THE ONE YEAR BIBLE CLUB

    Kudos to the Church in Thyatira. If I was the Pastor of that church I would frame these words from Jesus and hang them in the Church foyer for everyone, especially visitors to read, “I have seen your love, your faith, you service and patient endurance. And I can see your constant improvement in all these things”. Of course I would leave out the next part, “ But I have this one complaint against you, you are permitting that woman Jezebel….to teach them to commit sexual sin”. We know that “Love” is the primary objective, the primary goal of a church. The church in Thyatira seems to have reached this high and lofty goal. I think we can agree, there’s a few churches today that are seriously lacking in love. It’s unfortunate that the very objective that the Thyatira church has strived to be, now brings with it a serious fault. They have tried so hard to be “the love church” that in doing so they have completely avoided any kind of behavior that might be taken as “unlo...

    "Return to your first love" it's the sermon older Christians hate to hear. It's like men listening to a sermon on lust "oh here we go again", they think to themselves. Lust is the Achilles heel of every man (though hopefully triumphant) and "go back to your first love" is the sermon that can be preached any Sunday, and most older converts will be convicted! Because we do stray in our relationships, the fire does dwindle in our relationships and whether we want to hear it or not it is true and needs to be said. We do need to return to our first love, it's not a cliché, but true! We are no longer the "down and out" person we were when we first came to Christ. We are now married, have kids, have sports on week-ends, have good jobs and life is good, for the most part and oh yeah...did I mention, Jesus!  Jesus.... sure, he's good, church is alright, however I don't think I'm gonna make it this Sunday my son has a soccer gam...

   I know that the Christian Life is not the perfect life. That if I expect my life to be ever so bliss because I’m a Christian is wrong. However, I still cannot get away from the scripture that continuously tells me, “my life should be blessed because I fear the Lord and obey him. So while I should make room in my theology or life, for hard times, I must also understand that it isn’t my lot in life to be miserable and beaten down. In both Psalms and Proverbs today we are told that “ how joyful are those who fear the Lord, how joyful and prosperous they will be, may you live to enjoy your grandchildren” then in Proverbs we read, “whoever obeys the law is joyful” it is almost a duplicate of what we read in Psalm 128. And so I get it, I get it, my life isn’t going to be perfect, I know, I’ve been told enough times, through radio talk shows to sermons, books and from friends. I got that part, it’s been made loud and clear. It’s almost the strategy they use in “sales”. Set ex...

         I SIMPLY don't understand Eternal Security and I understand it even less after reading today's passage in Jude. The author provides a clear cut case against eternal security. He writes, "let me remind you". I think part of the problem is we forget and probably worse, most Christians just don't read The Bible, seems like an oxymoron if I've ever heard one, but it's true. If you were to try to have a debate over this subject and say, "well you know what it says in the book of Jude (as I have many times) about this" many "self-professed" Christians/back-slidden Baptists, would give you that stare...."hmmm, Jude, I think I've heard of that book, I'm not quite sure where it is...is that old testament?" And for those that have read the book of Jude and read the arguments of the author they would simply say, "well, that's because they were never really saved". However the author deals with that in Jude....

    The reason we have conflict in the church is because some people are just jerks. Surely it has nothing to do with us! It's always the other person that has the issues, it's always the other person who is causing the conflict. It's always the other persons conceit and arrogance that has caused us not to like him. He's this and she's that and if they weren't like that we wouldn't have such problems. If the Pastor wasn't so .........than I could submit to him, I would even like him. If my ministry leader wasn't so headstrong, then I could get along with him/her. But c'mon, how can you have a problem with the Apostle of Love? If there's anybody in the church you could expect not to have any relationship problems with, it would be the Apostle John, (known as the disciple of Love) the disciple whom Jesus loved the most. However that's not the case is it?! Somebody in the church had major issues with John. " I wrote to the church, but D...

HOSEA 4:1-5:15     It's horrible to read about the moral decline of Israel. Was Israel really this bad? As we read about the moral decline of Israel, it's hard not to think about the moral decline of America. We see that the name and title the Priests wear, has no bearing on their behavior. They are just as lewd and immoral as the rest of the people, if not worse. What happens when we lose are relationship with God and just become religious, is exactly this. No longer does the name we bear, have any effect on how we live or conduct ourselves. For the most part, Americans have lost their relationship with God, but are still a religious people. And so we have a Nation of self-professing religious people, whose conduct is rated R. America is still pretty religious, some States are more religious than others, ie: Texas, Alabama and the whole midwest, but you will not find moral conduct that is being curved or tamed by people in these States as opposed to other States. Al...