Good Morning Everyone,   Our theme for this month: “Be thankful”   Our Bible verse for today: “How I love your instruction! It is my meditation all day long … Your word is a lamp for my feet and a light for my path … Your word is completely pure and your servant loves it … I obey your decrees and love them greatly.” Psalm 119;97; 105; 140; 167 (CSB)   Our thought for today: “Be thankful for the Bible”   My mother was a devout Catholic and therefore my brothers and sisters and I were raised in church. We were in church every Sunday and in catechism classes every Tuesday after school. Saint Matthews Catholic church was one block from our house and so we would always walk there, we five little ducklings obediently following my mother up the sidewalk and into the church.   That continued until my teenage years, then I quit church and became a street punk (but that’s another story). Although I didn’t have a personal relationship with Christ for all those years in church, my upbringing in the Catholic church did effectively lay the foundation of faith in my life. I was well-schooled in the basic doctrines of the Christian faith and I was very familiar with the stories of the Bible. Although I spent more than twenty years after that very far from God, the Holy Spirit had a hold on me and my exposure to the Christian faith was never far from my conscious mind. Although I resisted for years, I knew I was being drawn back to God, and my familiarity with the Word of God played a big role in that.   When I finally did surrender my life to Christ more than thirty years ago, I discovered that the Bible came alive for me in ways it never had before. Although I had always been fascinated with it and felt drawn to it, once the Holy Spirit was in my heart and illuminating my understanding of it, the Words of God seemed to be jumping off the page at me. I can identify with the feelings expressed by the writer of Psalm 119. The Bible is amazing and fascinating and essential. In 2 Timothy 3:16 Paul reminds us, “All Scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for teaching, for rebuking, for correcting, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.”   In the Bible God has revealed to us everything He wants us to know about Himself and about His ways, and also about how He wants us to live. I encourage you to spend some time today thanking God for the gift of the Bible, and then, I encourage you to read it.   God Bless, Pastor Jim

Copyright © 2020 Oak Hill Baptist Church, All rights reserved.

Good Morning Everyone,   Our theme for this month: “Be thankful”   Our Bible verse for today: “To the church of God at Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called as saints, with all those in every place who call on the name of Jesus Christ our Lord – both their Lord and ours. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” 1 Corinthians 1:2-3 (CSB)   Our thought for today: “Be thankful for your sanctification”   “Sanctification” is a fifty-cent theological word with a double meaning. It means both “to set apart as holy” and “to be transformed over time”. Sometimes it is confused with “justification”. Justification refers to the fact that we have been fully pardoned for our sins and are now treated by God as if we have never sinned. Sanctification is a result of justification. We are set apart and made holy before God because our sins have been wiped away.   In 1 Corinthians 1:2-3 Paul was writing to the Christians in the city of Corinth. He stated that they had been “sanctified” in Christ Jesus. He wrote that in the past tense. It was something that had already been done to them by the Holy Spirit. In the moment they placed their faith in Christ they were made holy. That’s what 2 Corinthians 5:17 means when Paul wrote, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, and see, the new has come.” As we learned in yesterday’s devotional, from the moment of salvation forward, God sees you through the righteousness of Christ – holy and pure and perfect. You have been sanctified, set apart as holy before God.   But there is also an ongoing sense to the term “sanctification”. It is an event that occurred in the past in a moment of time, but it is also an ongoing process in the life of the believer that progressively transforms us more and more into the likeness of Christ. This is a process that will continue right up until the moment you leave this life and enter into heaven. Paul wrote about this in Philippians 1:6 when he said, “I am sure of this, that he who started a good work in you will carry in on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”   However, although it is the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives to bring about that ongoing transformation, we have a role to play in it too. We have to cooperate with Him. The amount of transformation, and the rate at which it occurs, will depend on the choices we make and the actions we take. Paul explained this in 1 Thessalonians 4:3-5; 7, “For this is God’s will, your sanctification: that you keep away from sexual immorality, that each of you knows how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not with lustful passions, like the Gentiles, who don’t know God … for God has not called us to impurity but to live in holiness.”     As a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ you have been sanctified – set aside as holy before the Lord. And, you are being sanctified – progressively transformed more and more into the image of Christ. I encourage you to spend some time this morning thanking God for your sanctification.   God Bless, Pastor Jim

Copyright © 2020 Oak Hill Baptist Church, All rights reserved.

Good Morning Everyone,   Our theme for this month: “Be thankful”   Our Bible verse for today: “He made the One who did not know sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.” 2 Corinthians 5:21 (CSB)   Our thought for today: “Be thankful for the great substitution”   Yesterday we paused to thank God for our salvation. Today we will consider how it is that salvation is even possible. 2 Corinthians 5:21 provides that explanation for us. Sometime in the late 1990s I was at a Pastor’s conference in Los Angeles and I heard Pastor John MacArthur teach a lesson on this passage. To this day I still believe it to be one of the best and clearest explanations of how salvation is possible that I have ever come across. I’ll paraphrase it here for our purposes this morning.   2 Corinthians 5:21 teaches the doctrine of substitution. The innocent dies for the guilty. Jesus had no sin of His own, that’s what Paul meant when he wrote that Jesus “did not know sin”. But God took every sin that would ever be committed by any person who would ever profess faith in Christ, and He put them all on Jesus. That’s what it means when Paul writes that God made Jesus to “be sin for us”. The sins had to be punished, and they were. God punished Jesus for them. On this side of the great substitution, Jesus gets all of our sins.   Then, on the other side of this exchange, we get all of Jesus’ righteousness. That’s what Paul meant when he wrote that “in Him we might become the righteousness of God.” On the one side of the exchange, Jesus gets all of our sins. On the other side, we get all of His righteousness. That’s why Jesus had to live on earth for thirty-three years before He was crucified. He had to live the perfect and sinless life that you and I are not capable of living. Then, on the cross, God treated Jesus as if He had lived your sinful life (and mine), so that in eternity He can treat us as if we have lived Jesus’ perfect life. The innocent dies for the guilty – and the guilty go free.   That’s the doctrine of substitution. On the one side Jesus gets all of our sins. On the other side we get all of His righteousness. Now there’s something to be thankful for! I encourage you to spend some time this morning thanking Jesus for taking all of your sins and for giving you all of His righteousness.   God Bless, Pastor Jim

Copyright © 2020 Oak Hill Baptist Church, All rights reserved.

Good Morning Everyone,   Our theme for this month: “Be thankful”   Our Bible verse for today: “For you are saved by grace through faith, and this is not from yourselves; it is God’s gift – not from works, so that no one can boast.” Ephesians 2:8-9 (CSB)   Our thought for today: “Be thankful for your salvation”   So, with respect to your beliefs about salvation, are you a Calvinist or an Arminian? Although there are flavors and degrees in both schools of thought, basically Calvinists believe that if you are saved, it’s because God selected you and predestined you for salvation before you were even born. If you subscribe to the Arminian school of thought then you believe that salvation is a matter of personal choice – you have to make a decision to accept the offer of salvation and actually invite Jesus into your life and ask Him to forgive your sins.   Personally, I’m more of a hybrid. I’m a “Cal-Minian”.  I do believe God predestined us for salvation, in that it is His intent and desire for us to be saved from our sins and through the sacrifice of Christ on the cross He made it possible for us to be saved (more about this tomorrow). Then, He has extended the invitation to us to join His heavenly family, but we do need to accept that invitation.   But whether you consider yourself a Calvinist or an Arminian or something in-between, if you believe you are saved then you should be deeply and eternally grateful to God for your salvation. And, I believe most of us are. When we take the time to think about it, I believe we are thankful for our salvation. But how often do we think about it? Instead, don’t we more often than not simply take our salvation for granted – especially if we’ve been saved for a long time? Isn’t it just sort of an accomplished fact, a matter of history, something that happened a long time ago in our lives and which is now simply a fact about us, sort of like your gender, or your height, or the color of your eyes?   Your salvation is actually the most important thing about you and like Paul explained in Ephesians 2:8-9, it’s was not your doing. It is a gift from God. It is pure grace on His part. It’s not as if you accumulated enough brownie points in heaven to have earned your salvation. It’s also not as if you’re just so cute and irresistible, and God is so infatuated with you, that He will accept you in heaven whether you come to Him through faith in Christ or not. God does love you, and He does want you in heaven with Him, but it was the work of Christ on the cross that made it possible and it comes to you as a gift.   We’ll think more about this tomorrow but for now, I encourage you to spend some time thanking God for your salvation.   God Bless, Pastor Jim

Copyright © 2020 Oak Hill Baptist Church, All rights reserved.

Good Morning Everyone,   Our theme for this month: “Be thankful”   Our Bible verse for today: “Show me, O Lord, my life’s end and the number of my days; let me know how fleeting is my life. You have made my days a mere handbreadth; the span of my years is as nothing before you. Each man’s life is but a breath.” Psalm 39:4-5 (NIV)   Our thought for today: “Thank God for your life”   From the moment of conception your life is a gift from God to begin with, and then every day afterwards is pure grace. The fact that we exist at all is a gift from God for which we should be grateful and for which we should thank Him. Now-a-days, with abortion as common as it is, for a baby to survive the womb is something of an accomplishment.   And then, from the moment of birth onward, we face the potential for death every day of our lives. Infant mortality is a common problem. In many places around the world children only have a 50/50 chance of surviving to their fifth birthday. As I was writing this devotional my thoughts drifted to a childhood friend of mine by the name of Keith. He died at only 17 in a tragic car accident. Then I remembered Rick, another young friend. He died at 20 from a heroin overdose. Just three days ago Linda and I buried our daughter Tracy. She was only 49. As I stood at the gravesite an older woman approached and told me that she could relate to our pain because her own son died young, and many decades later she still feels the loss.   In Psalm 39:4-5 David was reflecting on the brevity and temporary nature of life. Even if we manage to live a full life of normal length, it is still brief compared to the span of history, and certainly when compared to eternity. David reflected on this truth again in Psalm 144:4 where he wrote, “Man is like a breath; his days are like a fleeting shadow.” And life can end so suddenly! That’s what James was referring to when he wrote in James 4:14, “Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.”   I often hear people complain about getting old – usually in a joking manner but complaining none-the-less. When I hear such comments my thoughts always go to those who never had the privilege of growing old.   Every day of life is a gift from God, an act of pure grace on His part. When was the last time you paused to thank God for your life? Why not do so right now?   God Bless, Pastor Jim

Copyright © 2020 Oak Hill Baptist Church, All rights reserved.

Good Morning Everyone,   Our theme for this month: “Be thankful”   Our Bible verse for today: “How priceless your faithful love is, God!” Psalm 36:7 (CSB)   Our thought for today: “Be thankful for God’s love”   In recent daily devotionals we just spent two months exploring the subject of God’s love. We thought about the various ways in which God expresses His love for us, and we discussed ways we can experience God’s love better and deeper. I hope those devotionals were helpful for you.   Are you thankful for God’s love? King David was. In Psalm 36:7 he declared that it is priceless to him. The love of God was perhaps the primary theme underlying most of the Psalms David wrote. In fact, from start to finish the entire Bible is the story of God’s overwhelming love for us and of His strong desire for us to spend eternity with Him in heaven. “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” John 3:16 (NIV)   God’s love for humanity in general was proven once and for all, without question, by sending His Son to die for our sins. But salvation isn’t general in nature, it is specific and happens on an individual basis. Jesus didn’t just come to offer salvation to the entire world, He came to save you individually. God doesn’t just love the world that much He loves you that much.   There’s a Christian praise song about being thankful for the love of God called, “I Could Sing of Your Love Forever”. It has been recorded by many artists and is sung regularly in worship services around the world. Here’s a piece of it:   Over the mountains and the sea, Your river runs with love for me, And I will open up my heart And let the healer set me free. I’m happy to be in the truth, And I will daily lift my hands: For I will always sing of when Your love came down. I could sing of your love forever, I could sing of your love forever, I could sing of your love forever, I could sing of your love forever. I could sing of your love forever …   How thankful are you for God’s love? Could you sing of it forever? Spend some time in prayer this morning simply thanking Him for loving you. Of all the things we have to be thankful for, nothing is greater than God’s love for us.   God Bless, Pastor Jim

Copyright © 2020 Oak Hill Baptist Church, All rights reserved.

Good Morning Everyone,   Our theme for this month: “Be Thankful”   Our Bible verse for today: “I will thank the Lord with all my heart; I will declare all your wondrous works. I will rejoice and boast about you; I will sing about your name, Most High.” Psalm 9:1-2 (CSB)   Our thought for today: “Count your blessings, name them one by one.”   Let me ask you this morning, “Are you a thankful person”? I mean in general, by disposition, do you tend to be a person who focuses on the good rather than the bad, the positive rather than the negative, what you have rather than what you don’t have?   It takes a special person to be happy and thankful most of the time. Our human nature tends to lead us in the opposite direction. In my work as a preacher I might get five positive remarks about a sermon, which I will be grateful for, but if there is also one negative remark it’s the negative one that will stick with me and continue to play in my mind. Then, rather than simply being thankful for those five encouraging comments and being upbeat and happy because of them, instead I might find myself a little dejected as I continue to replay the negative.   You too? It’s human nature. We tend to allow the negative to have more power over us than the positive. We are often more aware of what we don’t have than we are grateful for what we do have, and we simply do not spend enough time counting our blessings.   That being the case, we’re going to spend the month of November counting our blessings and giving thanks. And just to get us started, here’s a verse and chorus from that much-loved hymn “Count Your Blessings”:   “When upon life’s billows you are tempest tossed, when you are discouraged, thinking all is lost, Count your many blessings, name them one by one, And it will surprise you what the Lord hath done.   Count your blessings, name them one by one; Count your blessings, see what God hath done; Count your blessings, name them one by one; Count your many blessings, see what God hath done.   In the days and weeks to come I will challenge all of us to think about how richly we have been blessed and how much we have to be thankful for.   God Bless, Pastor Jim

Copyright © 2020 Oak Hill Baptist Church, All rights reserved.

Good Morning Everyone,   Our theme for this month: “You are loved”   Our Bible verse for today: “… but the greatest of these is love.” 1 Corinthians 13:13 (CSB)   Our thought for today: “In the end, when all else is gone, there is love.”   Wab Kinew is a Canadian Indian. Not an Eskimo but an Indian (similar to a Native American Indian only from Canada). He is a leader among the Aboriginal people of Canada who are commonly referred to as the “First Nations People”. They were the original inhabitants of Canada long before Europeans discovered the place. And like our own Native Americans, for centuries they were dominated, subjugated, and persecuted. Wab’s father, Tobasonakwut Kinew, was sort of the Martin Luther King Jr. of the Canadian Indians and he helped them to make great strides towards gaining equal treatment under the law.   Wab had a complicated and difficult relationship with his father. They spent decades struggling to figure each other out and trying to arrive at some sort of a peaceful co-existence. Finally, in his later years, the father was diagnosed with the cancer that would ultimately kill him. Wab then took a two-year sabbatical from his work as political leader, journalist, author, and television personality to help care for his father. It was during those years that father and son finally worked through their issues and developed the close relationship they both had been striving for and which they both wished they’d had for all those other years.   After it was all over and the father had died, Wab wrote an autobiographical book about his relationship with his dad with the title “The Reason You Walk”. The premise is that we must continue to walk through all the seasons of life with the ones we love (and with those we’re trying to love) and we should never give up, because love is worth the effort.   One of the reasons I was moved by this story is because it so closely resembles my own story with my father. Including the ending. I too had a difficult relationship with my Father. And I too cared for him through the sickness that killed him. He died in my home. And it was during that time that we finally worked out our differences and developed the close relationship we both always wanted. Now, in retrospect, I’m so glad that neither of us ever gave up on the other one.   Wab ended his book with reflections about the death scene as his father breathed his last breaths. It occurred to him that as the end approached, all the unimportant and meaningless trappings of life were stripped away. All the accomplishments and awards, all the earthly possessions, the political causes and the social movements, even food and water – none of it mattered much anymore. In the end what was left was love. It was the only thing that really mattered at that point. And then Wab realized that it was the only thing that ever really mattered to begin with. In the end, if you’ve done it right, what remains is love.   As we conclude our two-month study about experiencing and embracing and sharing the love of God, it is my prayer for you that your life will be characterized by love – the love of God for you, and the love of God flowing through you for others.   In the end, when all else is gone, there is love.   God Bless, Pastor Jim

Copyright © 2020 Oak Hill Baptist Church, All rights reserved.

Good Morning Everyone,   Our theme for this month: “You are loved”   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: “Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ.”   Sometimes life can get dark and difficult. Sometimes storms sweep in upon us out of nowhere and we find ourselves overwhelmed and floundering, perhaps wondering what’s happening, why it’s happening, and where God is in the middle of it all.   Romans chapter eight is one of the richest chapters in the entire New Testament and it provides much needed insight for times such as those I just described. In verses 31-38 Paul wrote a passage which the editors of the Christian Standard Bible have labeled “The Believer’s Triumph”. In it he poses some rhetorical questions which force the reader to come to obvious conclusions: 31: “If God is for us, who is against us?” (If God is for us then no person and no issue can have victory over us.) 33: “Who can bring an accusation against God’s elect? God is the one who justifies.” (If we are justified in God’s eyes then it doesn’t matter what anyone else has to say – not even Satan!) 34: “Who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus in the one who died, but even more, has been raised.” (We are saved through faith in Christ and therefore we are not condemned.)   Then Paul moves on to his primary point in all of this. 35: “Who can separate us from the love of Christ?” Again, remember, these are rhetorical questions. The answers are supposed to be obvious. But just to be sure we don’t miss it Paul answers this question for us anyway. He tells us that neither affliction nor distress nor persecution nor danger nor great need can separate us from God’s love. He says there is no height or depth, no angels or demons, no power in this world or in the next, no thing in all of creation, that can separate us from God’s love.   This means that no matter what you are going through, no matter how hard it is, you are never out of God’s protective embrace. He is there and He loves you fully and completely. Back in verse 28 Paul went so far as to assure us that even in the worst of situations God is a work behind the scenes orchestrating events to bring some good thing out of it for us (We know that all things work together for the good of those who love God …), and in verse 37 he writes that because all of this is true, “… we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.”   No matter what you’re dealing with in life don’t ever lose sight of the great truth that nothing can separate you from the love of God that is yours through faith in Christ.   God Bless, Pastor Jim

Copyright © 2020 Oak Hill Baptist Church, All rights reserved.

Good Morning Everyone,   Our theme for this month: “You are loved”   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: “God loves the black sheep too.”   I have some things going on in my personal life right now that have caused me to get behind in some work projects. For one thing, I have a small pile of mail on my desk which needs some attention. It includes three letters from prisoners with whom I correspond and with whom I have a mentoring relationship. As I’m sitting here grieving the recent loss of my own child, it occurred to me that these men in prison are someone’s son, brother, nephew, cousin. Each of them has made bad decisions for which they’re now paying a painful price, and they have also damaged relationships with family members. They are the black sheep in their families.   Do you have a “black sheep” in your family? Someone who is different from the rest, someone who is often hard to love? Most families do. Perhaps you are your family’s black sheep. Sadly, some families shun or cast out their black sheep. If the person doesn’t conform, or if their behavior is unacceptable and they won’t change, some families refuse to have anything more to do with the individual. Personally, I think that’s the wrong approach. I also don’t think it’s Biblical because it’s not how God deals with us.   The entire history of the nation of Israel is one of being in right relationship with God but then drifting away from Him and suffering terrible consequences, followed by repentance and coming back to Him, only to be followed by another period of bad behavior. The books of Judges, Jeremiah, Lamentations, and all the Old Testament prophets were about that very thing. Israel was the ultimate black sheep. And yet, God never gave up on them. True, He always dealt with them in ways appropriate to their conduct, and that often resulted in punishment and temporarily broken relationships, but the door was always opened for them to come back to Him. As the book of Jeremiah reveals, He was unhappy with their conduct but He never stopped loving them.   There’s a lesson in that for us – especially as we deal with our own black sheep. We need to maintain as much of a relationship with them as their conduct allows. We don’t want to excuse or enable bad behavior, but at the same time we need to make sure our love for them is never in doubt and that they know the door is always open to come back into right relationship with us once they’re prepared to behave properly. God’s love for you is unconditional and everlasting. That’s true even when your behavior is bad and you’re acting like a black sheep in His family. If that’s how God loves us, and if He never gives up on us, then that’s how we need to treat others.   Don’t shun or cast out your black sheep. Certainly, don’t excuse or enable their bad behavior. But at the same time, do what you can to maintain the relationship, communicate your continued love for them, and keep the door open so the relationship can eventually be restored. That’s how the love of God is expressed in situations like that.   God Bless, Pastor Jim

Copyright © 2020 Oak Hill Baptist Church, All rights reserved.