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  There is a story that has gone ‘viral’ this past week that has its origins here in San Francisco at a local Giants baseball game; perhaps you’ve seen it? During the game broadcast, the TV cameras cut away to a woman who was making her way back to her seat, carrying a load of concession food with her daughter strapped to her as well. She seems to be maneuvering her way through the seats where her husband takes the food from her, but doesn’t seem to be overly helpful in helping her get settled in. The TV broadcasters then unload on this guy, and from there…the story takes off across social media platforms as people weigh in and continue the dog piling as they unload on this dude for being a pathetic excuse for a man. Days later, the wife/mom responds…to set the record straight and it is the perfect example as to how ignorant humans can be in their rush to judgment based on what little they know, see, or hear. (I’ll post a link to the story below in the comments if you care to ...
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  There is an interesting backstory to the photo I posted here today to go along with my message. It was taken by me in the summer of 2014 while Kathy and I were down in Big Bend, TX. We had made the trek down that way in June for a few days to visit the area for our first time. We both remember clearly, the drive through some very inhospitable terrain, during the summer heat, and what we were talking about in the car that day while driving. That was the year there had been a huge surge in undocumented children…showing up at the southern border, many who had made the trip up from central America. What was hard to fathom was the fact that most of them were unaccompanied by adults, and somehow had survived walking through hundreds of miles of the very kind of terrain we were driving in at the time. I still remember Kathy and I discussing this very thing as we drove to Big Bend. How did these kids get here…and survive? Who…or what…brought them here? This humanitarian crisis domin...
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  Dear Fellow Christians, I don’t want to sound like an alarmist, but it might be a wise idea to tap the brakes on the path we claim to be walking on these days, and do a little ‘heart check’ …as we are admonished to do in 2 Cor. 13:5. I would like to direct your attention to Luke 10, where a ‘certain lawyer stood up to test Jesus, asking Him: “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” (25) Jesus immediately directed this man to the ‘law’, asking him what his take was on it. (26). Being a lawyer, he did a good job summing it up with how we are commanded to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength…and to love our neighbor as ourself. (27) Jesus commended him on his response, affirming him of his understanding of the 'law', then adding…(which we should all take note of): “You have answered correctly; do this…and you will live.” (28) The lawyer was not finished, as we are told he wanted to ‘justify himself’…which is interesting.  So he asked Jesus: “Who is ...
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  In case it has not been brought to your attention yet, let me be the first to inform you that God has this unwavering way about repeating Himself, over and over and over; and for good reason. We ‘believers’ would do well to sit up and take notice, because we tend to be slow at times at 'getting it'. Do you know what the one area is that God makes it a point to keep repeating Himself? It might surprise you…especially since the ‘church’ (His ‘supposed’ body) places little emphasis on this one thing. Let me lay it out for you this way today, and see if it doesn’t resonate and ‘connect a few more dots’ for us all. It has to do with ‘keeping His commandments’. What our Bible teaches: “Oh, that they has such a heart in them that they would fear Me and always keep ALL My commandments, that it might be well with them and with their children forever.” (Deut. 5:29,33) [you might just read through chapters 5-11 when you have time and see how often this theme is stressed] “I believ...
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  If you’ve not experienced this ‘bell-ringing milestone’ yourself… you probably know someone personally who has. I’ve known several over the years. It marks the end of what can be grueling treatments to rid the body of any and all cancer cells. But it’s the results of the PET-CT scan that every patient and their family members anxiously await for, because that’s when they receive the news that the treatments worked and they are now ‘cancer free’. If a cancer patient undergoes major or radical surgery to remove cancerous organs or body parts…one of the first pieces of news you want to hear when coming out of surgery is to be told by a confident doctor… that they ‘got it all’. Being told that they ‘got most of it’…or to be informed that despite surgery and follow up chemo or radiation treatments that there were still ‘some’ cancer cells detected in your blood work…would not be a source of great comfort to anyone. Care to guess why that might be?  I’m no expert at this but we...
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  Here is an over-simplified picture of what I have spent the past five years trying to convey from all these Bible lessons with plenty of scripture included to support what I share. God set a law in place which He expects to be obeyed, and it can best be summed up like this: We are either going to surrender to His Lordship and allow Him to replicate His divine nature in us so that we can manifest His love to the world…or we will be destroyed. I don’t know that I could make it any plainer than that. We are told that God is ‘long-suffering’ towards us, ‘not wanting any to perish but for all to come to repentance’ (2 Pet. 3:9). It is His desire for “all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” (1 Ti. 2:4) And ‘unless we repent…we will all likewise…perish’. – Jesus (Luke 13:3,5). Oh, and here’s a news-flash in case anyone forgot this little nugget of truth taught by Jesus: He gave us a ‘new commandment, that we love one another as He loved us’…and…’by this will all...
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  The apostle Paul wrote: “Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law…having become a curse for us…” (Col. 3:13). Before you go and pop the cork on that bottle of champagne upon hearing this news regarding what Christ did…may I challenge you to take a moment to consider this: who was Paul referring to there when he mentions….'us'? Who are the ones that are actually included in that great news…about being ‘redeemed from the curse’? I only do that because we know how easy it is for people to ‘jump to conclusions’ when they read various scriptures and just automatically ‘assume’…it applies to them, especially when it comes to being on the receiving end of blessings and/or good news. How many people are we told in Matt. 7:22 will ‘come in that day’…when they stand before God and just presume they are ‘in’ as they list all those glorious works they did in ‘His name’, only to discover that Jesus ‘never knew them’? (Matt. 7:23) And how many people did Jesus imply would be on th...
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