Christian Living

At the beginning of the new year, you eagerly set goals to reach forward for Christ in multiple areas. Both through your goals and the early action steps you have taken, you stretched forward.

Perhaps you have heard the statement, “Jesus loves you just as you are, but He loves you too much to allow you to stay that way.” It’s true. God loves us unconditionally, and He doesn’t love us more or less based on if we are currently growing or backsliding. But He does call us to grow in Him.

Revival is more than simply having a special guest preacher and a few extra nights of meetings. True revival is a work of the Holy Spirit. That is why Habakkuk prayed, “…O LORD, revive thy work in the midst of the years…” (Habakkuk 3:2).

People are dangerous! Our sinfulness often brings with it the capacity to hurt others. We hurt one another with the words we say and with the things we do or forget to do. Sometimes we injure our relationships with others through carelessness or negligence.

This January marks Terrie’s and my thirty-third New Year at Lancaster Baptist Church. A few weeks ago, we were able to host several families from our church who were here when we came or who we were able to lead to the Lord in those first couple years. Their faithfulness over the decades is such an encouragement to us.

As our Lord is coming to the close of His earthly life and ministry, He shares a meal with His closest followers, girds Himself with a towel, draws a bason of water, and kneels to wash the feet of His friends. It is a wonderful lesson on humility that convicts me each time that I read it. It is my desire to be that kind of a servant.

I was amused when I read a prediction offered in 1962 that reported by 1985, technology would have made so many advances, that the average workweek would be twenty-two hours, and we would only work twenty-seven weeks a year.

I hope you’ve made time over the past week or so to prayerfully evaluate needed areas of growth in your life and set some goals for this New Year. Setting goals, however, is the easy part; living them out in day-sized pieces over the coming year is the challenge.

We find written in the Word of God the words, “He brought them out that He may bring them in.” This statement refers to the children of Israel. They were delivered from Egyptian bondage. The purpose for their deliverance was not that they might wander in the desert, but that they may enter into the promised land.

There’s nothing like a new year to renew our passion for growth and excellence. I think, however, that in our haste to set new goals sometimes we miss careful evaluation of where we’re really at currently in some of the key areas of life.

Have you ever been invited for a special event, only to find out that there was no space for you to sit at the table? I can remember many times being invited as a guest to a dinner event or speaking conference, but somehow the host did not have a spot for me to sit!

The Thanksgiving and Christmas seasons can be a combination of great joy and, oddly, some melancholy. They mark the coming and going of not only the literal seasons of fall to winter, but they also mark the passing of seasons in our lives.

The Bible says, “But if ye bite and devour one another, take heed that ye be not consumed one of another,” (Galatians 5:15). Sometimes I hear people say, “I just let so-and-so have it.”

According to statistics from 2018, Americans owe 26 percent of their income to consumer debt with the average American spending 10 percent of his or her monthly income on non-mortgage debts. And although average income is increasing, American consumers are buying more and increasing their debt.

Thanksgiving Day, made a national holiday in 1863 by President Abraham Lincoln celebrates the feast the Pilgrims held after their first successful corn harvest in 1621. What many Americans fail to remember is that Thanksgiving is not just about being thankful—it’s about being thankful to the one true God.

I love Thanksgiving for many reasons, but perhaps the greatest is that it helps us schedule a day to do what we should be doing every day of the year—give thanks.

It would seem that a ministry devoted to helping preachers would not need to talk to them about having a time of daily devotions and a regular schedule to read the Bible. Unfortunately, my sad experience through the years has taught me otherwise.

The results of an election can reveal the character and heart of a people. And this most recent election, at least in the state of California, didn’t reveal a heart for God or loyalty to Christian values.

Each year, our deacons insist that I go in for a thorough health examination. Usually the doctor will greet me with a statement like, “Deacons sent you again, huh?” He gets it.

Theologically, it is an amazing truth; but to us humans who are limited to occupy only one space at a time, we can find it a bit hard to appreciate. God occupies all places and all times simultaneously—all of heaven and earth, all of the time. Preachers often use that truth to remind themselves and their listeners that God is with us at all times and sees everywhere we go and everything we do.