One of the most blessed and beautiful things in the body of Christ is to experience and enjoy sincere and sweet fellowship with one another. My wife and I were spending some time with a splendid, service-oriented couple in our church body. Besides sharing a destiny together (eternal life), I discovered that the wife of the couple and I had been raised in the same state, Georgia, the Peach State. While most of us identify the State of Georgia as the Peach State, they also have a plethora of pecan trees. Oftentimes, the best pecans were at the top of the tree.
Read MoreIn the 2016 presidential election, the Trump campaign reached back to the days of Ronald Reagan (1980) and grabbed the Gipper’s powerfully persuasive phrase that promoted patriotism and propelled him to his landslide victory over Jimmy Carter: “Make America Great Again." Now I would like you to consider with me not a slogan but a sentence that seeks to supplant self-centeredness and set God as the superior subject of your life! Make God Great Again!
Read MoreI remember my very first experience with a rip current. It was in June 1995 at Fort Lauderdale Beach. My wife and her sister accompanied me on some business with the Broward County School System. Before engaging in my business with Broward schools, we elected to entertain a beach excursion. We were not as enlightened as your everyday beach person so both the environment and the experience were new to us.
Read MoreHave you ever been told to wait? By nature we are usually inclined to despise the directive to wait! To be told to wait is often interpreted as unjust and insensitive. The prevailing attitude is that waiting is an impediment to my immediate indulgence! Too many of us are cemented in this culture of immediate gratification.
Read MoreThere is a story about a janitor who took the idiom “cleaning up” to another level – financially, that is! This great-hearted, giving janitor led a very meager and self-imposed, monetarily simple life. When he traveled around the town of Brattleboro, Vermont, he settled behind the wheel of a second-hand Toyota. His exhilarating expression of personal entertainment was chopping wood. Finally, when the janitor died he left an astounding amount of money that surely shocked the citizens of his small community. He left $4.8 million to the local hospital and $1.2 million to Brattleboro’s Brooks Memorial Library. The explanation behind the janitor’s enormous endowment was his persistent prudence in stock investments that totaled $8 million by the time he died.
Read MoreAny casual perusal of local or international news reminds us that we live in perilous times as well as how profoundly problematic, perverse and perplexed people can be. Consider these recent news headlines:
“Texas explosion kills two and injures twelve”
“Body in beer cooler found in Braves stadium”
“Five people dead at Annapolis Newspaper shooting”
“Law officials charge over 600 in Health care fraud and opioid crack down”
“Man clings to the hood of vehicle traveling over 70 mph on interstate 95”
“California on front line as STDs run rampant in US”
My wife, Gloria, and I make it a point to walk at minimum two and a half miles four days a week. We refer to it as our “Hour of Power” time as we spend this time together in prayer. We have found this time to be a personal blessing as well as beneficial to our connection with our Creator, Jesus Christ, and as a couple.
Read MoreMost of us are familiar with the idiomatic expression: “It’s not what you know but who you know.” The substance of the expression speaks to the advancement of individuals at a work place or professional setting based on their connections rather than their talents, knowledge or skills. Oftentimes this is identified as nepotism. According to the dictionary, nepotism is patronage bestowed or favoritism shown on the basis of family relationship, as in business and politics.
Read MoreFor this weeks’ blog, I wanted us to consider a check-up from the neck up. And if our hearts are heavy I pray they are heavy with the hope of Heaven. For the most part, I naturally enjoy an environment of elevated optimism in my heart. I always advance the argument that the glass is half full as opposed to being half empty! Now for all my more pessimistic friends I am not promoting a proliferation of people that only present positive dispositions in public. I know that’s a lot of p-words but be patient with me. I am augmented with alliteration.
Read MoreOn Wednesday evenings at my place of worship, service and fellowship we attend and participate in prayer and Bible study. It is also there that we purpose in our hearts to be more than ordinary servants for an extraordinary God. The format for the service follows what I reference as the four W’s: Welcome, Worship, War (prayer) and finally, Word (Bible study). During the War segment of our Wednesday evening service, individuals present prayer requests as well as testimonials of praise.
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