We pause today to remember our fallen heroes. Thank you for defending and giving your lives to keep us safe and the banner of freedom flying high. These videos are a tribute to you. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-ZCvBct6lA https://youtu.be/4VLHEZ6ZUxE Today is more than a day off and time to spend with the family. It is also a day […]
I have spent most of my ministry in big metropolises but have not lived in a community of under 4,000. You know you live in a small town when the closest grocery store is 20 miles away. There is no Walmart in your city, and there are more cows than cars. Doing ministry in this […]
The press reported a heart-rending story, telling of a young father who shot himself in a telephone booth. James Lee had called a Chicago newspaper and told a reporter he had sent the paper a manila envelope containing the story of his suicide. The reporter traced the call, but it was too late! When the […]
When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to his mother, “Woman, behold, your son!” Then he said to the disciple, “Behold, your mother!” And from that hour the disciple took her to his own home. John 19:26–27 Jesus’ Hour Had Finally Come If you begin with John’s […]
In the first century, Rome executed criminals by crucifixion. It was a humiliating and agonizing experience. There was no concept of death with dignity for the guilty. According to “Roman Antiquities”, after a man was sentenced to die, he was stripped of his clothes and paraded through the streets of the city, so that his […]
“And he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” And he said to him, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.” [1] (Luke 23: 42, 43). Crucifixion is perhaps the most demeaning and agonizing form of execution ever concocted, yet Jesus showed no defiance and demonstrated no […]
24 Thomas, the one called Didymus, one of the Twelve, wasn’t with the disciples when Jesus came. 25 The other disciples told him, “We’ve seen the Lord!” But he replied, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands, put my finger in the wounds left by the nails, and put my hand into his […]
When I talked to a few frustrated rural pastors, at the heart of their frustration was the sense that because there was not a large influx of people coming into their community, there were not many ministries to do. What is needed is an attitude adjustment. Sometimes out of our most desperate situations comes the […]
In his 1983 acceptance speech for the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion, [Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn] recalled the words he heard as a child when his elders sought to explain the ruinous upheavals in Russia: “Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.” He added, “If I were called upon to identify briefly the […]
Former heavyweight boxer James (Quick) Tillis is a cowboy from Oklahoma who fought out of Chicago in the early 1980s. He still remembers his first day in the Windy City after his arrival from Tulsa. “I got off the bus with two cardboard suitcases under my arms in downtown Chicago and stopped in front of […]
