Coming to the Still Waters

A friend of mine took the step of baptism last Saturday afternoon.  He followed what he read of his Savior in the Scriptures and made a public testimony and demonstration of dying in Christ so we might live for Him.  This played right into the passage this Sunday as we looked at Jesus' terms and conditions of what it means to follow Him. I encourage you to listen to the video below of the whole service from Sunday when we cover the passage Matthew 16:21-28. Jesus has just told His disciples of the road map going forward. They will be traveling to Jerusalem; Jesus will suffer many things from the hands of the religious leaders; He will be killed; and He will rise again on the 3rd day. Jesus will share this road map with His disciples many times before getting to Jerusalem and add more details along the way. This plan is not accepted by Peter and we assume the other disciples as well. Peter objects to the One he just called,  "The (only) Christ, the (only) Son, of the ...

  The Ptarmigan Towers towering over Lake Nanita on the Lake Nanita trail off of the North Inlet Trail in the RMNP.  To think I was thinking of climbing up there by just looking at a map!  It looks so easy on the map but when I got to the saddle I realized that reality was much different.  I had read in books about others coming from the other way, another trail, but this seemed so much shorter.  Now I know why they wrote of another route.  Here is another shot of just the first tower. The original languages of our passage help us to see reality.  Without them we can go down a different road that leads away from Christ alone and unto interpretations that elevate a man over the God-man, Jesus Christ.  I was never really good at applying the rules of the English language.  Some of them didn't make sense.  I actually did better understanding the rules of the Spanish language.  So when we dive into the Greek language the use of genders ...

  Another trip up to the summit of Mount Ida but this time with Stephanie.  12,889 ft with a 5 mile hike up the last 2500 ft from the Milner Pass trailhead.  For a moment we had the summit to ourselves except for the picas and the marmots!  We are embracing where God has put us.  This is only a small part of us living where we do.  The larger part is the work of the gospel through the local church.  Today I finished with a group of men the weekly study of the whole of the Bible we started in April of 2024.  Today Stephanie will gather with a group of women who are going through the book of Hebrews.  We are walking through the life of Jesus through the book of Matthew on Sundays that we started in March of 2024 and have reached chapter 16.  We are walking daily alongside of our church family as we and they experience the challenges of this life and in hope of the next with Jesus face to face.  Hopefully our physical endeavors are an ...

  The goal was to make it all the way up the East Inlet trail to complete the whole trail system.  I would start at 8300 ft where the East Inlet dumps into Grand Lake to 10 miles up to where it feeds 5th Lake at 10,900 ft.  I would start at 6 am and get back to the van at 4:15 pm.  6 lakes in total that would be involved in this trek, Grand, Lone Pine, Verna, Spirit, 4th, and 5th.  The trip included seeing many deer and fish and also an unexpected visitor at the final destination.  You would expect not to see anyone this deep up a trail but after about 30 minutes of alone time at 5th Lake, another hiker came over the rise to the edge of the lake.  Solitude is great but sharing the event with another has great value too.  It proved again that we live in a small world as we connected with someone we both knew. The passage this Sunday magnified the point that it is not what is external that defiles you but what is internal.  It is not the unwash...