Flaming Arrows

I was doing my daily reading the other day and I ran across something that puzzled me. In 2 Corinthians 4:15 Paul prays that the grace of God will superabound towards the believers in the city of Corinth. The adjective superabound actually means to pile one on top of another, on top of another, on top of another... It means to increase, to multiply, to superabound. The New American Standard translation applies this adjective to "more and more people" and in The Message applie

I was at a Bible study the other day and the pastor was talking about how his mind was not in the service because of what happened to him earlier in the day. He talked about a woman who came in to be counseled and had various manifestations of demonic activity (those are my words not his). The reason I share this is not to talk about where we stand with the demonic but, rather, our perspectives. You see, until this time, the pastor presented himself as a very conservative and

These past few weeks have been the most fulfilling in the area of ministry and yet hey have been the toughest in my personal life. My ministry field has expanded to include a variety of people. With the change in my job to the Recreation Department clerk I am able to be on the yard walking with people a lot. The variety of people that I am associating with and am able to minister to is vast also. The lost have needs that they are very cautious to communicate to just anyone. T

This past week there was a conversation between some friends of mine that was very interesting. One side of the group took the position that Paul was speaking “sarcastically” in the letter to the Galatians (and in other letters) when he spoke of the Law of Moses being there to show us sin and that its purpose was not to show us how to live a righteous and holy life. Naturally there was an opposing opinion. In my opinion, unless the Bible tells us otherwise, Scripture is to b

Have you ever felt consumed by something? Not in a bad way, though. Let’s see…you have been planning to go on a vacation to a place that you have been always wanted to see and the closer it gets, the more you think about it. As long as it was on your list of things to do, it didn’t enter your thoughts all that much. But, the closer it gets, the more you start anticipating the things you are going to see, the activities, the food. Or, for you, it might be dating someone. You a

I have a few friends who have a chosen faith affiliation of “Messianic Jewish.” They are not Jewish by birth but, for some reason, they feel that it is necessary to worship according to the Jewish customs and feasts that are in the Old Covenant. As they prepare for the autumn feast days I am reminded that they are the shadow of everything that Jesus Christ accomplished for the New Covenant believers. Do not get me wrong, my friends believe that they are saved by faith in Jesu

Today I was thinking about the difference between sympathy and empathy. In a lot of ways we have sympathy with other people concerning their situations but we have no idea what they are going through. The problem is that we have no idea what they are really going through except from a second person point of view. This is sympathy. Empathy, on the other hand, is having to go through that type of ordeal or trial and then coming into contact with someone that is going through th

It is 5:30 in the morning and the guard just passed by my cell, shining his flashlight into my darkened rooms, doing his rounds. It is much like a security guard in a warehouse or museum guarding the treasure that is boxed inside the confines of the building. It’s kind of a mundane existence, for the guard or the merchandise, if you choose to let it be mundane. My mind falls on something that a friend told me yesterday. We had just talked about some inter-personal things (lik

A couple of weeks ago the Lord started talking to me about faith. Is faith believing that God can do something? Is faith just believing that God is able to do something? Is faith some kind of power that somehow makes God do what we want? Or is faith something more? What the Lord started speaking to me was that faith is better explained as expectation. When blind Bartimaus was sitting by the side of the road, what do you think was floating through his mind when he found out th

As I was reading Genesis 37-46 this morning I see similarities between Joseph’s life and mine. Well, minus the interpretations of dreams, being thrown into a pit, sold into real slavery, taken to another country, falsely accused, being given reign over the prison, being released from prison, and then being raised to vice president of the country. Other than that, our lives are a LOT like each other’s. The thing that strikes me as the most astounding thing about Joseph is the