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Doing Things the Hard Way
“And while they were there, the time came for her to give birth. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them … Continue reading
Let There Be Peace
This is a season of hoping for peace on earth and goodwill among men. And why should we not hope? The angels announced it to be so at the birth of Jesus. Yet, where do we find ourselves two thousand … Continue reading
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Checklist for a Great Worship Service
My wife does most of the legwork of planning the Sunday morning worship service orders for our church. She and I talk through the theme and then she sets to the task of choosing songs and putting them in an order along … Continue reading
What’s Good about Good Friday?
Have you ever wondered what is good about Good Friday? How can the things that happened on that day and the horrors of Christ’s suffering be good? How can it be good that he was falsely accused and wrongly condemned and … Continue reading
The Leader, the Witch and the Warning
The encounter of King Saul with the witch of En Dor in 1 Samuel 28 is one of the most bizarre incidents in Saul’s life, and even more so, in all the Bible. Who was this woman? What kind of … Continue reading
Adapt or Die
A little over a week ago, jihadists executed 21 Christian Egyptian men. None of the martyrs were wealthy or educated. They had gone to Libya looking for work and ended up in the hands of ISIS. In a picture accompanying the article … Continue reading
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Praying in the Garden
The night Jesus was betrayed and arrested he went with his disciples to a favorite place, a quiet place at night I’m sure called the Garden of Gethsemane. It was in this place that the final minutes ticked down to … Continue reading
“How Long ’til We Get There?”
When I was a kid, traveling was part of our Christmas holiday. My family lived in Maryland and my grandparents lived in New York state. As soon as Christmas break arrived my parents, four siblings and I would pile into … Continue reading
The Resistance to Christmas
The other night in family devotions we read from John Piper’s Good News of Great Joy: Daily Readings for Advent, published by Desiring God. The reading focused on the theme of resistance to Jesus and highlighted two demonstrations of resistance in … Continue reading
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Tagged Advent, Jesus Christ, King Herod, persecution, resistance, the Christmas story
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What’s Your Number, Pastor?
There it was in an email I had received. I predicted out loud to my wife on our way home from church that another one was slipping away. My mind raced to figure out what I could do to tighten … Continue reading
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Tagged Chief Ben Randall, Chief Shepherd, Church, Jake Fischer, Jesus Christ, Leadership, Ministry, Pastoral Work, shepherd, Shepherd Jesus
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