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Showing posts from September, 2025

A Long Journey...Matthew 17:14-23...The Line in the Sand

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  This is a picture of my in-laws, Harry and Asenath.  They have been on a long journey together.  77 years of marriage and still going.  How did this happen?  Well one reason was getting married young and another was drawing a line in the sand to hold true to the vows said 77 years ago at a church altar before God and many witnesses.   The line in the sand can be a good thing especially if it drives us to be urgent about the important things of life.  Jesus brings His disciples back to the line in the sand that God's plan involves His coming first to save and then His coming again to judge.  The church resides into between those two comings of Christ.  What do we need to be urgent about? In our passage we have parents urgently pleading for their children before Jesus.  Sometimes this is because of something negative happening to the child but we also see other times when parents are bring their children to Jesus in a positive setti...

Am I asleep to Jesus' presence?...Matthew 17:1-13...Falling in love again with His words.

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  The Never Summer Mountain Range is behind me.  It is always amazing to me how people will respond more quickly to a picture than to the text.  I updated our Facebook cover photo and profile picture and people are responded left and right to it.  I do not get as much response when I print text to the same group of people.  I think this bears true with the response to video presentations of the Bible over just the written text of the Bible.  But since we don't have actual video footage of Jesus (sorry Chosen) I feel it is important to not just rely on someone's artistic presentation of the text but to read it for ourselves.  The question would be, "Am I reading more than I am watching when it comes to God's words?" I have purposely not used much video in my preaching opportunities because video will steal the show, no pun intended, to the actual passage we are looking at.  I think we need to train ourselves again to rely on what we are reading rat...