"He brought them out of darkness and the deepest gloom and broke away their chains." -Psalm 107:14 Not long-ago Jess Francis, with great courage, spoke out in one of our podcasted services about her ongoing struggle with clinical depression. The result of her honesty was a beautiful time of confession, both during the public service in the accompanying chatroom and privat...

In Scripture we are told to "be angry and yet do not sin" (Eph. 4:26 NASB). In another place in the New Testament we also read that "the kindness of God leads you to repentance." (Romans 2:4 NASB). Anger is sometimes allowable, but it often can lead us into a wrong spirit and, consequently, wrong actions. An angry spirit should never be allowed to rule us. This is especia...

I love a hot cup of tea. Each morning, especially on a work day, I begin with a cup of black tea, preferably English breakfast. It doesn't feel right to start with the zing of Earl Gray or the unusual seasoning of Orange Pekoe. Only English breakfast will do I had a tea awakening in the late nineties. Fresh out of college and newly baptized, my friends and I would meet af...

Recently I wrote of my own past struggles with self-condemnation during my 30 years as a follower of Christ. In this piece I address an unfortunate "side-effect" of this problem: the condemnation of others. One of the many drawbacks of a self-condemnatory spirit masquerading as the voice of God in a believer's life is its power to tempt us to condemn others as well. I bel...

A personal note: Our pastor's new series entitled "No Condemnation, the Ridiculous Reality Found Only in Jesus" has a special resonance in my heart. The tendency to self-condemn has dogged me, to one degree or another, for basically my entire Christian life. In recent years, though, it has become far, far less of a problem for me. The theme of the following essay explains ...

Jesus told us that "the sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath" (Mark 2:27). Present-day Christ-followers debate about whether observing a regular sabbath day is still mandated for New Testament believers. I take a particular and fairly strong stance on this question, but whatever position you might hold most would agree that taking a day each week and laying it...

For most kids, when they are at school, their mornings begin with them standing, hand over heart, to recite the Pledge of Allegiance.This is a key patriotic exercise that we require daily from our children as an oath of allegiance to the U.S. flag and what it stands for. Since quarantine started, every morning we receive a call from my son's school with the principa...

Last Sunday's message went a long way towards de-stigmatizing two wrongs ways of thinking still present to some degree in the larger Church today. They are: The idea that there is automatically something seriously wrong morally with a child of God who is struggling with any emotional and/or psychological illness. The idea that only prayer is an immediate cure to such i...

Unity is, or should be, a primary goal in every Christian congregation. With the possible exception of ongoing rank heresy or unrepented mass wrongdoing going on there should be no reason why Spirit-led Christians cannot work through all their differences and get along. The above is, of course, very easy to write. As this past sermon pointed out, it's not so easily lived ...

I laughed last Sunday when Pastor Chris said, "Professional Weaker Brother", as I've met a few of them through the years. I thought at the time they were over-sensitive judges of everyone's behavior that was unlike their ownmuch like today's coddled millennials living in the safe space of the basement. I was reminded and did appreciate this series of sermons on wisdom i...