Coming to the Still Waters

All of our possessions in the back of a 16ft moving truck gives us a little perspective on where we are at this stage of our lives.  In a few hours we will leave and head south into the "heat and hurricane" season of Florida.  I am always thankful for the hands to help us when we attempt these moves and especially with the piano!  It is well buried amongst the boxes and totes. Our time in Illinois has been good.  God has confirmed some things in my life that I need to go after.  I could have stayed but I think I would have been struggling against something in my soul.   I have been accepted into the online Masters of Biblical and Theological Program of Belhaven University of Jackson, Mississippi.  My first class starts in August and I am thankful for this opportunity to take some seminary classes long past due.  I will include a video of the announcement and a link to a video of the curriculum I will be covering called Third M...

I like to think of this created combination punctuation mark between an exclamation point and a question mark is a good representation of a rhetorical question.  We will see one in the passage today. Wednesday in the Word covers verses 21 through 30 of John chapter 8, which read, v.21 - Then He said again to them,  "I go away, and you will seek Me, and will die in your sin; where I am going, you cannot come." With this passage I will try to switch back and forth to what Jesus is saying and what the crowd is saying.  Jesus is in the temple area and speaking to those who are gathered there.  He has made the statement that He is the Light of the world.  Jesus is also receiving some  "push back"  from His statements that connect Him to His Father, God. Jesus will go away.  He will be crucified; be buried in a grave for 3 days; rise again; and then ascend into heaven.  In the unbelieving state that they are in, they will not be...

This is a picture of the sun going down.  It is saying goodbye for a time.  Yesterday was the last Sunday of service to the congregation I have served for the last almost 5 years.  I started when an approval vote was taken in August of 2014 and I will send out a final email on Wednesday of this week, May 29, 2019.  Yesterday was a goodbye and there were many tears.  But amongst the tears... there were some really great things that made my yesterday a phenomenal day.  Let me give you 3. 1.  There was a high emphasis on evangelism/discipleship. The focus of the passage in Luke chapter 15 makes you ask the question, "Which son are you?"   We are like both of them in that we all are lost and need to be found by the Father.  Our lives tend to be described by one or the other like riotous or religious or a running away or a keeping with the routine.  But the runner's story ends with a celebration and we don't have the end of the story f...