Today is the first Sunday of Advent—four weeks before Christmas.  Time flies, doesn’t it?  Well, to prepare our hearts and minds to celebrate the birth of Jesus Our Lord, I’m planning to preach a brief series which I titled, The Joy of Mary, on the first three Sundays of December. Yo...

The other day our daughter called to tell us that one of her sons told her that in this world the one person he loved more than her was me, his “kung-kung.” Well, I, then, responded in kind by saying this to our grandson, “Me, too!  I love you more than I love your mama.”  [&hellip...

C. S. Lewis gives us a sobering reminder, “There’s nothing like suspense and anxiety for barricading a human’s mind against God.  God wants men to be concerned with what they do; the enemy’s business is to keep them thinking about what will happen to them.”  I cannot agree more!&...

We don’t typically respect, much less, care for the weak.  We exalt the strong and the winner.  But that is not the way God wants us to be.  He wants us to consider the weak and lend our hands to them.  John C. Maxwell, one of the leadership gurus in America, tells the story of...

The other day I received an email from somebody who apologized to me for saying hurtful things to me.  I was of course touched by the kind gesture and amazed by the Holy Spirit’s work in the lives of the believers.  It must have been the Spirit’s work because that incident supposedly t...

We don’t always understand why God does what He does such as, why to those who live rightly He allows bad things to happen to them or worse yet, He gives something that is hard to bear.  In his book, The Contemplative Pastor, Eugene H. Peterson shares about Ruthie and Dave, a deeply spiritual Chr...

The other day when Santy and I were babysitting our grandchildren, I happened to hear the conversation that took place between our eldest and youngest grandchildren.  Apparently the youngest got a hold of a toy that the eldest wanted.  Instead of taking it by force, the eldest, then, said ...

How do we measure godliness?  What is the chief characteristic of godly people? It is not by how much we know the Bible or how many Bible verses we memorize.  It is not by how long we can fast and pray; and it is not by how eloquent we preach.  We measure godliness by how […]...

One of the great preachers the world has ever known is Charles Haddon Spurgeon of England, who was known to preach directly from the Bible.  One Sunday morning he began his message by saying this, “Some have found fault with me, contending that I am too old-fashioned.  I am always quotin...

A couple of days before I left Indonesia for America, my mother threw a farewell party for me.  Present among the guests were two missionaries. After giving his message, my pastor turned to the missionaries and asked if they had a message for me.  One of them, who happened to be a Baptist ...