Our theme for this month: “Laugh Again”

Our Bible verse for today: “You will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on You, because he trusts in You.” Isaiah 26:3 (NKJV)

Our thought for today: “Don’t allow yourself to dwell in despair.”

The concept of “mind control” sounds spooky to many people. It conjures up images of a diabolical genius who can control other people’s thoughts; or someone who dabbles in the dark side of the spiritual world and has learned to bend spoons with his thoughts.

But actually “mind control” is much simpler and innocent than that. Mind control simply means having control over your thoughts. It means taking positive control over the influences you allow into your mind and the thoughts you allow your mind to dwell on.

This is a bigger issue than you might realize. The things you allow your mind to dwell on determines how you think and what you believe to be true, and it also colors your personality – thereby determining how other people view you.

When it comes to our theme of “Laugh Again”, what you allow your mind to dwell on will determine if you are happy or sad, upbeat or depressed. If you allow your mind to dwell on negative thoughts and depressing situations, you will be negative and depressed. But if you make yourself focus instead on positive and upbeat things like encouraging bible verses, or humorous thoughts and jokes, you will be positive, upbeat, and maybe even funny.

“Mind control” is what Isaiah was referring to in Isaiah 26:3. Those who choose to keep their minds focused on God and on the things of God will find themselves to be at peace. You can accomplish that by memorizing and reciting encouraging passages of Scripture. You can do it by means of listening to uplifting Christian music. And yes, it can happen through comedy and laughing, and surrounding yourself with Christian friends who encourage you and lift you up.

All of us have times when we feel down, but we don’t have to dwell there. We don’t have to remain depressed and discouraged. We can be intentional about taking actions that will move us up out of despair. There’s a general principle about human behavior that applies here. It says, “All of my problems become smaller when I take action to deal with them.” That applies to problems of all kinds but especially to despair, discouragement, and depression. It all begins to dissipate when we take positive and intentional action to deal with it. You don’t have to stay there. You can control your mind.

And also, if you know someone who is struggling with this issue, please be sure your help is actually helpful. Don’t be like that church that started a support group for them but then put in the bulletin, “The Low Self-Esteem support group will meet on Thursday at 7:00 PM in the church basement. Please use the back door.”

God Bless,

Pastor Jim

Our mailing address is:

Our theme for this month: “Laugh Again”

Our Bible verse for today: “No foul language should come from your mouth, but only what is good for building up someone in need, so that it gives grace to those who hear.” Ephesians 4:29 (CSB)

Our thought for today: “Keep it clean”

The other night Linda and I pulled out the TV trays, cooked ourselves a pizza, and sat down to watch a movie we had been eager to see for some time. The name of the movie is “Stan and Ollie” and it is about the real-life story of the famous comedy team Laurel and Hardy. Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy were the most popular slap-stick comedy act for much of the 1930s, 40s, and 50s. They were hilariously funny, but in an innocent and clean way. The movie was a heartwarming behind-the-scenes look at their personal relationship as close friends and partners.

So much of what passes for “humor” in our day is dark and dirty and mean. It doesn’t uplift, edify, or enrich the minds and lives of the audience. Instead it has the opposite effect. It plants dark, dirty, and mean thoughts in the minds of those who listen to it. Worse, getting enjoyment from that kind of filth poisons a person’s personality. Fill your mind with dark, dirty, and mean thoughts and soon you will become a dark, dirty, and mean person. Comedy shouldn’t have that effect on people.

Ephesians 4:29 is one of several passages found in the New Testament which reminds us that as the people of God we should not use foul language. That would include telling or listening to dirty jokes. As a child of the 50s and 60s I grew-up on the comedy of Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello, The Three Stooges, The Little Rascals, The Bowery Boys, Leave it to Beaver, and the Andy Griffith Show. I’m so glad I did because it conditioned me to appreciate and enjoy good clean comedy.

The good news is that there is still plenty of clean comedy around today that will help us to laugh at life and to enjoy ourselves. Chonda Pierce, Jeff Foxworthy, and Louie Allen, are just a few examples. In our region of the country we also have The Comedy Barn in Pigeon Forge, TN. There are actually more choices for clean comedy than you might realize. The reason is because many people prefer it to the dark, dirty, and mean-spirited stuff that passes for comedy in our day.

By the way, did you hear about the 17 year old boy who was in rebellion to his father? He insisted on wearing his hair shoulder length. His father wanted him to get a haircut. One day the boy came to his father and asked to borrow the car. The father said, “You can borrow the car when you get a haircut.” The boy replied, “You know Dad, Moses had long hair, Noah had long hair, the Apostle Paul had long hair, and even Jesus had long hair.” To which the father replied, “Yes, and they WALKED everywhere they went!”

I hope you have at good day today – even if you have to walk everywhere you go. (Trevor, get a haircut!)

God Bless,
Pastor Jim

Our mailing address is:

Our theme for this month: “Laugh Again”

Our Bible verse for today: “A happy heart makes a face cheerful …” Proverbs 15:13 (NIV)

Our thought for today: “Being happy makes you smile, and smiling makes you happy.”

It comes as no surprise to us that when we’re happy we smile. But did you know that smiling also makes you happy? It does. There’s an old saying that goes, “Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile is the source of your joy.” The truth of this has been scientifically proven in numerous psychological and neurological studies.

Psychologically there is a theory known as “self-perception theory”. It holds that acting as if you feel something will eventually lead you to actually experience that feeling. If you act like you are brave, soon you will begin to actually feel brave. If you act like you love someone, and if you continue in those actions, eventually you will begin to experience true feelings of love for them. Likewise, if you act happy, soon you will begin to actually feel happy, or at least happier than you were.

Most of us acknowledge that if we feel happy we will act happy. But it’s also true that if we act happy soon we will feel happy. Smiling is a major part of the happiness equation. When you’re happy you smile. So conversely, if you smile you will begin to feel happy. The self-perception theory proves it over and over again. If you want to have something to smile about, just go ahead and smile, and soon you will be smiling because you feel like it and not because you are trying to.

There’s also a neurological element to this smiling business. Smiling results in the secretion of endorphin hormones in the brain. Endorphin has an opiate kind of effect on us in that it makes us feel good. The physical act of smiling generates a release of endorphins in the brain. That in turn makes us feel good, which gives us even more reason to smile, which then releases more endorphins, which make us feel even better, which makes us smile even more … and on it goes. Smiling makes you feel good. And the more you smile, the better you feel.

This is good stuff, man. And it’s legal! You can get high on endorphins and there’s no law against it! The more you smile the better you feel and the better you feel the more you smile. Smiling is also contagious. If you smile at other people other people will smile back at you. Then they will experience the release of endorphins, they will feel better and happier, they will smile even more, which will cause yet more people to smile, releasing endorphins in them, causing them to smile at other people and … Wow. This stuff could change the world!

Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile is the source of you joy. So smile today! Smile a lot.

God Bless,
Pastor Jim

Our mailing address is:

Our theme for this month: “Laugh Again”

Our Bible verse for today: “Our mouths were filled with laughter then, and our tongues with shouts of joy. Then they said among the nations, ‘The Lord has done great things for them.” Psalm 126:2 (CSB)

Our thought for today: “Be joyful, and let it show”

I once heard it said that “The Christian should be one big “hallelujah!” from head to toe!” It’s true. Nobody has more to be grateful for than the Christian. Your sins have been forgiven. You have the Holy Spirit of God living in your heart. You have a loving Father in heaven who is always looking out for you and who is committed to meeting your needs. You get to experience the Fruit of the Spirit in your life in increasing measure. And, when this life is over, you have a wonderful eternal home waiting for you.

Yes, the Christian should be one big “hallelujah!” from head to toe!

I love the scene depicted for us in Psalm 126. It is known as “A song of ascents”. It was sung by the Israelites as they marched up to Jerusalem to worship. Jerusalem sat on a hill, which is why it is commonly referred to in song as “a city on a hill”. As that large throng of Israelites ascended the hill, with the city of Jerusalem in sight above them, they were laughing, singing, rejoicing, and calling out praises to God. It was a great scene of joy.

Our theme this month is “Laugh Again” – with an emphasis on “again”. The implication is that long ago we stopped laughing enough. The joy of life drained away and many of us simply resorted to getting through our days. May I politely suggest that you knock it off? To borrow a phrase from Sergeant Hulka in the movie Meatballs, “Lighten up, Francis!” Life is not as hard as you make it out to be. Go back and read the previous devotional about the 80/20 rule. You have been blessed beyond measure and there is much more good in your life than bad. Life is meant to be enjoyed not just endured. There is plenty to be thankful for and happy about. And there are lots of reasons to laugh.

Did you hear about the little boy who was invited to say the blessing at his family’s Thanksgiving dinner? He thanked God for his mother, father, brothers and sisters. He thanked God for their guests, and for the turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, pumpkin pie, and even for the Cool Whip. Then there was an extended silence until finally the mother looked up and saw the boy with his eyes open, looking at her, and in obvious distress. He whispered to her, “Mom, if I thank God for the broccoli won’t He know I’m lying?” Everyone at the table burst out laughing and they all agreed it was the best Thanksgiving prayer any of them had ever heard.

Make it a point today to look for things to be grateful for and to be happy about. And laugh. Laugh at lot. Go ahead and be one big “hallelujah” from head to toe!

God Bless,

Pastor Jim

Our mailing address is:

Our theme for this month: “Laugh Again”

Our Bible verse for today: “Because of the Lord’s faithful love we do not perish, for his mercies never end. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness! I say, ‘The Lord is my portion, therefore I will put my hope in him.” Lamentations 3:22-24 (CSB)

Our thought for today: “Choose to be happy”

Have you ever known a person who seems to be an expert at finding something wrong with everything? If you say it’s a beautiful sunny day, they’ll point to the one dark cloud in an otherwise clear sky. If you tell them they look nice today, they’ll respond by saying they recently put on five pounds. If you tell them the glass if half full, they’ll tell you that it’s also half empty. Do you remember “Eeyore” the donkey from the Winnie-the-Pooh books? Winnie was always upbeat and positive but Eeyore was always pessimistic, gloomy, and depressed. No matter how good things are, Eeyore finds something wrong. We all have encounters with the Eeyores in life, and they’re not fun to be around.

I saw a cartoon recently of two women talking. One was babbling on and on. We the readers get the conversation in midstream,  “… and then I caught the flu, the house burned down, our car was stolen, George had to have an operation, the cat got the flu …” The other woman, looking trapped, is thinking to herself “Dear Lord just take me now!” You’ve been in that situation. You’re trapped in a conversation with a narcissist who drones on and on about all her misfortunes (real and imagined) and there seems to be no way out for you. So you’re thinking “Just shoot me now!”

Abraham Lincoln is reported to have said that “Most people are about as happy as they make their minds up to be.” That’s a great truth. You can choose to see the glass half full instead of half empty. You can choose to see the sunshine rather than the cloud. You can choose to thank God for what you have rather than complain about the things you don’t have.

In the book of Lamentations Jerusalem had been completely destroyed and was in ruins. The people had been taken into captivity and the situation seemed hopeless. In the middle of the destruction and desolation the prophet Jeremiah uttered that wonderful statement of faith and praise that we just read in 3:22-24 above. He found reasons to praise God and to trust Him. I encourage you to read it again now.

In my Bible I keep a typed list of positive affirmations which I review frequently and which help me to maintain a proper perspective in life. One of them pertains to choosing happiness over despair. It reads “I choose to be happy. Happiness is a choice. I can choose to think thoughts and engage in activities that bring me joy. I choose to be grateful, and I choose not to complain. I have joy in my heart, a smile on my face, and laughter in my voice. Life is a privilege. I choose to live it with joy.”

How about you? Do you choose to live with joy? Do you laugh easily and often? I hesitate to hold Winnie-the-Pooh up as a model to emulate. Winnie has serious weight control issues and his fingers are always sticky with honey. But if the choice in your life is between Winnie or Eeyore, be Winnie my friends, be Winnie.

God Bless,
Pastor Jim

Our mailing address is:

Our theme for this month: “Laugh Again”

Our Bible verse today: “Reuben went in and slept with his father’s concubine …” Genesis 35:22 (CSB)

Our thought for today: “Everybody’s normal – till you get to know them.”

There’s a great truth expressed in that statement – “Everybody’s normal – till you get to know them.” The fact is that we’re all a little weird. There really is no “normal”. After more than twenty years as a Pastor I’ve come to understand that every person is a little odd and every family has skeletons in their closets. Granted, some people are odder than others and some families have a literal boneyard going on, but still, we’ve all got stuff that we’d prefer others don’t know about. (As a Pastor I get to know a lot of that stuff. It’s kind of a side benefit to the job. The stories I could tell! Lol).

A Biblical case-in-point is told by Pastor John Ortberg in his 2003 book by that same title, “Everybody’s Normal Till You Get to Know Them”. In one section he tells the story of one of the great Biblical families – that of Jacob. Jacob was a bit of a scoundrel and a swindler. He had at least thirteen children by four different women. One son (Joseph) was sold into slavery by his brothers. Another son (Reuben) slept with his father’s mistress. Another son (Judah) slept with his own daughter-in-law and fathered a child by her. One daughter was raped and two sons then led a military expedition to wipe out the entire village that the rapist lived in. And those are just a few examples of the dysfunction in that family. John Ortberg writes, “These people need a therapist. These are not the Waltons. They need Dr. Phil, Dr. Laura, Dr. Ruth, Dr. Spock, Dr. Seuss – they need somebody!”

Feeling any better about your family?

The point is that we’re all a little weird – there really is no “normal”. And that’s a good thing. I’m glad there are no perfect people. It makes me feel better about myself.

I sometimes tease our folks at Oak Hill Baptist Church that we’re a lot like that place everyone has come to call “The Star Wars Bar”. The Star Wars bar was a place in the first Star Wars movie. Han Solo and Chewbacca go into this inter-planetary bar and we see that it is filled with an array of weird creatures from across the galaxy. One guy is purple and has two heads. Another is orange and has a single eye in the middle of his forehead. One creature looks like an octopus with tentacles sprouting from various places, and on it goes. Weird people. Funny looking people. But all of them somehow getting along.

That’s us! At our church we’re just an odd collection of unusual people, but somehow we all get along. So, if you’re looking for a church, I invite you to visit us. (I’m thinking you will probably fit right in.)

So there are no normal people. Nobody is normal because there really is no “normal”. Everyone is a little bit strange. So I encourage you to celebrate your weirdness today. Just be you – and enjoy it!

God Bless,
Pastor Jim

Our mailing address is:

Our theme for this month: “Laugh Again”

Our Bible verse for today: “Truly I tell you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” Matthew 18:3 (CSB)

Our thought for today: “Don’t take yourself too seriously.”

In the late 1980s there was a young comedian named Dana Carvey who starred on the television show “Saturday Night Live”. As a member of the cast his job was to come up with funny characters and to put on live comedy skits. One of Dana’s most popular characters was known as “The Church Lady”. The Church Lady was prim and proper – with poofed-up hair, too much make-up (including a hideous amount of red lipstick), and 1950s style dresses. Her cheeks were pinched and sucked-in and her lips were always puckered, making her look like she must have been weaned on a pickle. She held her little purse with both hands at waist level, and her posture was ramrod straight (her girdle was obviously way too tight).

The Church Lady would then proceed to bless us with her opinion on everything from bad boys to loose girls, from rock and roll music to bad manners, from proper etiquette at church potlucks to the awful tie the pastor wore last Sunday, and everything in-between. Just watching and listening to her, with those sucked-in cheeks and those puckered lips, you just knew that as a child she sucked every ounce of juice out of that pickle.

Many Christians back then were offended by this caricature of church people and they thought it was terrible for Dana Carvey to make fun of them. Not me. I thought it was hilarious. I still do. And I also think it’s good for us to laugh at ourselves. We often take ourselves way too seriously. That’s one of the reasons I love the ministry of Chonda Pierce. She’s a Pastor’s kid who was raised in church, and she is absolutely brutal in her comedy routines as she points out the silliness of church life and gets us all to laugh about it. That’s good for us.

In Matthew 18:3 Jesus was using a child as an illustration of the simple faith that God likes and cherishes. But another lesson we can learn from children is to stop being so darn serious about everything and to just relax. Children have that unique ability to be silly and to have fun, and as adults we need more of that. We’re too uptight.

I’ll share with you one thing that makes me uptight, and it has to do directly with church life. Actually it has to do with how nice the people at our church are. Did you know it is possible to be too nice? It is. I have a recurring dream (this is real), I have this dream that I’m up on the stage on Sunday preaching my heart out, and there’s this booger hanging out of my nose, or worse, my zipper is down. AND NOBODY TELLS ME!

Why? Why does nobody tell me? Because they’re so nice that’s why, and they don’t want to embarrass me. So they say nothing!

Lol. Look, I love ya, and I’m glad you are so nice, but for goodness sakes don’t be that nice! Tell me I’ve got booger hanging out of my nose. We’ll all get a good laugh out of it and then I’ll preach the rest of the sermon!

Okay now that we’ve all lightened up a bit go and have a good day but remember, don’t take yourself too seriously.

God Bless,
Pastor Jim

Our mailing address is:

Our theme for this month: “Laugh Again”

Our Bible verse for today: “A joyful heart is good medicine, but a broken spirit dries up the bones.” Proverbs 17:22 (CSB)

Our thought for today: “Laughter is good for you.”

The other night I was leading a marriage enrichment Bible study and suddenly one of the ladies in the group starting imitating Homer Simpson. I don’t know why. Maybe she’s going through menopause and has sudden uncontrollable outbursts of weird behavior (I’m kidding). But whatever the reason, right in the middle of a serious discussion about how a woman can build up her husband with words of affirmation and encouragement she comes out with “Doh!”

According to Wikipedia when Homer Simpson says “Doh!” it means “Homer injured himself, realized that he has done something stupid, or something bad has happened or is about to happen to him.”

I’ll leave you to guess which of those definitions that woman might have felt applied to her use of “Doh!” with respect to the topic under consideration of her affirming and encouraging her husband. But whatever her intended meaning, the moment was hilarious. One couple was laughing so hard I thought they were going to pee their pants.

After I finally regained control of the class we all agreed that laughter is good for us – especially when it comes to strengthening the bonds of close relationships. Life is hard and sometimes it gets heavy. Many of us are way too serious. We all know people who trudge through their days, wearing their circumstances like a heavy old coat, seldom smiling much less laughing. But that’s not how we’re supposed to live. It’s not what God intends for us. Like Solomon tells us in Proverbs 17:22, laughter is good medicine, but a heavy spirit dries up the bones. A heavy spirit makes us sour and grumpy and difficult to be with. Laughter lightens things up. It makes us feel better, it makes us nicer to be around, and it causes other people to want to be with us.

All this month we will explore this idea of laughter as good medicine. We will consider what the Bible has to say about laughing and being happy, and we will also think the importance of intentionally expressing joy. Laughter and being joyful is good for us.

By the way, did you hear the one about the feminist who demanded to know why we always say “Amen” at the end of a prayer rather than “Awomen”? The Pastor told her it’s the same reason that we sing “Hymns” instead of “Hers”.

May you day today be filled with joy and laughter.

God Bless,
Pastor Jim

Our mailing address is: