Contributed by Johnny Wilson on Feb 27, 2009
I am reminded of Herman Melville’s description of the pulpit in Moby Dick. It’s actually a description of a real pulpit in the Whaler’s Chapel that a Jewish friend went out of his way to show me in New Bedford, Massachusetts. It reads:
Its paneled front was in the likeness of a ship’s bluff bows,
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Contributed by Johnny Wilson on Feb 27, 2009
IS GOD IN RESIDENCE?
I once saw a poster of a valentine-shaped heart with a castle on top of it. There was a flag with a slogan, oversized and coming out of the top of the castle. The slogan read: "Joy is the banner flown from the heart when the King is in residence."
Well, stupid me, I didn’t
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Contributed by Johnny Wilson on Mar 2, 2009
LOOK UP
I love those scenes in action films, comics, or cartoons where you have one set of bad guys pursuing the hero from one end of a tunnel or corridor and another set of bad guys is converging from the other side. You know the hero is in between them, but when the groups of pursuers meet in
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Contributed by Johnny Wilson on Mar 2, 2009
SHORT-TERM SOLUTIONS
In Chicago’s elevated train stations, they hung phony owls from the ceilings of some of the stations to discourage the pigeons. I can remember seeing pigeons right up next to the owls, blithely ignoring them. Now, there are wire spikes everywhere the pigeons might roost up
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Contributed by Johnny Wilson on Mar 2, 2009
IDOLATRY IS LIKE POISONING
More than 25 years ago (1982), seven residents of the Greater Chicago area made an assumption that proved fatal. They all took a dose of Extra Strength Tylenol® that had been laced with potassium cyanide. What they thought was medicine proved to be poison. This crime,
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Contributed by Johnny Wilson on Mar 7, 2009
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HIDE AND SEEK WITH GOD
This week I have been hammered by the immensity of what it means to "abandon," "forsake," or "leave alone" the omnipresent God, God who is everywhere. How is that possible? It is ONLY possible if God allows us to leave, allows us to turn our back upon God Himself.
Yes, it
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Contributed by Johnny Wilson on Mar 7, 2009
CONFESSION: SIN HURTS GOD
If you’re part of a big family, you probably remember those times when a little nephew would come up and slug his older uncles. The nephew’s mother probably chided him, but I can almost hear the uncle say, "No! That’s all right. The kid’s got to flex his muscles once in a
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Contributed by Johnny Wilson on Mar 16, 2009
SIN KEYED OUT BY JESUS
What is this idea of "covering" or "hiding" sin? It means that there are circumstances where God will refuse to see our sin. I like to picture that as being like the technique used in video and film. It’s called the chromakey technique and requires filming in front of a blue
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Contributed by Johnny Wilson on Mar 16, 2009
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FORGIVEN, FORGIVEN, FORGIVEN...
I once read a marvelous story about a country doctor in Scotland who had a very poor practice. Although his patients would pay him in eggs, chickens, vegetables at harvest, and meat at slaughtering time, his huge ledger book would contain many names, symptoms,
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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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Contributed by Johnny Wilson on Mar 23, 2009
FAITH: REASON AT REST
The late Manley Beasley defined faith as a "reason at rest with God." To me, that's powerful, but it hits me even harder when I remember that he went on to say, "Faith is dependency upon God, and this God-dependency only begins when self-dependency ends." And what do we see
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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 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 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 Creasong on Apr 22, 2009
Some folk must really get into their Sunday School lesson because they are so worn out by the time the sermon rolls around that they just can’t help but fall asleep! Or maybe they have worked up such a sweat during the music that they are plumb tuckered out! Perhaps those taking forty winks
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Contributed by Johnny Creasong on Apr 22, 2009
FALLING ASLEEP IN CHURCH
Please don't think I'm complaining about folks who fall asleep in church. I understand some people can’t help it. I am convinced that some people fall asleep in church during the sermon because their have a physical ailment. Some folk must have a snooze button attached at
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