2015

December 27, 2015

Three Levels of Love, part 2

Here’s a sad thing about America. It’s okay to be passionate about anything except God. You can be passionate about movies; thousands dressed up in Star Wars costumes to watch the latest movie in the series. You can be passionate about sports; millions of Americans wear the jerseys and caps of their favorite college or professional teams. You can be passionate about politics; and that will be dominating the news for the next eleven months. You can be passionate about cooking, about exercise, about fashion, or about your hobby. But to be passionate about God—that’s a no-no in America. People will call you a fanatic, a nut case.

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December 6, 2015

Three Levels of Love, part 1

Can you think of one person right now who you find it very hard to love? You may be tempted to think of four or five, but just focus on one person. This person just rubs you the wrong way. Maybe he or she has wronged you or hurt you. Are you thinking of this person right now? By the way, have your ever considered somebody may be thinking of you right now?

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November 29, 2015

What Will Life Be Like in Heaven?

In Heaven, our relationship with the Living God will be so powerful our earthly relationships will seem to be insignificant in comparison. And contrary to popular folklore, when we die, we DO NOT become angels—we become LIKE the angels. Our transformed bodies, our eternal bodies, will be like the resurrection body of Jesus.

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October 25, 2015

When Kingdoms Collide: God or Government?

There was a time when Christianity was part of the accepted mainstream culture of our nation. But our nation has allowed an ill wind to fill our sails and we have sailed into the uncharted waters of moral relativity and wickedness. As our nation sails further away from God and His Word, we may all be forced with the choice to obey God rather than our government, but we must be willing to pay the price of civil disobedience.

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October 18, 2015

The Case of the Murder in a Vineyard

In a real sense, each one of us is a sharecropper for the Lord. We don’t own anything; we just manage a part of God’s creation. But sometimes we make the same mistake the tenants in the parable made. We start imagining we own the vineyard.

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October 4, 2015

God’s Prescription for Powerful Prayer

Forgiveness is an active choice. Forgetting is a passive process in which a matter fades from our memory with the passing of time. We all forget things like names, telephone numbers, and birthdays. It’s amazing how some men can forget their wedding anniversary but can remember the score of the 1983 Super Bowl! The sad thing is when it comes to people who have offended us, we have total recall.

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September 20, 2015

Figs, Faith and Forgiveness

When the winds of adversity blow into your life is that what happens to you? “There goes my faith in God.” When mountains too tall to climb stand in your way and block your progress is that your response? “There goes my faith in God.” The solution to any problem in your life is simply this: Have faith in God. The answer to any need in your life is: Have faith in God.

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September 13, 2015

Keeping God’s House Clean

Let’s talk about God’s current address. If you’re a Christian, you are His temple. So what comes to your mind when I say, “God won’t live in a dirty house?” If Jesus lives in you, grace means you’re not a dirty house. You are a child of God. You are the temple of the Holy Spirit. Oh, you and might occasionally have a dirty thought or say a dirty word, but you’re not a dirty house. Being clean is a state of grace, not based on your behavior. God has declared you holy and righteous based on your faith in Jesus.

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September 6, 2015

The Passover Party Parade

Jesus chose a donkey intentionally. Why didn’t He ride in on a stallion? A beautiful horse is a magnificent animal. It has large beautiful eyes, a flowing mane, a shining coat, and long graceful legs. A donkey isn’t a thoroughbred horse. It’s a plain, small, ugly animal. Nobody ever called a donkey beautiful. They have floppy ears that are too large, and sad eyes, like Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh. And when a donkey lets out a loud bray, it usually makes us laugh. In Jesus’ day, horses were the Ferraris; donkeys were the used Ford Pintos.

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August 16, 2015

Open the Eyes of My Heart, Lord

There are about 10 million legally blind people in America today. Most of those are visually impaired with correctable vision. But many live in total darkness. Bartimaeus was not only blind; he was a beggar. Everyday Bart sat beside the road holding out his hand and asking for money. So when he heard Jesus was passing nearby, he shouted out to Jesus for help in spite of the crowd’s attempt to silence him.

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August 2, 2015

What’s in it for Me?

Whenever you study the Bible you should always ask yourself these two words: SO WHAT? Now that I’ve learned this, what changes will this make in my life? Here’s a good answer: Because Jesus gave His life away for us, we should give our lives away in service to others. I’m so glad that when Jesus approached the cross He didn’t stop and ask, “What’s in it for me?” He knew what was in it for us—our salvation and our liberation. So, take off your WIIFM t-shirt and start living a life of service to others.

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July 19, 2015

It’s a Small World…After All!

Our job as parents and grandparents is to create a desire in our kids for the things of God. It is to show them that the things of God are sweet and nourishing to them. And once you create that desire in them to know God, they never really lose it. They may fight against it and rebel, but that desire is there as much as a baby grows up wanting to drink nourishment.

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July 12, 2015

God’s Definition of Marriage

If you are a single person, God wants you to honor Him with a life of sexual purity. Teenagers, God wants you to honor Him with abstinence until you are married. Married folks, God wants you to be true to your mate. Your identity should never be found in your sexual preferences. It should be found in Jesus Christ.

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July 5, 2015

Our Foundations are Being Destroyed

For most of our nation’s history, we have recognized the moral foundation of the Bible, but that is no longer the case. When the religious foundations are being destroyed, what can the righteous do?

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June 14, 2015

God, Bless America

God blessed the nation of Israel above all the nations on the earth. But Israel sank into moral and spiritual decline and turned their backs God, so He allowed a pagan nation to conquer them. America isn’t Israel, but there are similarities that cannot be ignored.

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May 31, 2015

Imagine: No Hell Below Us; Above Us Only Sky

Two-thirds of Americans believe there is no hell. For the first part of this message, let’s imagine there is no hell. Lest you take me literally, I DO believe in the existence of heaven and hell. But what would you do if you wanted to eliminate the distasteful idea of hell?

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May 24, 2015

From Great to Good

When it comes to our personal relationship with God and with others, Jesus taught that personal goodness is more valuable than personal greatness.

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May 17, 2015

Living in the Faith Dimension

The mountaintop is sweet because we commune with Jesus! But when you return to the valley, you will be ambushed by people who have all kinds of needs. That’s why we should to always be a church built in the valley, not on the mountain.

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May 10, 2015

Humble or Crumble

Louie Gohmert

I don’t know if you have felt the burden, but this country is in severe trouble. Maybe it can last another 200 years, but the dangers lurk out there. Any one of them could bring us down and I never thought that was possible until after 9/11. We saw what just a few planes did to stop this country for several days. We’ve had God’s protective hand over this country and we’re about to do enough that we lose the hand protecting. We have turned from God’s way.

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May 10, 2015

Oh, What a Foretaste of Glory Divine!

When Jesus was on the mountain, the Bible says He was transfigured. Jesus was changed from an ordinary looking man into a figure of light with brilliant beams radiating from his body. The reason His clothes became white was from the light emanating from His body. This is a very important event in Jesus’ life, because it confirms He was not merely a man. He was God in the flesh. For most of His 33 years of human existence, His human flesh obscured and veiled His Deity. But at this time, His true divine nature was revealed.

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April 19, 2015

Don’t Waste Your Most Precious Possession

Your soul is infinitely more precious and valuable than anything or anybody in this life. It will last when the sun, moon, and stars have all gone cold and dark. Your soul will exist when the entire universe is gone and replaced by a new heaven and a new earth. Your soul is worth more than all the banks and Fortune 500 corporations combined. The worth of all the stocks, bonds, gold, silver, diamonds, oil, and gas in the world can’t compare with the value of your soul, because your soul will go on, endless, timeless, and measureless into the future.

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April 12, 2015

Clear Eyes. Full Hearts. Can’t Lose.

The New Testament records Jesus healing seven different blind men. And in each case He employed a different method. God is a God of variety. He seldom saves two people the same way. Some people come to Christ in a dramatic way with tears and anguish. Others are so full of joy they laugh at the point of regeneration. Others just quietly place their faith in Jesus. God saved the Apostle Paul by shining a bright light from heaven that knocked him off his feet. There’s not another account of a similar conversion experience.

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April 9, 2015

Convincing Proofs That Jesus is Alive

If the resurrection is a lie, the disciples KNEW it was a lie. What was their motive? People knowingly lie when they think there is some selfish advantage to be gained. If the resurrection story was a hoax, did the disciples get wealth or fame, or pleasure from it? In fact, they gained the opposite. They were hated, scorned, persecuted, tortured, boiled alive, roasted, beheaded, disemboweled and fed to lions—hardly a list of perks. And tradition tells us that the Apostle Peter was crucified upside down.

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March 29, 2015

Palm Sunday: The Tearful Entry

I think the crowd turned on Jesus because He didn’t fulfill their expectations of a real Messiah. They were still looking for a military hero to deliver them from the hated Romans. They missed the point that He was riding a lowly donkey. They were looking for a general like Judas the Hammer. Over the next few days, it became obvious Jesus wasn’t a military revolutionary. He was a suffering servant who was going to be handed over to the Romans. He failed them, and they turned on Him in vicious rejection.

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March 22, 2015

When Your Situation Seems Impossible

What if we started seeing supernatural miracles occur here every Sunday morning, do you think more people would believe? Let’s imagine, for instance, that every Sunday God gave me the ability to levitate and float around this room while I preached. We’d have bigger crowds but we wouldn’t have more believers.

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March 15, 2015

The Day Jesus Used Sigh Language

There are all different kinds of sighs. There’s a sigh of relief when the doctor tells us that the tumor is benign. There’s a sigh of fatigue after we’ve finished a long, hard job. And there is the sigh of anguish and grief when someone we care about is longer with us. This past week, we had to put our 12-year-old Boxer, Boomer, down because she had gotten too sick to function. A day afterwards, I was driving in my car, and found myself just going, “Sigh…poor old Boomer. I’m going to miss her greeting me every afternoon.” Life is one long bridge of sighs.

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February 22, 2015

You Can’t OUTGIVE God!

Have you ever thought about the miraculous power of a seed to increase and enlarge? Consider a watermelon seed. One seed weighs about 1/6 of a gram. But that seed can be planted and will suck so much moisture and nutrients out of the ground that it can grow into a huge watermelon. Some watermelons grow to be 100 pounds. That’s about 300,000 times the weight of the seed. And in that watermelon you will find about 300 seeds, that if each of them were planted and grew melons, that first seed would have multiplied its weight by 122 million times! That’s the power of a seed.

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February 12, 2015

Do You Have the Eye of the Tither?

Jesus said there are two places where we can direct our vision. We can open our eyes in wonder to what God is doing and we’ll be people of light. Or we can squint at all the stuff around us and try to hoard as much as we can. When it comes to managing the money God has entrusted to you, where is your focus?

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February 8, 2015

The Magnetic Power of Your Treasure

In the movie series, “Pirates of the Caribbean,” Captain Jack Sparrow had an unusual compass. It didn’t point North. He explains it to Elizabeth. Jack says, “True enough, this compass does not point North.” Elizabeth says, “Where does it point?” Jack replies, “It points to the thing you want the most in this world.” In one movie it points to the Black Pearl. In another movie, it pointed to a bottle of rum Jack wanted, and then it pointed to the Fountain of Youth. If you had Jack Sparrow’s compass in your hand today, what would it point to? Jesus said that treasure has the same effect on your heart. He said, “Where your treasure is there your heart will be also.” Your treasure has a magnetic attraction to your heart.

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February 1, 2015

The Greatest Investment You’ll Ever Make

Most babies are born with their fists clenched—but there’s nothing there. Then we start grabbing and we spend our lives grabbing and grabbing for more and more. In death, rigor mortis returns our hands to a fist—and we carry nothing out.

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January 25, 2015

If God Owns it All, What Am I Doing With it?

We are a generation that is piling up more and more toys based on the misconception that this life is all there is. Everyone in the millennial generation recognizes what these four letters mean: YOLO. It means You Only Live Once. That’s a half-truth, and a half-truth is a full lie. Yes, you only live once physically, the Bible says that. But the Bible goes on to say that after this life, there is eternity. The Bible says it is appointed unto man or woman ONCE to die and after that, the judgment.

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January 4, 2015

The Ultimate Treasure Hunt

When it comes to God and money there are some strange ideas floating around out there. Many people are confused. Three different theological positions concerning money.

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