As a former high school, collegiate, and professional football player as well as a high school coach I have very fond memories of both receiving incentives and giving incentives for players performing well in games. The word incentive is defined as something that incites or tends to incite to action or greater effort as a reward offered for increased productivity. Football coaches on all levels have utilized everything from stickers on Helmets, lunch pails, wrestling belts, big sticks etc. as incentives for their players. This year’s NCAA College football season has a team that has taken motivational tools or incentives to a new level via something called the “Turnover Chain.”
Read MoreOver the past couple of weeks, we have been considering three principles to practice that will promote intimacy with God. The first principle was watch and pray. We must be watching and praying if we want our will to reveal that we desire a relationship with God and are interested in Him. Second, we should also be walking in wisdom to know how to please the Lord and walk in His ways. Finally, we will discuss advancing Godly words or speech.
Read More“Getting to Know You" is a show tune from the 1951 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical The King and I. In the show, Anna, a British schoolteacher who has been employed as a governess, sings the song as she endeavors to engage an inviting and affectionate relationship with the children and the wives of the King of Siam. In the opening verse of the song she sings:
Getting to know you
Getting to know all about you
Getting to like you
Getting to hope you like me...
Most of us are familiar with the idiomatic question: Who made the bigger investment: the chicken that gave us eggs or the pig that gave us the bacon? Obviously the pig offered his life for his offering so he would be the one that made the greater investment...
Read MoreI thought I would pick up from where we left off in last week’s blog entry with the lyrics of 1982 Grammy award winning artist Patrice Rushen hit single: “Sending You Forget Me Nots”:
Sending you forget me nots
To help me to remember
Baby please forget me not
I want you to remember...
Usually the opening statement in this passage of Scripture speaks from a soul that is arrested with appreciation or gripped with a generous gratitude. Do you remember telling God that you will never forget what He has done for you? Better yet do you tell him on a consistent basis “I will never forget what you have done for me”? By the way, the practice of blessing the Lord and refusing to forget His favor in our lives purges our prejudices against God. These prejudices are produced by a heart heavy with pride, complacency, selfishness, discontentment, pessimism and a fountain of fleshly issues that pollute our perspective of God.
Read MoreI really appreciate a good sound. My definition of a good sound is music which moves you with a message to snap your fingers and move your feet. If you were around during the decades of the 1960's and 1970's, you might remember the soulful sounds of Motown music. The song “Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I'm Yours" is a soulful single by Stevie Wonder that was released in June 1970. Wonder's song was indeed a wonderful hit as it spent six weeks at number one on the U.S. R & B chart and peaked at number three on the U.S. Pop chart. In the same year, the song was also released on the album titled “Signed, Sealed & Delivered.” As you might expect from the song title, the dominant lyrics in the chorus are “Signed, sealed, delivered, I’m yours!” But further listening reveals that there was another part of the lyrics that spoke volumes with respect to the message of surrendership, commitment and our eternal future. Four different times throughout the song, Wonder sings “You got my future in your hands.” I wonder if Wonder understood the gravity of such a statement.
Read MoreWe all have heard the idiomatic expression, “When the going gets tough the tough get going.” So when you are experiencing tough times with faith, family, friends, or faculty (body and mind), how do you get going? And where and who do you go to? The correct Christian answer to these questions is that we turn to God and His Word. In order to “get going” we must submit ourselves to His Spirit according to Scriptures.
Read MoreThere are a lot of life lessons that lead us to look to the Lord and listen to His voice. When you have been travailing on tough terrain, strapped with stress and drenched with a downpour of difficulties, giving God glory and promoting praise in pain is a Christ-centered concept that's challenging to embrace. However, difficulty and stressors in our human story is standard with sanctification. Our human experience also echoes the essentially of stress and difficulty for development and discovery. For instance, a long distance runner must be stressed to gain endurance. Sailing the seas gives the sailor his “sea legs”. Soldiers train by setting their sight on war and preparing for battle. For the Christian, in truth, tribulation is tied to us learning how to trust in God. And this learning process develops patience.
Read More
The California gold rush (1848–1858) commenced on January 24, 1848 when James W. Marshall came across a gold nugget in the American River while constructing a sawmill for John Sutter, a Sacramento agriculturalist. News of Marshall’s discovery brought thousands of immigrants to California from elsewhere in the United States and from other countries.