Good morning everyone,   Our theme for this month: “Great thoughts from great Christians”   Our Bible verse for today: “Pay careful attention, then, to how you live – not as unwise people but as wise – making the most of the time, because the days are evil.” Ephesians 5:15 (CSB)   Our thought for today: “Be intentional about how you live”   Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) was a brilliant man. He entered Yale University at only thirteen, already having a firm grasp on Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. At the age of twenty-one he was appointed pastor of a church in Northampton, Massachusetts, where God used him to ignite the Great Awakening of 1734-35. That was a spiritual revival that spread across the Colonies and resulted in tens of thousands of salvations.   Throughout his life Edwards was a big proponent of making resolutions and living by them. He had long-term life goals, which were intended to establish basic principles to live by; and he also kept a list of short-term goals he was working on. One of his most important and helpful life principles was, “Resolved, never to lose one moment of time, but improve it the most profitable way I possibly can.”   Edwards was serious about using his time well. He understood that time is a precious commodity that is not renewable. We only get so much of it in life and the Lord expects us to use it well. That’s why he kept lists of resolutions and goals. Benjamin Franklin expressed the same thought in slightly different words, “Do you value your life? Then value your time; because time is the stuff life is made of.” This is what the Apostle Paul was trying to teach us in Ephesians 5:15, we must be intentional about using our time well – we must be intentional about how we live.   Jonathan Edward’s personal practice of writing out his lists of resolutions is similar to the common practice in our day of a personal mission statement. It’s simply a written declaration of principles and practices that become a sort of north star. It is big-picture guidance designed to keep us on track in life. Beyond that, the practice of having short-term goals is essential as well. Short-term goals ensure that we’re always in the process of learning, growing, and moving forward in life, never becoming ambivalent, lazy, or unproductive.   A big part of the reason Jonathan Edwards made such a powerful impact with his life is because he was so intentional about how he lived and how he used his time. His written resolutions and goals were helpful tools that kept him focused and motivated. That can be true in our lives as well.   “Resolved, never to lose one moment of time, but improve it the most profitable way I possibly can.”   God Bless, Pastor Jim

Copyright © 2021 Oak Hill Baptist Church, All rights reserved.

Good morning everyone,   Our theme for this month: “Great thoughts from great Christians”   Our Bible verse for today: “Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, ‘This is the way; walk in it.” Isaiah 30:21 (NIV)   Our thought for today: “God is guiding you and protecting you, even when you don’t realize He is.”   Jean-Pierre De Caussade was a French writer and preacher in the early 1700s. He was well-known and much-admired for his deep spiritual insights. Once, when commenting on Isaiah 30:21 and considering how it is that God quietly and subtly guides and protects those who are His, De Caussade wrote:   The unique and infallible power of divine action always influences the simple in the right way, inwardly directing them to react wisely … Sometimes this happens consciously; but sometimes simple souls are moved by mysterious impulses to do or ignore things in which they see no mystery; things which seem like pure chance, necessity, or convenience, and seem even to have no significance either to themselves or to others. And yet divine action, in the form of intelligence, and wisdom and advice from friends, uses them all for the benefit of these souls, ingeniously foiling the plans of those who scheme to harm them.”   What he meant was that as we walk day-by-day on this great adventure of living the Christian life, our Sovereign God is watching over us, guiding and protecting us, and orchestrating events in our favor and for our benefit, in a thousand ways we’re not even aware of.   De Caussade believed that someday in heaven we will have the opportunity to look back and review all the details of our lives, as if we were reading a history book. You will see everything (all you were aware of and thousands upon thousands of other things you knew nothing about). Then you will understand all the ways in which God guided you and protected you when you weren’t even aware of it. You will see the bad guy lying in wait around the corner to the left as the Spirit of God whispered in your ear “Go to the right”. In that day you will see how fortunate you were that the Holy Spirit gave you a little nudge at just the right time to get you to do one thing rather than the other. You will be reminded of every word of wise advice that came from a friend at just the right moment. And all of it will have been your Father in heaven watching over you, guiding you, and protecting you.   Take a few moments this morning to sit before God thinking about His loving watch-care over you, and how it is that you are never out of His sight. Remember the truth that He is constantly intervening on your behalf and for your good. Then thank Him for taking such good care of you.   God Bless, Pastor Jim

Copyright © 2021 Oak Hill Baptist Church, All rights reserved.

Good morning everyone,   Our theme for this month: “Great thoughts from great Christians”   Our Bible verse for today: “Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business and to work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody.” 1 Thessalonians 4:11-12 (NIV)   Our thought for today: “Great in God’s eyes”   All this month we’re considering what I’ve been calling, “Great thoughts from great Christians”. Unfortunately, often when we think of Christians we consider to be or have been “great” we only think of well-known high-profile figures like the Apostle Paul, or Saint Augustine, or C.S. Lewis, or Billy Graham. And without question, those people were great. But greatness in God’s eyes isn’t limited just to those who are well-known and who have big ministries. In fact, I would argue there are and have been millions upon millions of ordinary men and women who are considered “great” by God simply because they lived simple lives of faithfulness in ordinary circumstances.   I’ve told you the story before about my old friend Dick DeGrow. When I knew him, Dick was in his 70s. He was a retired pastor who was a member of the first church I was the pastor of. At that time Dick served as a deacon, an adult Sunday school teacher, and as the church custodian.   One day, while I was in my office writing a sermon, Dick arrived to begin his custodial duties. He knocked on my door, stuck his head in, and with a warm friendly smile he asked, “How’s my pastor this morning. Is there anything I can do for you?” I looked at him for a short moment and then I asked, “Dick, you’re a retired pastor. Why do you serve as the church custodian? You’re in your 70s, you don’t need the money, and there are other people who could do this.” He smiled at me again and then he said, “Pastor, I would rather clean toilets in the house of the Lord than to be the CEO of a Fortune 500 company.” “Then with another smile he said, “You have a good day.” And then he shuffled off to go clean those toilets.   Many of you will recognize Dick’s words to me that day as a paraphrase of Psalm 84:10, “I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of the wicked.” I’ve never forgotten that encounter with Dick, nor have I ever forgotten the great example he set for me and for everyone else with his simple quiet life of service to the Lord.   There’s no doubt in my mind that Dick was great in the eyes of the Lord. And his comment about cleaning the toilets in the church? It was a great thought by a great Christian.   God Bless, Pastor Jim

Copyright © 2021 Oak Hill Baptist Church, All rights reserved.

Good morning everyone,   Our theme for this month: “Great thoughts from great Christians”   Our Bible verse for today: “So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view.” 2 Corinthians 5:16 (NIV)   Our thought for today: “See them through God’s eyes”   I once heard Billy Graham make a comment about people which caused me to rethink how I see other people – especially other people whom I don’t like, or people who are engaged in sinful behavior. Billy said, “We have to learn to see people through God’s eyes.” What he meant is that God sees people not just as they are, but as they could be and as He wants them to be. When we start seeing people the way God sees them, it changes our perspective of them dramatically.   He was basing that comment on the Apostle Paul’s words in 2 Corinthians 5:16 (above). Paul learned to stop looking at people just from a worldly point of view but to see them with spiritual eyes – not just as they are, but as they could be. Billy went on to note that Paul himself was an excellent example of that. When he was an unsaved Pharisee, Paul (then known as Saul), hated Christians – to the point that he hunted them down, had them imprisoned, and presided over their murders. But after Paul had his encounter with Jesus Christ and became a Christian himself, that same man now began seeing people through God’s eyes and he found that he had great love and compassion for all people.     That lesson holds true about people who are easy to love, but it is especially true about those who are difficult to love. It was Jesus Himself who told us in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5:44 to “Love your enemies. Pray for those who persecute you.” By that Jesus didn’t mean that we were to approve of or accept the evil things our enemies do. Instead, He meant that we are to see them as people created by God and loved by God; people who, like Saul, can be converted and transformed if they would only come to faith in Christ. They are people Jesus died for, and we are to see them in that light.   The great Christian writer C.S. Lewis once had something to say about this. In His book, “The Weight of Glory”, when writing about the fact that every individual is a spirit-being who will exist eternally, Lewis wrote, “It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree helping each other to one or the other of these destinations … There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal.”   Let’s make an effort to see people through God’s eyes – to see them as He seems them, as the person they could be, as a person He loves deeply and for whom Jesus died.   God Bless, Pastor Jim

Copyright © 2021 Oak Hill Baptist Church, All rights reserved.

Good morning everyone,

Our theme for this month: “Great thoughts from great Christians”

Our Bible verse for today: “I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received.” Ephesians 4:1 (CSB)

Our thought for today: “Live a life worthy of your calling”

Yesterday we read a great challenge issued by the pastor and author John Wesley in the 1700s to do all the good we can, to all the people we can, in all the ways that we can, for as long as we can. More than 250 years later another Christian author said essentially the same thing in a slightly different way. In his book “The Jesus Touch” Dr. Lynn Anderson wrote,

“God, who is in the people business, has also called us to people-centered living. Thus, the most godlike thing we can do is to treat people like Jesus did.”

That’s what Paul was calling us to in Ephesians 4:1 (above), people-centered living – a life that honors God and blesses others. This was so important to Paul that he repeated it numerous times in different letters. In Philippians 1:27 he said, “You must live in a manner worthy of the Good News about Christ, as citizens of heaven.” In Colossians 1:10 he said it like this, “And we pray this in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please him in every way …” And in 1 Thessalonians 2:12 he reminded the Thessalonian Christians (and us), “We pleaded with you, encouraged you, and urged you to live your lives in a way that God would consider worthy …”

Often, when we read a statement like “Live a life worthy of your calling”, we think about things like prayer and Bible reading, faithful attendance at church, minding our p’s and q’s and being careful not to sin. All of that certainly is part of our calling but as Lynn Anderson so aptly reminds us, being like Jesus means being people-centered. Jesus called us to be on-mission with Him in the world blessing people in His name, ministering to their needs, and sharing the Good News of the Gospel with them. We are to be Acts 1:8 people. That’s the life we have been called to – being on-mission with Jesus out in the world interacting with people, blessing them, and leading them to faith in Christ. People-centered living. Christlike living.

The most godlike thing you will do today is when you treat others the way Jesus would treat them. What a different world this would be if all the Christians were more Christlike. I encourage you to be more Christlike today. It’s the life you were called to.

God Bless,

Pastor Jim

Good morning everyone,   Our theme for this month: “Great thoughts from great Christians”   Our Bible verse for today: “Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially those who belong to the family of believers.” Galatians 6:10 (NIV)   Our thought for today: “Do all the good you can”   This month we’re using the statement from Leighton Ford, “I surround myself with the thoughts of people who have thought much about God”, as a springboard to consider great thoughts from great Christians. This morning I want us to consider perhaps that most famous quote from the great pastor, writer, and theologian, John Wesley.   John Wesley lived a long life (88 years) in England in the 1700s. Along with his brother Charles, they founded the Methodist denomination. Together they wrote many of the great hymns of the church from that era, but John Wesley’s greatest contribution came from his preaching, teaching, and writing. Here’s the statement he’s most often remembered for:   “Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as you ever can.”   That’s what the Apostle Paul was getting at in Galatians 6:10 above. It’s what Jesus taught in Matthew 25:31-46 when He encouraged His followers to feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, house the homeless, visit the sick and those in prison. He said that it’s so important to Him for us to engage in those kinds of acts of mercy, compassion, and blessing, that when we do it, He receives our acts as if we are ministering to and blessing Him personally. This is also what the Old Testament prophet Micah meant when he wrote in Micah 6:8, “He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”   Let me ask you this morning, are people better off as a result of having had an encounter with you? Is their day better, has their situation improved because you were there? As you move through your days do you leave blessings and joy in your wake?   John Wesley made it a point to intentionally bless people everywhere he went and he encouraged others to do it too. It was a major part of the practice of his faith. That should be true for all of us as well. It has been rightly said that “People won’t care how much we know until they know how much we care.” Actions speak louder than words. I encourage you to go out today and do all the good you can for all the people you can.   God Bless, Pastor Jim

Copyright © 2021 Oak Hill Baptist Church, All rights reserved.

Good morning everyone,   Our theme for this month: “Great thoughts from great Christians”   Our Bible verse for today: “He tends his flock like a shepherd; he gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart.” Isaiah 40:11 (NIV)   Our thought for today: “Think love when you think of God”   This morning I want to return us to A.W. Tozer’s statement which we considered yesterday, “What comes to your mind when you think of God is the most important thing about you.”   Why? Why is it the most important thing about you? Because, as we’ve learned in previous devotional messages in this series, human beings intuitively know that there is a God. As Solomon taught in Ecclesiastes 3:11, God has placed a little piece of eternity in the heart of every person. He created us that way. There’s a space in the human heart which can only be filled by God and which remains empty until it is. Humans spend their lives seeking and searching to fill that empty place in their hearts. Deep down, we want God – or at least a god. Consequently, we spend our lives seeking either the God, or a god. Once we settle on either the one true God or a god offered to us by the world, we know we need to find a way to please Him, and this is where our concept of God becomes so important.    Horace Bushnell was a Pastor and writer who lived in the 1800s. Commenting on Isaiah 40:11 (above) he wrote, “Gentleness in a deity – what other religion ever took up such a thought?” It’s true. The ancient gods of the Greeks and Romans were tyrannical, mean, and distant. Many other pagan gods went so far as to require human sacrifice. Even pseudo-Christian faith systems like Mormonism follow a god who is stern, strict, and demanding. Bushnell went on to argue that the way you think of your god will determine much about you as a person. That’s exactly the point that Tozer made almost 100 years later when he wrote, “What comes to your mind when you think of God is the most important thing about you.”   What you think about God, and what you believe it takes to please Him, will shape your thinking and your personality. If he is a fearful and demanding god, and if you sincerely do want to please him and be in a right relationship with Him, you will tailor your thinking and your actions in life to appease that fearful and demanding god. But if your God is a God of love, kindness, mercy, and grace, that belief too will be reflected in not only how you think, but also in how you live. What you believe about God will shape you as a person.   As I noted in yesterday’s devotional, the dominant theme throughout the Bible is the love of God. Therefore, that should be the first thing that comes into our minds when we think of Him and that should cause us to live in a state of feeling loved. And, as we all know, when a person has an overwhelming sense of being loved and of being in love, it changes everything about them.   Again today, as I did yesterday, I want to encourage each of us to spend some time just thinking about, mediating on, and enjoying the great truth that “God loves you!” God is love, and that’s how He wants you to think of Him.   God Bless, Pastor Jim

Copyright © 2021 Oak Hill Baptist Church, All rights reserved.

Good morning everyone,   Our theme for this month: “Great thoughts from great Christians”   Our Bible verse for today: “I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore, I have continued to extend faithful love to you.” Jeremiah 31:3 (CSB)   Our thought for today: “What comes to your mind when you think of God?”   A.W. Tozer was a pastor, author, magazine editor, and mentor to other pastors in the USA during the early to mid-1900s. He was well-known for his thoughtful and perceptive spiritual insights, and his books continue to be widely read today. Tozer once declared, “What comes to your mind when you think of God is the most important thing about you.”   Tozer is right and this is important. What is the first thought that comes to your mind when you think about God? Many people have an image of God as a stern disciplinarian or as a harsh task-master. Others think of Him as sort of a celestial scorekeeper, tracking our every thought, word, and deed, and keeping copious notes. Many others simply don’t know what to think about Him. But perhaps a more important question is, “How does God want us to think of Him?”   The Bible answers that question very clearly. When we think of Him, God wants us to remember how much He loves us. That’s the first thought that should come into our minds. When we think of God, we should immediately feel loved. Yes, there are also examples of God’s wrath and judgment in the Bible, even times when He punishes His people and causes them to suffer for a reason and for a season. But God’s love is the dominant theme in the Bible – especially and overwhelmingly in the New Testament.   Let’s further refine the question by asking, “What comes to your mind when you think of Jesus?” Ah, now you’re probably thinking “love”. Well, Jesus is God. And Jesus came to show us what God the Father is like (Have I been among you all this time and you do not know me, Philip? The one who has seen Me has seen the Father. – John 14:9). So, if you want to know God, study Jesus. And when you think of Jesus if you feel loved, then when you think of God you should also feel loved because Jesus is God. The first thought that comes into our minds when we think of God should be, “He loves me!”     Tozer was right. What comes to your mind when you think of God is the most important thing about you. It’s actually more important than we realize and so we need to come back to it tomorrow to explore it a little further. For now, let me challenge all of us to spend some time today thinking about the great truth that more than anything else, God wants us to know how much He loves us.   God Bless, Pastor Jim

Copyright © 2021 Oak Hill Baptist Church, All rights reserved.

Good morning everyone,   Our theme for this month: “Great thoughts from great Christians”   Our Bible verse for today: ‘God made us plain and simple, but we have made ourselves very complicated.” Ecclesiastes 7:29 (TEV)   Our thought for today: “There is beauty in simplicity”   The older I get the more I find myself valuing simplicity. In my personal life, in the life of the church, in the practice of the Christian faith, simplicity can be of great value and can make things better. If we allow it to, life can become very complicated. And generally, the more complicated it gets, the less we enjoy it. The more tangled and frenzied our affairs become, the less time we spend savoring and enjoying life.   G.K. Chesterton lived in England from 1874-1936. He was perhaps the most prolific Christian writer of his day. He was the author of over 100 books. He also wrote newspaper columns, magazine articles, and he was a popular speaker. Chesterton was a very large man – robust, enthusiastic, jolly, and fun. He had a sharp wit, great humor, and was sort of the British version of Mark Twain. He had something to say about everything from Christian apologetics, to politics, to social issues, and more. He even wrote a popular detective series known as “The Father Brown” detective stories.   Chesterton was also an advocate of simplicity. He believed there is goodness and beauty in simplicity that is missed when life gets too complicated. He once wrote, “The thing I mean can be seen, for instance, in children, when they find some game or joke that they specially enjoy … Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, ‘Do it again”, and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, ‘Do it again’ to the sun; and every evening, ‘Do it again’ to the moon … The repetition in Nature many not be a mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical encore.”   There is goodness and beauty found in simplicity. God has made much of His creation simple and beautiful, but I wonder how much of the beauty we miss because we have made ourselves so complicated, so busy. When was the last time you said “Do it again, Lord” and then simply relaxed and enjoyed it when He did?   I encourage you to try to be a little less complicated today. There is beauty found in simplicity.   God bless, Pastor Jim

Copyright © 2021 Oak Hill Baptist Church, All rights reserved.

Good morning everyone,   Our theme for this month: “Great thoughts from great Christians”   Our Bible verse for today: “For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 8:38-39 (CSB)   Our thought for today: “Remember 9/11”   This morning I want to share with you some excerpts from the devotional remarks delivered by President George W. Bush at the Episcopal Cathedral in Washington D.C. on the National Day of Prayer, on September 14, 2001, just three days after 9/11:   “It is said that adversity introduces us to ourselves. This is true of a nation as well. In this trial, we have been reminded and the world has seen that our fellow Americans are generous and kind, resourceful and brave.   We see our national character in rescuers working past exhaustion, in long lines of blood donors, in thousands of citizens who have asked to work and serve in any way possible.   Today, we feel what Franklin Roosevelt called, “the warm courage of national unity.” This is a unity of every faith and every background. It has joined together political parties and both houses of Congress. It is evident in services of prayer and candlelight vigils and American flags, which are displayed in pride and waved in defiance. Our unity is a kinship of grief and a steadfast resolve to prevail against our enemies. And this unity against terror is now extending across the world. America is a nation full of good fortune, with so much to be grateful for, but we are not spared from suffering. In every generation, the world has produced enemies of human freedom. They have attacked America because we are freedom’s home and defender, and the commitment of our Fathers is now the calling of our time.   On this National Day of Prayer and remembrance, we ask Almighty God to watch over our nation and grant us patience and resolve in all that is to come. We pray that He will comfort and console those who now walk in sorrow. We thank Him for each life we now must mourn, and the promise of a life to come. As we’ve been assured, neither death nor life nor angels nor principalities, nor powers nor things present nor things to come nor height nor depth can separate us from God’s love.1 May He bless the souls of the departed. May He comfort our own. And may He always guide our country. God bless America.   9/11 was a tragedy of immense proportions. But in its aftermath, we were united as a country in ways we haven’t been since then. Pray that God would heal our divided nation and bring us together again in ways that truly honor Him.   God Bless, Pastor Jim

Copyright © 2021 Oak Hill Baptist Church, All rights reserved.