If You Want the Blessing, You Have to Grow Up

by Michael Catt (from the “Leap of Faith” series) Joshua, 1 Corinthians, Hebrews, Ephesians I. Jehovah is looking for a people who will take Him at His word. Essential truths for victory:1) Prayer is a powerful weapon.2) The sword of the Spirit is our offensive weapon. II. The promises are ours, but we fail to […]

"Temperance is moderation in the things that are good and total abstinence from things that are foul." - Frances E. Willard

“Temperance is reason's girdle, and passion's bride, the strength of the soul, and the foundation of virtue.” - Jeremy Taylor

Temperance

Suffering

“We need to pay attention to what we are learning about God in the darkness because the darkness is where our relationship with Him is tested. The darkness is where we learn the truth that God will be faithful.” – Jan Dravecky “Great souls are grown through struggles and storms and seasons of suffering. Be […]

"We hate some persons because we do not know them; and we will not know them because we hate them." - Colton

"The hatred we bear our enemies injures their happiness less than our own." - J. Peitt-Senn

"We may fight against what is wrong, but if we allow ourselves to hate, that is to insure our spiritual defeat and our likeness to what we hate." - George William Russell

Hate

Money Fonts

(as appeared in World Magazine, May 2010) Watching your budget? Here’s a surprising way to save money: Choose the right font. Printer.com, a printer comparison website, found that you can save up to 31 percent on your ink cartridge costs by selecting a typeface that uses less ink. That translates to $20 per year for […]

The Radical Disciple

Some Neglected Aspects of Our Calling – John Stott. IVP Books. “(This book) looks at eight elements of Christian discipleship that believers tend to neglect: nonconformity, Christlikeness, maturity, creation care, simplicity, balance, dependence, and death. Stott lays out the clear challenge that if Jesus is truly Lord, ‘we have no right to pick and choose […]

Introverts in the Church

Finding Our Place in an Extroverted Culture– Adam S. McHugh. IVP Books. As an introvert, McHugh was called to be a leader in the church. He says, “Too often I experienced those two things as contradictory, adn the book began as my way of trying to make sense of my call in light of my […]

Missing the Obvious

The Pharisees and Sadducees came up, and testing Jesus, they asked Him to show them a sign from heaven. But He replied to them…“Do you know how to discern the appearance of the sky, but cannot discern the signs of the times?” And He left them and went away. (Matthew 16:1-4) Blindness is amazingly comprehensive. […]

The Cloister Gospel

James McDonald has written about the “Five Distortions of the Gospel in Our Day.” He describes the shallow substitutes for genuine New Testament proclamation and evangelization as the “cake mix gospel” in which key ingredients (e.g. repentance) are left out; the “cultural gospel” in which the main focus is to appear to be relevant; the […]

The Danger of Drifting

On October 31, 1983, Korean Airlines flight 007 was on the last leg of a flight from New York City to Seoul, Korea with a stopover for refueling in Anchorage, Alaska. Unknown to the crew, however, the computer engaging the flight navigation system contained a one-and-a-half-degree routing error. At the point of departure, the mistake […]

P. T. Barnum Was Right

I believe it was P. T. Barnum who said, “There’s a sucker born every minute.” In my lifetime, I’ve seen people rise from the dead…not literally, but ministerially. I have a file in my office filled with resumes of good and godly men who have been dismissed from their churches for trying to do the […]

It’s Carnival Time! (Part 2)

One of the most popular rides at the carnival was the roller coaster. In my preaching and teaching, I have more than once referred to “roller coaster Christians,” people who are always looking for a new “spiritual high” but do nothing but go up and down, never really maturing in the Christian life. They don’t […]