHIA
My father died in a Philadelphia hospital in 1999. Some weeks before his death, I was able to spend a few days with him. I stayed at the home of some friends in Washington Crossing, just a few miles north of Philadelphia, and each day I would drive into the city.
The first morning
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Presbyterian/Reformed
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WHAT A WASTE...??
There was a young man who grew up just down the block from my wife Jan. I never met him; I can’t even remember his name. But I know about him. I think about him every time I’m in the neighborhood.
This boy didn’t attract much notice as he was growing up. He studied mostly. He
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Presbyterian/Reformed
HARRY POTTER: TEMPTATION
Every great story has great characters. And in truly great stories, the characters go through significant change. This change is called a character arc.
For example, if you’re familiar with the Harry Potter series, you know that Harry starts off in the story as an
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Presbyterian/Reformed
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COMFORT FROM WHERE?
When Jerry’s mother died, the loss was almost unbearable. But Jerry was determined to be strong for the sake of her family. John, in fact, asked her how she could be holding up so well. It was the God on whom she relied that stabilized her in the midst of that
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Presbyterian/Reformed
CHILDHOOD REMINDERS
When I first came to Wichita Falls, Joe and Eloise were living over on Hursh, and I remember going to call on them one day. The front door cradled a lovely stained-glass window. When I asked about it, Joe said, "It’s from the old church in Vernon." Every time he entered and
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Presbyterian/Reformed
WHAT YOU DON'T KNOW
They say, "What you don't know can't hurt you." But it's not true, is it?
Suppose your house is invaded by termites that are eating away at the studs and beams and rafters, and you don't know it.
Suppose you are on an extended trip but you left water boiling on the
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Presbyterian/Reformed
AFRAID
I was all alone. I lived with four other guys in a huge, old house just off the campus of Baylor University, but I was the only one home. I must have been twenty-one or twenty-two – a grown man, practically a college graduate – but I was afraid. There was usually a surplus of noise in the
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Presbyterian/Reformed
FIRST PHIL AND FIRST PHYLLIS
Some years ago, I asked the leaders of our church to do a little exercise with me. I fabricated two imaginary people, one a man and the other a woman. Since this is First Presbyterian Church, I named the man "First Phil" and the woman "First Phyllis." I suggested that
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Presbyterian/Reformed
HAPPY FAMILIES
Leo Tolstoy opened his novel, Anna Karenina with this line:
"Happy families," he said, "are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."
I don’t know if that’s entirely true, but, of course,
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Presbyterian/Reformed
CONTAMINATED
I'm all thumbs when it comes to band-aids. I know you're not supposed to touch the pad, the part that compresses the wound. If you do, then you contaminate it, and you run the risk of infection. And, of course, you don't want to do that. So, every time I use a band-aid, it's something
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Presbyterian/Reformed
A SAFE PLACE
Some years ago, I used to see Project Safe Place signs. Perhaps you have seen them too. They were most often displayed on houses along residential streets, or on fire stations, or even on public library buildings. They are diamond-shaped with a yellow background and a black logo,
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