My wife shared with me an illustration from a sermon that she listened to online this week. The illustration had a point, but I narrowed my focus to the illustration and had to remind myself not to miss the point. This reminded me of the passage in James that we...

We shouldn’t wait until we run out of words to start praying, but sometimes we do. So much is happening in our personal lives and in our world that calls for us to speak. God gave us truth and tongues, so we should speak. But the truth is that the...

The great commandment given to us in the Bible, both the Old Testament and New Testament, is to love the Lord our God with our whole being (Deuteronomy 6:4-5, Matthew 22:37-38). When the Jewish people of the Old Testament first heard these words, they were told to teach and remember...

Sometimes we shout the loudest to silence our guilty conscience. The voice of our own conscience speaks to us. We are unsure about our rightness. We have no place to turn to settle this internal conflict, so we shout. Group shouting is even better, so we think. There is strength,...

In our trials we must remember that though God will do it, we must go through it. This is the messages of the first chapter of the book of James. James is writing to Christians who are experiencing all kinds of challenges, some related to being a Christian and others...

I often find myself in the middle of a parent-child teachable moment. The parent is trying to teach the child how to introduce himself. “Look at Pastor Scott, shake his hand, and tell him your name,” the parent says. All the while, the child is enduring the moment and hoping...