Today's Word

[Judy Harder]

Today's Word for Pastors...

Romans 8:35-37
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written: "For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered." No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.

Today's Preaching Insight...

You Were Made for Ministry

I want to tell you how my Aunt Eva got my goat. Once upon a time I owned a goat. Buck, believe it or not, was so big that I could ride him, which I often did. I grew to really love my pretty white goat. Aunt Eva, on the other hand, never really got attached to Buck like I did. One day when our azalea bushes and magnificent bridal wreath spirea were in full bloom, both prized by Aunt Eva almost as much as she prized me, Buck had a hunger pang. He proceeded to eat all of those azaleas along with the spirea next to them. Once discovered, Buck was history. The last time I saw Buck, he was in the back of a trailer headed to who-knows-where. Buck was a fine animal other than that episode, and I thought he was a pretty good goat. But on that fateful day, Aunt Eva declared that Buck was "good for nothing."

Christians are to be good for something. But we can also appear to be "good for nothing." In fact, Jesus said that when we stand before Him on Judgment Day, some will be like sheep and others like goats. The sheep in Matthew 25, who will be on Jesus' right hand at the place of sonship, are true believers who manifested their faith in tangible expressions of love to others. Jesus says that these sheep will have fed the hungry, given drink to the thirsty, provided hospitality to the homeless, clothing to the naked and visited the sick and those imprisoned.

(To read more of this article, click here to visit the official website.)

Today's Extra...

Our friend and contributing editor Mike Milton recently was elected to serve as Chancellor of the Reformed Theological Seminary empire. (They do have a lot of campuses, you know!) His election marks a good time to remind you of his book What God Starts, God Completes (Christian Focus), which draws on his own life to share the wonderful story of God's grace.]

[Judy Harder]

Today's Word for Pastors...

Romans 8:38-39
For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Today's Preaching Insight...

To Those Who Have Loved and Lost

I believe the depth of our grief arises from the depth of our love. When we lose someone we greatly love, how can we not deeply grieve and how can that grief quickly pass? Deep grief never passes quickly and never passes completely. My loss occurred almost 20 years ago; your loss occurred this past year. Yet, our common grief persists. How should we, how can we, respond to our losses?

Here are three responses to loss that deal with the past, present, and the future of our lives. Some people respond to their loss with regret as they focus on the past. Their grief is defined by their guilt about what was but should not have been or their guilt about what should have been but was not. The words they often think and say with respect to their deceased loved one are "if only." If only I had not let him take the car that night! If only I had told her I loved her more often! If only I had done more for him! If only...

(To read more of this article, click here to visit the official website.)

Today's Extra...

Illustration: Conscience

You never know where you will find a conscience. In York, Pa., an armed robber gave back what he would have stolen from a homeless man. According to news reports, a man by the name of Sanderson was stopped by an armed thief. At the point of a gun, Sanderson gave the thief his wallet, cell phone, MP3 player and a pack of cigarettes. The thief wanted to know if that was all he had, to which Sanderson replied that he was a resident of the homeless shelter. Something must have touched the thief. He reportedly said, "I can respect that." He then gave the man back all he had stolen.

[Judy Harder]

Today's Word for Pastors...

John 15:1-5
"I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. "I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.

Today's Preaching Insight...

The Life of Love

If love comes from God, then love links us to God. Love shows we know God. Thus the pity we feel at the plight of another is God's pity. The helping hand we lend is God's hand. Traveling a distance, spending money, taking risks in the service of others — these are ways we practice the love of God.

My son rode 16 hours with a group of students to hurricane-ravaged New Orleans. There they shoveled mud, tore out moldy drywall, and hung Sheetrock. The work was hard, but all agreed it was more than worth the trip.

Not everybody gets the opportunity to travel far to help the victims of a disaster. But every Christian gets the daily opportunity to "go the distance" in love. The trip will invariably take us farther than you thought! It will keep us longer and cost us more than we thought! For love is costly.

"In this is love, not that we have loved God but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another" (1 John 4:10-11).

(To read more of this article, click here to visit the official website.)

Today's Extra...

The Legacy of the King James Bible: Celebrating 400 Years of the Most Influential English Translation

The most recent contribution to the subject will be Leland Ryken's The Legacy of the King James Bible: Celebrating 400 Years of the Most Influential English Translation (Crossway), which is due for publication this month (and is available for pre-orders). The author and Wheaton prof offers helpful insights on the cultural and literary impact of the KJV.

[Judy Harder]

Today's Word for Pastors...

John 15:1-5
"I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. "I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.

Today's Preaching Insight...

God Delights in Obedience

Have you ever made a decision to obey God as a way of life? I'm not talking about obeying once in a while but in every area to the best of your knowledge and ability. Or do you find that there are times when you struggle to do what you know is right and in keeping with His principles? There may be times when it is easy to discern between what is right and in keeping with God's will and what is wrong and not a part of His plan. In fact, you may actually obey Him at crucial junctures because you want His best. Other times, you may feel as if you are being pulled aside by disobedience simply because you did not do your homework in prayer and the study of God's Word.

Solomon admonished us to "catch the foxes." He went on to explain that it is the "little foxes that are ruining the vineyards" (Song 2:15). Often the smaller decisions bring about the biggest consequences. A decision to tell a little white lie is very costly because it leads to sin and usually the next step, which is deception. The enemy is very keen. He knows better than to tempt a seasoned believer to flat out disobey God. Obvious sin always draws a response. Friends and family members usually speak up when you are involved in something that leads to shame, failure and a damaged testimony. You may falsely believe that something perceived as being insignificant is much easier to disguise. It may be for a season, but at some point God pulls the covers back, and the truth is revealed about what you have done.

(To read more of this article, click here to visit the official website.)

Today's Extra...

Illustration: Blaming God

In his Church & Culture blog, James Emery White shares this: "If all else fails in passing blame, there's always God.

"The author Philip Yancey writes of being contacted by a television producer after the death of Princess Diana to appear on a show and explain how God could have possibly allowed such a tragic accident. 'Could it have had something to do with a drunk driver going 90 miles an hour in a narrow tunnel?,' he asked the producer. 'How, exactly, was God involved?'

"From this, Yancey reflected on the pervasive nature of the mindset that our actions are actually an indictment of God. Such as when boxer Ray 'Boom Boom' Mancini killed a Korean boxer in a match, the athlete said in a press conference, 'Sometimes I wonder why God does the things He does.'

"In a letter to a Christian family therapist, a young woman told of dating a man and becoming pregnant. She wanted to know why God allowed that to happen to her.

"In her official confession, when South Carolina mother Susan Smith pushed her two sons into a lake to drown, she said that as she did it, she went running after the car as it sped down the ramp screaming, 'Oh God! Oh God, no! Why did You let this happen!'

"Yancey raises the decisive question by asking, 'What exactly was the role God played in a boxer pummeling his opponent, a teenager abandoning her virtue, or a mother drowning her children?' God let us choose, and we did; and our choices have brought continual pain and heartache and destruction. Our self-destructive bent has seemed to know no bounds."

[Judy Harder]

Today's Word for Pastors...

Matthew 5:48
Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

Today's Preaching Insight...

Is There Hope for World Peace?

I received an interesting Christmas card from a dear friend, a retired Air Force General. On the front was a white dove with an olive branch in its beak, hovering above the world. Inside the card were these words: "Peace on earth." Beside those words my friend had added a big question mark. Then he wrote, "Is peace possible in a world like this?"

This General was asking the $64,000 question. Go to any barbershop or beauty parlor and you will hear various prescriptions for how to straighten out our troubled world. Someone will suggest that we retreat from the rest of the world and just build a "Fortress America" along our borders. Someone else will suggest that we withdraw from the United Nations. Someone else will declare that if all nations would surrender their nuclear weapons, the world would be safer.

But what does the Bible say? Let's see if God's word can give us answers concerning world peace.

(To read more of this article, click here to visit the official website.)

Today's Extra...

Illustration: Imagination

Several weeks after a young man had been hired, he was called into the personnel director's office. "What is the meaning of this?" the director asked. "When you applied for this job, you told us you had five years experience. Now we've discovered this is the first job you've ever held."

"Well," the young man replied, "in your advertisement, you said you wanted somebody with imagination."

[Judy Harder]

Today's Word for Pastors...

Psalms 27:1
The LORD is my light and my salvation-- whom shall I fear? The LORD is the stronghold of my life-- of whom shall I be afraid?

Today's Preaching Insight...

What Every Father Needs to Hear

The Bible is very practical and plain, sometimes disturbingly so. As in the case of the historical account of King David and his son Absalom. David was a great man, but he was guilty of great sin, which infected his home. In 2 Samuel 12:11-13, Nathan confronted David about his sin with Bathsheba. This was not his first sin. He had been married seven previous times. David had seven wives when he took Bathsheba from his servant Uriah the Hittite. In 2 Samuel 12, Nathan said that David's great sin had resulted in judgment. The sword would not leave his home. The universal laws of God had been violated, and David's sin had produced family pain. By Chapter 13 it happens: The damage that was done begins to unfold in the repugnant tale of incest in the royal line between two children of two different wives of David. The act is followed by the murder of Amnon by Absalom, Tamar's full brother. In Chapter 14, Absalom "lived two full years in Jerusalem without coming into the king's presence" (v. 28). Absalom conspires to dethrone his father and become King. Chapter 18 chronicles the climax of the sordid story.

(To read more of this article, click here to visit the official website.)

Today's Extra...

Christ Among the Dragons

James Emery White of Charlotte's Mecklenburg Church is one of our featured speakers at this year's National Conference on Preaching. Jim is also one of the finest and most insightful writers in the contemporary church. Here are three of his best books, all worth a place on any preacher's bookshelf:

Christ Among the Dragons: Finding Our Way Through Cultural Challenges (IVP) is Jim's newest books and among his best. Recognizing that evangelical Christians find themselves in uncharted territory, he helps us understand how to regain our footing on some key issues and move positively into the future.

[Judy Harder]

Today's Word for Pastors...

1 Peter 5:8
Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour

Today's Preaching Insight...

A Role Model For Prayer

Jesus told His disciples to go from Jerusalem to the remotest parts of the world as His witnesses. If twelve apostles and a hundred or so disciples are going to reach the world, they had better get busy. But, the first thing they do when Jesus ascends back to heaven is lock themselves up in a room, shut themselves off from everything, and pray for ten days for the power of the Holy Spirit. They understood that they needed supernatural power for a superhuman work.

The most important lesson we can ever learn about prayer is that we are absolutely dependent on God. Jesus tells us in John 15, "Apart from me, you can do nothing." The tricky part is that we can do lots of things on our own, but the impact and fruit of our work is "nothing" unless Jesus empowers us. Psalm 132:2 says: "As the eyes of a slave look to the hand of their master . . . so our eyes look to the Lord our God till he shows us mercy." A slave is completely dependent on his master, and that's where we stand in our need for the Lord.

Thurman Thomas was the leading rusher in the AFC in 1991 and helped to lead the Buffalo Bills to the Super Bowl that year. But, on the very first play of the Super Bowl, Thomas wasn't even on the field because he had lost his helmet in the pre-game warm-ups. A football player wouldn't dream of going onto the field without his helmet; and we as Christians shouldn't think of facing life or doing ministry without prayer underlying everything we do.

(To read more of this article, click here to visit the official website.)

Today's Extra...

Illustration: Marriage

According to a column in "Ripley's Believe It or Not," the Tujia people in China have a unique ceremony in which the prospective bride and her wedding party cry every day for a month before the wedding. They do not say if the tears are happy tears or not; but if they are not, we can only wonder how many days they will cry after the wedding. All marriages will experience times of tears. Some will be sad, and some will be happy. Let's hope the majority are happy tears.

[Judy Harder]

Today's Word for Pastors...

Jeremiah 1:4-5
The word of the LORD came to me, saying, "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations."

Today's Preaching Insight...

Orderly Worship

During the past year, we have been preaching/teaching in the book of 1 Corinthians. We now come to the latter part of chapter 14, in which Paul discusses corporate worship. His theme is orderly worship.

Remember, in chapter 12, he stressed the importance of the spiritual gifts that are given to each believer. He used the metaphor of the body, noting that each individual believer is a part of Christ's body. We are noble creatures individually. But that nobility is enhanced as we come together in the community of faith, each of us having an essential contributory part. There is a synergism in which the whole body becomes much greater than the separate functioning of the individual parts.

Then you remember how Paul quickly shifted gears to stress the temporal nature of these gifts and the importance that all of our religious activity, in fact all of our life existence, be undergirded by agape love. So, we've noted that 1 Corinthians 13 was not intended primarily to be read at weddings but to underline the importance of living a life motivated by agape love. In it, the Apostle Paul stresses the incompleteness of our human existence, encouraging us to know that some day that which is now incomplete will be fulfilled when we will know as we are now known by Jesus Christ. We also are humbled by his reminder that we now see in a mirror dimly. But when we are in heaven, we will see clearly that which is of puzzlement in this life.

(To read more of this article, click here to visit the official website.)

Today's Extra...

The Dying Man and Cookies

An elderly man was at home, upstairs, dying in bed. He smelled the aroma of his favorite chocolate chip cookies baking. He wanted one last cookie before he died. He fell out of bed, crawled to the landing, rolled down the stairs and crawled into the kitchen where his wife was busily baking cookies.

With his last remaining strength he crawled to the table and was just barely able to lift his withered arm to the cookie sheet. As he grasped a warm, moist chocolate chip cookie, his favorite kind, his wife suddenly whacked his hand with a spatula.

Gasping for breath, he asked her, "Why did you do that?"

She replied, "Those are for the funeral."

[Judy Harder]

Today's Word for Pastors...

Jeremiah 1:4-5
The word of the LORD came to me, saying, "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations."

Today's Preaching Insight...

Shallow Leadership

Ron Edmonson writes: "Growing in our leadership abilities, knowledge and relationships should be a goal for every leader. Many leaders settle for status quo leadership rather than stretching themselves as leaders. They remain oblivious to the real health of their leadership and the organization. I call it shallow leadership. Perhaps you've seen this before in leadership. Here are seven characteristics of shallow leadership:

Thinking your idea will be everyone's idea...

Believing your way is the only way...

Assuming you already know the answer...

Pretending to care when really you don't...

Giving the response that makes you most popular...

Refusing to learn something new...

Ignoring the warning signs of an unhealthy environment...

(To read more of this article, click here to visit the official website) 

Today's Extra...

Illustration: Forgiveness

According to a recent news report, a Texas church received a lot of criticism for a sign that said, "Jesus Does Not Care." The membership of Community at Lake Ridge, a church in Mansfield, Texas, said they did want to be provocative, but their point was that Jesus doesn't care about our past. Some evidently took the sign to mean Jesus does not care at all about us. Others suggest that it is too permissive. Whatever the intent, the church has received 40,000 hits on its website. Maybe both sides have a point. Jesus does care about our past. He cares enough to provide forgiveness so we don't have to care about the past.

[Judy Harder]

Today's Word for Pastors...

Psalms 139:15
My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth,

Today's Preaching Insight...

Sermon: Thanksgiving

Bill Griffin tells the story of the leper in Mark 1:40 this way:

"'Hello, I'm a leper!' A man popped out from behind a building and stood right in front of Jesus. 'Please don't run away, Jesus!'

"'What's the matter with your skin?' asked Jesus.

"'Can't You see I'm covered with runny sores and crusty scabs?' No one wants to look at me, my face is so horrible.'

"'What do you want Me to do?'

"'You can make me better. I know You can,' said the man, falling on his knees in front of Jesus. 'If You don't, I'll scratch myself to death.'

"Jesus felt sorry for the poor man.

"'Don't touch me,' said the man. 'That's how you get it.'

"'I'm not afraid to touch you.' Jesus reached down and took hold of the man's arms and pulled him to his feet. The itching was gone. The sores started to dry. The scabs began to fall off.

"'Thank You, thank You, thank You!' shouted the man. 'What can I do to thank You?'

"'You can go to the temple, show yourself to a priest and say a prayer of thanks to God.'

"'Yes, yes; I will, I will!' promised the man hurrying off.

"'One more thing,' said Jesus.

"'Anything, anything,' said the man.

"'You don't have to tell anyone what I just did.'

"'I won't tell a soul,' said the man as he skipped toward Jerusalem; but the man was so happy and the walk to the temple was so long that he forgot and told everyone he met. Then all the other lepers along the road began to look for the wonderful Man with the healing touch." (Calvin Miller, The Family Book of Jesus, Bethany House, 2002.)

(To read more of this article, click here to visit the homepage.) 

Today's Extra...

Illustration: Encouragement

Joel Manby is the CEO of Herschend Family Entertainment, a company that operates theme parks, aquariums and other family attractions. Manby was featured in the TV hit, "Undercover Boss." In the show, he mentioned that he took a job with Herchend because of their Christian values. While working undercover, Joel discovered what most of the bosses discover. Their employees work hard, have overcome many challenges and have good ideas. At the end of the show, when the workers find out they're working with the boss, Manby seemed genuinely touched when people wept at the words, "Well done," from him. In a later interview, Joel said he has come to the conclusion that CEO ought to stand for Chief Encouragement Officer.