The only training I ever received in delivering a death announcement was during my time at the Vermont Police Academy. One afternoon, the belt broke on a vacuum cleaner as it was being used in one of the academy’s hallways. We had just received a block of instruction on CPR so our instructors thought they would use this as an opportunity to test our knowledge of the subject. They singled out a friend of mine and demanded that he attempt CPR on the broken vacuum cleaner. Giggles ran up and d…
I remember once in Junior High I overheard a classmate of mine explain to a teacher why she celebrates St. Patrick’s Day. “St. Patrick was Irish,” she said “And my family is super Irish!” She was dressed all in green with temporary shamrock tattoos on both cheeks.
The teacher was smiling and nodding her head, when I interrupted, “Actually, St. Patrick was from England,” I said. “He wasn’t Irish. He was brought to Ireland as a slave, but he escaped, and then later he came back to Ir…
As I have disclosed previously, I am a fan of westerns, and it seems to me that one of the unsung heroes of all the many westerns that I have watched are the horses. I mean really, what would a western be without horses? Would the bad guys just walk into town? Would the good guy ride off into the sunset on a bicycle?
There comes a moment though in nearly every western where somebody makes a horse do something that it would never do if left to its own devices. In the movies I have see…
A few years ago, while living in North Florida, I took the kids fishing at Watertown Lake. Like all of the lakes there in North Florida the water was very dark. They say it’s from all of the tannins in the oaks. I always thought it was beautiful- like a tea that had been steeping for thousands of years. The lake had a long, L-shaped fishing pier that went out beyond its weedy fringes into deeper water, and after the kids spilled out of the van, my oldest, Bowden, led the charge, clomping …
I remember a time several years ago when I attended a conference in Philadelphia. The hotel I was staying at was located several blocks from the site of the convention center where the conference was being held, and every day as I walked back and forth I encountered dozens of panhandlers on the street. Some were fairly aggressive in their approach, but others just sat silently and passively behind rough cardboard signs. Being from the country I was unaccustomed to interacting with beggars. …
In this message, we’ll be introducing our next sermon series that will take us through eight of the conversion stories that we find in the book of Acts. It is my hope and my prayer that studying these passages together will be both an encouragement and a practical help to us in our own efforts to be witnesses for the Gospel right here in Aroostook County.
We need to be encouraged by these stories to believe that the power that is at work within us is stronger than the downward pull of these d…
The Bible contains both inspiring stories of faithfulness that we are to imitate and also cautionary tales that serve as a warning. In 1 Corinthians 10:6&11 Paul explains the value of studying Bible stories that show the consequences of living in ways that are selfish and disobedient.
(Verse 6) Now these things occurred as examples to keep us from setting our hearts on evil things as they did.
(Verse 11) These things happened to them as examples and were written down as warnin…
So far in 2019 we have been talking a lot about our calling to make more and better disciples here at State Road church. I say “more” because part of being obedient to the Great Commission calling will involve winning new converts out of the world, and I say “better” because once a person has been converted to Christianity our obligation to that person has only just begun. They will need a church family to help them grow into a fully committed follower of Jesus. We all continuously …
Generally speaking, Christians are more comfortable with commands to act than commands to feel. It’s one thing for God to command us to witness to the lost, but another to command that we also be heartbroken over their state of separation. It’s one thing to command that we serve our enemies, but another to command that we also love them. It’s one thing to command our obedience, but another to command our cheerful, joy-filled obedience. The problem is that when we come to the Bible, God ofte…
In Joshua 5:13-19 we read about an encounter that Joshua had with an Angel before the battle of Jericho. It says that Joshua, “lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold a man was standing before him with his drawn sword in his hand. And Joshua went to him and said to him, “Are you for us or for our adversaries?” And he said, “No; but I am the commander of the army of the Lord.”
Joshua, who apparently didn’t recognize right away that the figure was an angel, essentially aske…
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