Consider this

“During the fourth watch of the night (around 3 am) Jesus went out to them, walking on the lake. When the disciples saw him walking on the lake, they were terrified. ‘It's a ghost,’ they said, and cried out in fear. But Jesus immediately said to them: ‘Take courage! It is I. Don't be afraid.’ ‘Lord, if it's you,’ Peter replied, ‘tell me to come to you on the water.’ ‘Come,’ he said. Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, ‘Lord, save me!’ Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. ‘You of little faith,’ he said, ‘why did you doubt?’” (Matthew 14:22-31) Poor Peter! He is often remembered for his failures. He is the one who denied Jesus three times. He is the one who speaks before he thinks. He is the one who, when walking on the water, sank like a rock. Let me ask you this question though: Why was it Peter who got to walk on the water in the fi...

Thirty seven years after their songs “Takin’ Care of Business” and “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet” first hit the airwaves, Randy Bachman and Fred Turner (the guys from “Bachman-Turner Overdrive”) are making music together again. During an interview this past week, Bachman was asked if he thought that the band could still be successful and write hits after so many years. His answer is worth noting. He said, “Do we think that we will get any airplay? I don’t know. It really does not matter. We are doing what we were born to do”. I like that quote for two reasons. First, he has found what he was “born to do”. That is not always easy in life. Some people jump from one job to the next, move from one city to another, change companies a dozen times before they find something that really fulfils them. It can be tough. Spiritually, speaking though, it is much easier. In fact, there are only two choices: follow God or follow yourself. The Bible makes it very clear which one we we...

On Sunday, I invited a couple of the kids to the front and said, “Can you take this nut off of this bolt and give it back to me? I need it for my sermon.” After about thirty seconds, they said, “We can’t get it apart. It is too tight.” I then said, “Oh! I forgot to give you the tool to use”, so I reached around the podium and handed them a rubber mallet. They were not impressed! In fact, they would not even take the mallet from me, because they knew that it would not help. What they needed was not just “any tool” but the “right tool”. To me, that simple little illustration points out one of the problems that many churches (and individuals) face. They, like the kids in my illustration, are ready to help. They put a lot of time and effort into their faith and service. Unfortunately, like the kids, they do not see positive results because they are going about their work in the wrong way. They do not have the proper tools. What is missing? Well, let’s look at some exampl...

By now, I am sure that you have heard about the thirty-three miners that were stuck in a collapsed mine in Chile. Against all odds, after seventeen days of drilling, the rescuers were finally able to confirm that all of the men had survived the collapse and that they were alive. For the families, it was nothing short of a miracle. Not only is this a news story that has a happy ending (which is rare in itself), but I was thinking that this story is a good parallel to the gospel story. You see, spiritually speaking, we were like those miners. We were trapped in a bad place. The apostle Paul puts it this way, “At one time we too were foolish, disobedient, deceived and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures. We lived in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another” (Titus 3:3). Fortunately, as in the case of those miners, unbeknownst to us, someone was “digging us out”. “But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of righ...

The purpose of a “movie trailer” is to give you enough of the storyline to get you interested. The hope, of course, is that after you have seen a little bit of the movie that you will want to see all of it. If I were trying to find a section of scripture to use as a “movie trailer” for the word of God, I would pick Psalm 103. In this Psalm, David describes God’s nature, our relationship to him and our hope. Here is a sampling. “Praise the Lord… who forgives all your sins” (verses 1 and 3). “Who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion, who satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's” (verses 4-5). “The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love” (verse 8). “For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us. As a father has compassion on his childre...

“Churches are not Victorian parlors where everything is always picked up and ready for guests. They are messy family rooms… Things are out of order, to be sure, but that is what happens to churches that are lived in. They are not show rooms. They are living rooms, and if the persons living in them are sinners, there are going to be clothes scattered about, handprints on the woodwork and mud on the carpets” (Eugene Peterson, “Reversed Thunder”, page 54). What Peterson says about churches is true of life in general. Unfortunately, life can be messy. It would be nice if everything was simple, easy and straightforward, but it rarely works that way. If seen in picture form, most people’s lives would look more like a river winding its way across a valley, rather than a man made canal that makes a straight line from “point A” to “point B”. We sort of expect things to go smoothly, but experience tells us that is rarely the case. Even a cursory glance at the word of God should be enou...

Do you remember those plastic adapters that you used to put in “45 records” so that you could play them on a standard record player? On Sunday morning, I held one of those things up and asked a bunch of kids, “What is this?” They had no idea. Then I turned and asked the adults. There was no uncertainty or hesitation from the “Fifty and over crowd” because they knew the answer (I then asked, “Who knows how to download music from the internet?” – you can guess which group knew the answer this time). There is a difference between knowing and guessing. That difference becomes very clear when we begin to talk about spiritual things. Are you certain about what you believe or are you just hoping that it may be true? Are you convinced or are you “on the fence”? As John closes his first letter, he gives his readers three big ideas to “know” and be certain about. First, if you are a Christian, you are safe. “We know that anyone born of God does not continue to sin; the one who was...