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“Whoever guards his mouth and tongue keeps his soul from troubles.” (Proverb 21:23) We live in an age in which it seems that gossip is celebrated. There are shows on television that exist solely so the “talking heads” in front of the cameras can yammer on incessantly about other people. It happens on FaceBook and in person all around us. I’ve noticed that adolescents constantly talk about other adolescents for one main reason: they want to push the focus off themselves and onto pretty much anyone else. Perhaps we are devolving into an entire culture of arrested adolescence. Our culture is becoming a largely anti-God culture and as it increasingly resists God and His precepts and teachings we

When God provokes a person to speak against the worldly traditions of men that add to, take away from or even attempt to displace the principles in God's word.....that person is NOT attacking the people who do them. He is merely addressing the extra-Biblical or anti-Biblical PRACTICES they promote which, in some way, ALWAYS hurt people. When these things are brought to their awareness, those who practice such things (and we ALL do and some time and to some degree) have the choice to either repent (agree with God) and change what they are doing or to continue to do these things because "we've always doing it this way" or "the people like it" or....well...there are thousands of bogus reasons t

For 14 years I taught a weekly internet Bible study. During one of them a good friend of mine said something interesting that I believe is true: “You know why I think God tests our faith? It’s not so He can see where we stand; He already knows. It’s so we can see where we stand.” When I originally wrote this piece I was in the midst of a financial (and patience) trial. We had a Jeep and it had been out of commission for almost a month due to a transmission problem it experienced while I was coming home from a ministry trip. At the time it was still in Joplin, MO where it stranded me and that was costing the ministry a lot of money. It also cost me a lot of frustration. Many of us are in some

The best stories are the true ones. The most compelling of the best stories always seems to be true ones that we are privileged to witness with our own eyes. I would like to share a story about something I saw this past weekend. “Now concerning the ministering to the saints, it is superfluous for me to write to you; for I know your willingness, about which I boast of you to the Macedonians, that Achaia was ready a year ago; and your zeal has stirred up the majority. Yet I have sent the brethren, lest our boasting of you should be in vain in this respect, that, as I said, you may be ready; lest if some Macedonians come with me and find you unprepared, we (not to mention you!) should be ashame

“And He entered the synagogue again, and a man was there who had a withered hand. So they watched Him closely, whether He would heal him on the Sabbath, so that they might accuse Him. And He said to the man who had the withered hand, ‘Step forward.’ Then He said to them, ‘Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?’ But they kept silent. And when He had looked around at them with anger, being grieved by the hardness of their hearts, He said to the man, ‘Stretch out your hand.’ And he stretched it out, and his hand was restored as whole as the other.” (Mark 3:1-5) Jesus knew who He was dealing with. He knew the Pharisees were more interested in the rules, re