Consider this

When evaluating Spiritual things, we ought to keep in mind two stories that Jesus told, both of which can be found in Matthew 13. "A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown” (verses 9-12). The second story is found in verses 24-31. "The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared. The owner's servants came to him and said, ...

For centuries, people have treasured the Biblical book of Psalms. It has been both a prayer guide and a songbook for God’s people. In it, we read about a God who is always “shepherding” us and will never let us down. The Psalms also helps us express a wide range of emotions including things like sadness, grief, impatience and even anger. From that, we learn that God is willing to listen regardless of what we have to say. One of the best reasons to read the Psalms, though, is to hear words of praise. Many of the Psalms focus on the joy of knowing the Lord and the blessing of his salvation. The following is a portion of one such Psalm. “I waited patiently for the Lord; he turned to me and heard my cry. He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand. He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God. Many will see and fear and put their trust in the Lord. “Blessed is the man who makes the Lord his tr...

It should go without saying that our model of how to do things and what to value needs to be Jesus himself. After all, he was the embodiment of God. “The Word [Jesus] became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). Unfortunately, this is not always the case. It is easy to get off track and begin to follow something else entirely. For example, I have heard people quoting well-known preachers as if they were quoting the word of God: “Well, so and so says…” I have seen churches model their entire program and worship after some big church that they admire. “Tradition” often directs our paths. Who has not heard someone say, “We do it this way because this is the way that we have always done it”? Certainly, we can (and should) learn from others and from the traditions that have been past down to us. However, I would suggest that we need somethi...

Last spring, I took my dog Murphy for a run. He had been sitting around in the back yard most of the winter, so I thought that he would enjoy the chance to get out on the open road. I was wrong! As we started running, he began going slower and slower. This was strange. Normally, I can hardly keep up to him. Then he started limping. I did not think too much of it at the time. After all, he is getting older and he had put on a lot of weight over the winter. Eventually he stopped running all together. It turns out that the pads on his paws were all cracked, so I took him home and we called the vet. She explained that a combination of the cold weather and the lack of real exercise had caused his paws to become hard and unable to take the force of running on the road, so we had to bandage his paws and soften them up with ointments so that they could heal. The moral of the story: Lying around all winter and getting fat did nothing to help my dog prepare for running. In fa...