DAILY, WEEKEND, AND HOLIDAY INTERNET EVANGELIZE TO THE WORLD MINISTRY

June 30 Are You in the Picture? We’ve had a bad habit for several years, we load the film in the camera, take the pictures, and then put the roll of film in a dresser drawer. Recently, Susan’s been taking a few rolls a week to get them developed. We never know what we’re going to see when we open the package. It’s the closest we get to playing the lottery. The pictures range from snapshots of church functions to pictures of our children when they were tiny, but they do have one thing in common—Susan isn’t in the picture. Why? She’s the official family photographer. While thumbing through the pictures, I remembered a story Pastor Dan Rhodes told me last year. Dan is the pastor of two rural churches in Colorado and stays busy. Like most pastors, he has plenty to do, but by being the pastor of two churches, he has twice the committee meetings, and twice the worship services. As Dan tells the story, his daughter’s third grade teacher requested a parent teacher conference with h...

To The Penny “Lord,” I’d pray, “we’re not making it. Everything we make is going to pay for Seminary and the new baby, we need more money.” We weren’t economically challenged. We were flat broke. We were sharing a small apartment with several hundred cockroaches and often were only able to eat a partial meal each day. Times were tough. The church I was pastoring was growing, but most of the new money was going into programs and for the new building we were planning. I took on some side jobs teaching Speech at a Christian school and substituting in the public school system to help ease the pressure, but we needed divine intervention. We were in over our heads. When I prayed about our situation, I kept hearing God say the same thing—”increase your giving.” “You’ve got to be kidding,” I’d pray, “increase our giving? You don’t understand, we need more money, not less.” We were already tithers, giving 10% of our income to the Lord, but now He was asking us to take a step of fa...

June 18 Patience The alarm clock screams at you at an ungodly hour. Your kids can’t find their socks, won’t look for them and expect you to know where they are. The milk and your husband have something in common … they are both spoiled. He’s upset because he wants to hear “snap, crackle and pop” while he reads the paper. If he mentions the milk one more time you’re fully prepared to give him “snap, crackle and pop!” It won’t be in his cereal bowl. You look at your watch, “oh no late again.” You rush through your routine, get dressed as fast as you can. “I can’t be late again.” Oh No! Your last pair of hose just got a run. Isn’t that the way it always is? Dressed in your best jeans, you turn the key in the car. NOTHING! Your car won’t start. What a day, your hose runs and your car won’t! Life is filled with challenging days, and we can’t do anything to change that fact, but we can do something about the way we react to them. Challenging days can be filled with life when we app...

June 9 One Nation Under God In The Church of the Holy Trinity Vs. United States, the justices unanimously decided that America is a Christian Nation. They wrote, “Our laws and our institutions must necessarily be based upon and embody the teachings of The Redeemer of mankind. It is impossible that it should be otherwise, and in this sense, and to this extent our civilization and our institutions are emphatically Christian.” And later in the same document, they wrote, “These, and many other matters which might be noticed, add a volume of unofficial declarations to the mass of organic utterances that this is a Christian nation.” In 1892, the Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States of America had no problem declaring America a Christian nation. Would anyone do the same a hundred years later? Our coins say “In God we Trust,” yet the way most people live their lives it proves they really trust in money, not God. Prayer opens every session of Congress and the Supreme Cou...

June 8 One Nation Under God In The Church of the Holy Trinity Vs. United States, the justices unanimously decided that America is a Christian Nation. They wrote, “Our laws and our institutions must necessarily be based upon and embody the teachings of The Redeemer of mankind. It is impossible that it should be otherwise, and in this sense, and to this extent our civilization and our institutions are emphatically Christian.” And later in the same document, they wrote, “These, and many other matters which might be noticed, add a volume of unofficial declarations to the mass of organic utterances that this is a Christian nation.” In 1892, the Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States of America had no problem declaring America a Christian nation. Would anyone do the same a hundred years later? Our coins say “In God we Trust,” yet the way most people live their lives it proves they really trust in money, not God. Prayer opens every session of Congress and the Supreme Cou...

May 25 Obedience In 1999, four out of five dogs that checked into Metro Detroit’s animal shelters were eventually destroyed. That’s 40,000 animals. Why such a high mortality rate? Its not that they’re not cute, or are maimed or crippled, it is that they don’t know how to obey. According to Chris Jones, the assistant manager of the Michigan Humane Society, the dogs they have to euthanize have inadequate training in obedience. If a dog can’t obey has little value to society, but how much value does a highly trained dog have? I guess to fully answer that question, we’d have to ask the owner of a seeing eye dog or a widow whose “guard dog” scared an intruder away. For the people of Plymouth Township, $10,000.00 is a reasonable price tag for a K-9 officer. They use the dog to detect drugs, find missing people, track down criminals and search for evidence. According to Terry Schoebach, the training director for the K-9 Academy, a police dog is trained to detect drugs, track cri...

May 24 Nothing “What’s all the fuss about?” the skeptic asked. “What are you Christians celebrating anyway?” “Nothing,” I responded, absolutely “nothing.” The angel of the Lord proclaimed: “He is not here, for He has risen, just as He said. Come, see the place where He was lying.” (Matthew 28:6 NASB) “Nothing” makes the message of Christianity unique. Most world religions have a monument that enshrines their founders in marble and granite as a tribute to their lives and teachings. Christians have no monuments with the remains of their founder. They took Him from the cross and placed Him in a borrowed tomb. Death and Hell could not keep Him. On the first Easter He burst through the ashen grip of the tomb, defeating the powers of Satan, leaving “nothing” where His cold body was! “Nothing” gives us power. Sin had a death grip on our lives. It defeated us and lead to spiritual death. He gives us power to live a productive spiritual life. The risen Lord transforms our lives be...

May 23 No Regrets When Karen Watson felt God’s call to go to Iraq, she responded by resigning her job, selling her car, her house and other possessions. When she left, everything she owned was contained in a duffle bag. Today, her duffle bag has become a reminder of the work she did in telling people in Iraq about Jesus Christ. Watson’s family shared her story with the President of the Southern Baptist International Mission Board, Jerry Rankin, at her funeral. Rankin then took Watson’s message of sacrifice to a Missions Conference in New Orleans. He encouraged students, faculty, and staff at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary to consider missions not out of obligation to fulfill the Great Commission, but because they are compelled by the Love of Jesus. Rankin said, “Media and culture, they just don’t get it. Why would anyone go to a place where their lives would be at risk?” He added, “We have all succumbed to a culture and a philosophy where it is all about us, it’s al...

May 22 Background Noise In the distance, a siren sounds as an ambulance races against time. The base notes from the neighbor’s stereo thunder through the wall and shake the knick knacks on the curio shelf. Your children slam the front door and run through the hall as the television is showing the first of fifteen consecutive commercial messages. Have you considered how noisy life is? Yesterday I was sitting at my travel agent’s desk as she checked the lowest rates for a trip I’m planning to make. As she stared at the computer screen, I kept hearing an intermittent loud buzz. “What is that noise,” I asked. “Oh that,” she said, “that’s the signal that someone just walked in the door. After a while you get used to it—I don’t even hear it anymore.” Is it possible to hear something so often that you don’t hear it anymore? I was day dreaming with a friend the other day about getting out of our Condo and buying a house near the church. He said, “I’d never live down there; its t...

May 21 Mystery of God “Can you solve the mysteries of God? Can you discover everything there is to know about the Almighty?” (Job 11:7 NLT) Perhaps you’ve caught a glimpse of it while standing on the rim of the Grand Canyon, or driving down Highway 1 along the California Coastline or standing at the foot of Niagra Falls. It is everywhere. The grand mystery of God is everywhere you turn. It is in His creation, in the faint sounds of conversation between lovers and in the screech of a newborn baby’s cry. If it is everywhere, why don’t we experience it more? For some reason, we’ve replaced deep mystery with shallow explanations and cliche answers. We’ve sacrificed knowing God for knowing about Him … and in the final analysis we really don’t know that much about Him. Solomon wrote, “As you do not know the path of the wind, or how the body is formed in a mother’s womb, so you cannot understand the work of God, the Maker of all things.” (Eccles. 11:5 NIV) Whenever someone asks us...

May Mother’s Day Over the years, my mother has slowly given me some souvenirs from my childhood. Baseball cards, my first books, you know, the kind of things that I left behind when I was packing to go to college. Recently she gave me back some gifts I gave to her when I was younger, things like my senior picture and a plaster-of-paris hand print that I made in Bible School as a kindergartner. While thinking about Mother’s Day this year, I thought about a gift I gave her as a young child. It is a piece of cardboard covered with green burlap with a candle I made out of yarn and glued on the board. Above the candle is a poem I wrote for her. The poem began, “I love my Mother, better than any other …” Not exactly e. e. cummins or Robert Frost, but it expressed a little boy’s affection to his mother. I don’t get sentimental about motherhood. I’m sorry, but in a nation where women “have the right to choose,” but a baby doesn’t have the “right to life” I don’t equate pregnancy with...

May 19 Mysteries When we lived in a climate where I couldn’t exercise outdoors year round, and I was a member of a health club, I used to catch myself circling the parking lot looking for a parking place close to the door. Why would I do that? I mean, if I’m about to go inside and get on a treadmill for 45 minutes, why not just walk across the parking lot too? There are some things in life that confuse me. Like why do we cultivate, irrigate and fertilize a lawn to make it grow, just so we can mow it twice a week to keep it short? Or worse yet, why can’t I get grass to grow in my lawn, but it flourishes in the cracks of my sidewalk? There are just some things, that are hard to explain. Like why a preacher would talk about the evils of money, then take up a collection for his church. If money is so evil, why does he want it so bad? It isn’t that money is evil, it is that if we don’t handle it correctly it can lead to all kinds of evil. The truth is, money is necessary. Without ...

May 18 Motives After we pay the mortgage, utility bills, tithe and other obligations, we pretty will split the money down the middle. With Susan’s share she buys groceries, cleaning supplies—you know, girl stuff. My share goes to things like boat repairs, fishing lures, and popcorn at the Dukes’ game. (Not really, but I thought it made a pretty good introduction. Though when I read the rough draft to Susan she said “That’s about how it is.”) The truth is, Susan is less likely to spend money on herself than I am. She is usually sacrificing so someone else can have something. Recently, I said to her, “Susan, why don’t you take some money out of the bank and get your hair fixed the way you want it?” I wanted her to do something nice for herself. “Don’t you like my hair?” What’s the title of that book—”Women are from Mars, Men are from …?” I just wanted her to treat herself to something nice, that’s all. I had no hidden agenda. She was looking for the message behind the qu...

May 17 Money Do you run out of pay check before you run out of month? If you do, you’re not alone. Many Americans experience financial struggles, and those struggles increase stress in our lives and strife in our homes. For some people, the problem is too little income, for others, it is too much out go. For some people, no amount of income would satisfy their need to spend. Madison Avenue calls people “Consumers.” What does that word imply to you? I picture a giant “pac-man” racing through a shopping maze devouring everything in sight. Does that word describe your shopping behavior? Or are you more level headed when you shop? Several years ago, our Realtor gave us a counter offer from the owner of a Condo we were trying to buy. They wanted us to sign the offer that day or the offer was void. Our answer? We told her our answer is NO for today, but if she is willing to wait until next week it might be yes. What do you think the sellers did? Of course they waited, and we still...

May 16 Mercy King Saul wasn’t exactly happy with David at the time, the truth is, he was jealous of him. “Saul has killed his thousands,” the people said, “David his ten thousands.” Usually when there is a disagreement between two people both people are wrong. But frankly, I don’t see where David did anything wrong. As far as I’m concerned, Saul was totally out of line in his behavior toward David. He was wrong when he threw the spear at him. He was wrong when he plotted to have him killed so he could provide a dowry for his daughter’s hand. He was wrong when he sent his goons over to his house to kill him in his own daughter’s bed. He was wrong when he hunted him down like a rabid dog after David fled for his life. Wrong, wrong, wrong—Saul was completely wrong. But—and this is a big but—Saul was the king. He was God’s anointed. So what should David do? Should David, in the spirit of preserving his own life take matters into his own hand and strike Saul down? His advisors told...

May 15 Memories “Remember the days of old; consider the years long past. Ask your father, and he will tell you, your elders, and they will teach you.” Deuteronomy 32:7 (HCSB) When Stephen and Farrell set their wedding date, one of the requests they had for us was to digitize photos of him growing up so they could make a PowerPoint presentation for the reception. I broke out an old scanner from a cabinet and hooked it up to my computer, only to remember why it was in storage-it didn’t work. After throwing it away, we got a new one and began converting memories into pixels. The three of us took turns scanning and I cropped and edited each photo and after a week of evenings, we mailed twenty years of Stephen’s life to him on one CD. Now we’re in the process of doing the same with the rest of our pictures. Perhaps some of you are involved in the tedium of lining up pictures on the scanner bed, scanning, cropping, editing, categorizing and saving your memories. We’re not near don...

May 14 Building Memories Deciding to buy her grandmother’s 18-foot trailer was the easy decision, but knowing what to do next was the problem. When Susan’s Grandmother died, her Grandfather wanted to get rid of their camping trailer, the price was within our means, so we bought it. Oh, it is nothing fancy, truthfully, we probably could have gotten a much better trailer for a little more money, but we wanted it for sentimental reasons. When we bought it, the trailer was parked on Susan’s brother’s property in Colorado, about 15 miles away from the family acreage. He offered to let us keep it there indefinitely, with no strings attached. Moving the trailer meant we’d have to build a road, install an outhouse and haul water, all at considerable expense. The trailer was already hooked up to a septic tank and had running water and access to electricity—it was a perfect arrangement. Perfect, except we’d spent 15 years building memories on land 15 miles away. Memories of the first ...

May 13 Member’s Only My brothers formed a club when I was five years old. They had a neat clubhouse (an old, dusty tool shed) a thriving membership (three or four other kids), and a membership policy (you had to be at least six years old to join). Do the math—I was out! “I can’t wait until next year,” I said, “then I’ll be old ‘nough to join your club.” My brother was quick to reply, “by then the age requirement will be seven.” Now, don’t start feeling sorry for me. The truth is, I was a scrawny little “tag-a-long” brother. I’m sure my brothers got tired of having to walk slower so I could keep up, or watching me while Mom and Dad went somewhere. They just wanted some peace and quiet. Have you ever been left out of something important? How did it make you feel? I remember the first building program I ever led. At that time, the Church only averaged 25 people and yet they sold their small building to relocate and build a much larger building. With the help of other Churche...

May 12 McVeigh Last Monday, Timothy McVeigh was executed. He died with his defiant eyes wide open, staring at a video camera that televised his death to the family members of his victims. His demeanor, like his life, was chilling. In his final statement, he cited a line from “Invictius,” a poem written by William Henley, a 19th century British poet. “I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.” McVeigh’s poetic selection illustrates the septic evil that emitted from the pores of his soul. McVeigh was his own master, his own captain. He was unable to submit to authority. In protest against the government, he killed innocent children and with a calloused heart, called them “collateral damage.” Please, will someone explain to me what children sleeping in a day care in a building in Oklahoma City ever did to him? His actions are beyond my ability to grasp. They were inexcusable. Too bad he had to be the master of his own fate and the captain of his own soul. From w...

May 11 Love Made Her Do It “Now when Jesus was in Bethany, at the home of Simon the leper, [7] a woman came to Him with an alabaster vial of very costly perfume, and she poured it upon His head as He reclined at the table. [8] But the disciples were indignant when they saw this, and said, “Why this waste? (Matthew 26:6–8 NASB) All four gospels carry a story of an anointing with perfume by a woman. Luke identifies the woman as “a notorious sinner.” His account of a different woman than the other three. In Mark, like in Matthew, she is an unidentified woman, but John gives her a name. Mary. Martha and Lazarus’ sister-Mary. Mary loved Jesus. Three times her name is mentioned in the gospels, each time she is at the feet of Jesus. In Luke 10:38–42 she is at his feet, listening to Him teach, in John 11:28–32, she mourns her brother’s death at His feet, and in John’s version of our text, she anoints Him with perfume, at his feet. Why did she give so much? Because she loved so much...