I’m pretty conservative in almost every aspect of my life. That means I really do not care much for change, if I am being honest. I like my coffee the same way every morning, I read from the same Bible every day, journal in the same kind of notebooks, and use the same pen. I …
Have you ever caught a great nap during a sermon? You aren’t alone. In Acts 20:7-12 the Bible tells the story of a young man named Eutychus who was sleeping so hard during one of Paul’s sermons that he fell out of a window and died (don’t worry, Paul raised him from the dead). Hopefully …
I have just celebrated my sixteenth anniversary as the pastor of Malvern Hill Baptist Church. Often, as I reflect on my time at Malvern Hill, I offer advice or suggestions to pastors who desire a long tenure. Today, however, I am writing to churches who might desire to keep a good pastor. For a man …
Most people do not care how much I bench press or what my most recent squat was. Very few people know or care how much time I spend in my home gym or how much I enjoy my Rogue barbells. Truthfully, I talk so much about weightlifting from the pulpit that it has become a …
For this important subject, I have decided to post a blog and to record a podcast which you can find here. Unintentionally, people say some pretty dumb and insensitive things to grieving friends and loved ones. We don’t say wrong things to be offensive, often we say wrong things because we just don’t know what …
There is a buffet drawer in our foyer filled with tablecloths. I don’t know how many there are, but I’m sure there are more than five. There are all different sizes and shapes of tablecloths. I know we have a green one, one has snowflakes. One isn’t even a tablecloth at all, it is a …
As I prepared a recent sermon from Acts 17, my outline included the following point: Be broken, not angry. There was one problem. In Acts 17:16, the Bible says Paul was provoked. Acts 17:16 does not say Paul was broken, it says he was angry. He was irritated or maybe exasperated, but the Bible does …
What happened the day after the resurrection? We do not know all the answers to that question, but we can be confident that Monday looked significantly different than Saturday. The resurrection of Jesus changed everything. Sunday came and Sunday went, but life was never the same again. Jesus’s followers saw him suffer and die. They …
Do you allow God to lead you? When Paul set out on his second missionary journey, he had an intention to move into Asia or Bithynia, but he and his traveling companions were not allowed by the Spirit of Jesus to speak in the areas they intended to go. You might imagine that they were …
Following his “sharp” division with Barnabas, Paul set out with Silas to revisit the churches he and Barnabas started on their first missionary journey. In Acts 16, rather than taking the original route, Paul visited the cities in reverse order, beginning with the region of Derbe and Lystra. There, Paul connected (or reconnected) with a …