"How Should We Pray?"

Should we repeat prayers or not? 

Jesus said this as part of his great sermon on the mount. Ver. 7, chapter 6 of Matthew. When you are praying do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do. For they think that they will be heard because of their many words.

In pagan religions they would believe that they could cajole their gods to act if they just kept saying a lot of words, a lot of words in their prayers to their gods and they thought that, well that would cajole their g

"Super Focused on God's Word"

Good morning and a most blessed Thursday to you. It was an interesting conversation I shared with someone recently about being in God's Word. And not only being in God's Word in a daily living sort of manner, but every week coming to the house of the Lord, hearing the Word proclaimed and preached. And we were talking about how interesting it is that we come to engage with God in His Word through various devotions and previous saints. And as we were hearing His Word proclai

"Partial Obedience is Disobedience"

Good morning and a most blessed Thursday to you. I was studying a devotional the other day and a quotation really caught my attention. So I'm going to share it with you. But I hope you're ready to be convicted because this is one of those really convicting one liners. This is from a devotional from Paul David Tripp and he writes, "The problem with partial obedience is that it is disobedience masquerading as obedience."

When you really think about that, it can cut deep. And

"Saved from Sin"

The late theologian R. C. Sproul tells a story when he was walking along and a man came up to him and said, "Are you saved?"  Well, Sproul says that he was taken back a little bit by the question, and he turned to the man and responded and said, "From what? Save from what?"  Well, the man that had asked the question was flustered and he started to stammer and he didn't have a response to Sproul's question.

How can one answer that question... from what? And how can you answe

"Repentance: The Gift of Lent"

Last evening we entered into the season of Lent, with the very meaningful worship service of Ash Wednesday. The sign of the cross was placed upon our foreheads with ash. That ash reminds us of our frailty, our mortality. It reminds us of our sin. But being in the sign of the cross, it reminds us of the redemption that is ours through the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. In the season of Lent, in a special way, the church focuses on repentance. The Biblical understanding of

"Eternal Light, or Eternal Darkness"

Good morning, and a most blessed Thursday to you. I want to read to you from Revelation, the 21st chapter. This is where John sees the new heaven and the new earth. He writes in verse 22, "I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God, the Almighty, and the Lamb. And the city has no need of the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring

"Seeing God"

Good morning and the blessed Thursday morning to you.  The other day, as a part of chapel in association with our preschool here at the church, I received an interesting question from one of the preschoolers. He said, "Why can't we see God?"

Why can't we see God? That's a really good question, isn't it? Well, I answered it with an answer appropriate for a preschooler. But I wanted to delve into that topic a little bit with you today. Why can't we see God?

Look with me, pleas

"Growing in Faith"

Good morning and a most blessed Thursday to you. Do you ever go through those seasons where you don't exercise as much as you would like to or pretend that you would like to? And then you try a workout and your muscles are so sore because you haven't used them in a particular way for a while. And yet you push through the pain, comfortably uncomfortable. You push through and you do another workout, maybe the next day or the next day, and you keep building the strength of yo

"A Clear Path"

Well, today I was driving into work and I had the blessed experience of driving in the fog. And I say it was a blessing because at the same time I was listening to some hymns and the hymn that happened to be playing was Lead Kindly Light. And it's a hymn that is all about seeking God's guidance, seeking for the light of God to lead and His Spirit to lead us forward. I was very grateful to God in the moment that I got to hear that hymn while I couldn't really see very far i

Why Can You Trust the Bible?

Good morning and a blessed Thursday morning to you. Would you open up your Bible please with me to the Gospel of John, the seventeenth chapter.  One of the songs that we oftentimes sing at the chapel time in preschool is "The B I B L E. Yes, that's the book for me."

I love the next lyric on that. "I stand alone on the word of God." The Bible can indeed be trusted. So that poses a question, why is it then that we can trust the Bible? 

Well, you can apply certain tests of trut

"No Compromise"

Good morning and a most blessed Thursday to you. I had an interesting deep dive the other day in my own time of devotion that I want to share with you right now. I was reading through Exodus, or part of Exodus, when Moses is going to Pharaoh and saying, "Let my people go. We want to go into the the wilderness three days and worship our God, make sacrifices to our God." And Pharaoh continues to harden his heart.

And what struck me interestingly this time, going through the s

"Don't Worry. Trust God"

Good morning and a blessed Thursday morning to you. 

The new year is still rather fresh, isn't it? But here's a question. Do you find that the challenges or problems that you had at the end of 2024 perhaps just carried into 2025?  When the ball drops in Times Square on New Year's Eve, signaling that new Year, there's that moment where the new year is fresh. But the reality, is that the problems and the challenges that we faced a minute before midnight just carry on into the

"The Warmth of God's Love"

Good morning and a most blessed Thursday to you. We are in the middle of a a winter storm warning today, and there's just a little bit of snow on the ground where I am. I hope that you are staying safe and warm wherever you are. And you know,  I was thinking about warmth and how really the great warmth that we have is from the light of the world.

The light of the world that is Christ. And regardless of how cold the world around us is, we have the light of Christ burning wit

"New"

Happy New Year. I cannot believe we're at 2025. And I know we say this every single year... that we can't believe it's a new year, but time marches forward and it is indeed a new year. So did you make resolutions? Do you have goals for this year? Did you make any spiritual goals?

You know, reading through the Bible in a year or maybe helping in a new ministry that you've never tried before, or joining a small group? Of course I have these wonderful ideas for you if you're l

"Preparing the Way"

We are approaching the fourth Sunday in this glorious season of Advent, as we anticipate entering into the Christmas season. This Sunday, the fourth candle will be aflame. And during the season of Advent, one of the characters from Holy Scripture, it is so often and rightly so, associated with Advent, is John the Baptist.

Remember, as we've been studying in this series, Mary and Elizabeth, that Elizabeth and Zechariah were the parents of the forerunner of the Lord Jesus Chr