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Showing posts from May, 2018

The Incredibles

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Watch on Facebook Last night we had a movie night to watch The Incredibles in preparation for the long awaited upcoming sequel. So, I thought for our short devotional time before the movie that I would share 3 ways to be incredible as part of our continuing series: Stronger. 16  I pray that He may grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power in the inner man through His Spirit,  17  and that the Messiah may dwell in your hearts through faith. (Ephesians 3:16-17a) Let Jesus Dwell in You Paul’s prayer, and mine, is that Jesus may dwell in your hearts through faith. It is only when we allow Jesus to take up residence in our hearts that we can be forgiven and be truly free from the effects and power of sin in our lives. You do this by first accepting that you need God’s forgiveness. God said that we have all sinned and that our sin needs to be forgiven if we want to be in good standing with God. Belie...

Lessons from Prison

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Watch this message on Facebook Close to the Mexican border in southern New Mexico you can find the Grand Floridas. That is a rugged mountain range with jagged sharp edges and rock formations jutting up out of the ground. Looking from the north, it appears to be one gigantic, unbroken rock sculpture dropped onto an otherwise flat New Mexico landscape. If you ride up to the mountains on horseback, you will see that they are not unbroken. The head of the range is a rock formation that rises higher than a skyscraper. Between that the main mountain range is a large valley filled with beautiful grassland and gentle slopes that are completely hidden from the distance. Until you get close, you have no idea that it is even there. The same can be seen in certain events in the Bible. It seemed that for thousands of years God kept a secret, hidden from the world, from the angels, from the priests, from the prophets, and from the people of Israel. It seems that He kept this secret c...

The Wall

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In Mending Walls, Robert Frost wrote, “Good fences make good neighbors … why do they make good neighbors? … before I built a wall I'd ask to know what I was walling in or walling out, and to whom I was like to give offence." For centuries we have built walls to keep people either out or in. The Great Wall of China, built between 800 and 200 BC was rebuilt and maintained for more than 1000 years. Its main purpose was for defense to keep invading forces out. Claims have been made for hundreds of years that the wall can be seen from space, however, modern space flight has proven that no manmade objects are visible from space. The Berlin Wall was built following World War II. Its main purpose was not to keep people out, but rather to keep people in communist controlled Eastern Berlin. The Cold War between Russia and the Western world ended shortly after the famous speech by President Ronald Reagan calling on Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev to “Tear down this wall.” T...

Stronger Than Death

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I lived in the Mississippi country during high school. I was outside as often as possible: swimming, hunting, fishing, riding motorbikes, playing football, baseball, or basketball, and even practicing my trumpet. The trumpet can be a really loud instrument, so rather than sit inside and bug my entire family with playing scales or practicing a particularly difficult phrase of music over and over and over, I would take a chair and sit outside to practice. One day as I was just playing through some fun music, I noticed a funeral procession coming down the road. You have to understand that roads are often long and straight in Mississippi. Without thinking about it, I stood as the funeral procession drove by our home. I lifted my trumpet and quietly played Taps, also known as Day is Done. I thought nothing about it until years later when a neighbor was talking to my parents. He said he loved to hear me play my trumpet outside and remembered one day seeing me stand for a funeral...