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

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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:

Our theme for this month: “Understanding Salvation”

Our Bible verse for today: “Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and reaching forward to what is ahead, I pursue as my goal the prize promised by God’s heavenly call in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 3:13-14 (CSB)

Our thought for today: “Live like you’re headed to heaven.”

In the end, salvation is about spending eternity with God. The three phases of the salvation process accomplish that for us. If you have already placed your faith in Christ for the forgiveness of your sins then phase one is a done deal for you and your salvation is secure. You are now in the second phase of being sanctified as God prepares you for eternity, and you are headed towards the third and final stage, the consummation of your salvation. But as you read this, you are somewhere in that second phase.

So, what impact should your new and fuller understanding of the entire doctrine of salvation have on how you live now? In his book “Heaven” author Randy Alcorn uses the phrase “Heaven-influenced living”. This is what Paul was writing about in Philippians 3:13-14. Our conduct should be influenced by our understanding of where we’re headed. The Apostle Peter wrote of this also in 1 Peter 2:9-12:

“But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his possession, so that you may proclaim the praises of the one who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. Dear friends, I urge you as strangers and exiles to abstain from sinful desires that wage war against the soul. Conduct yourselves honorably among the Gentiles, so that when they slander you as evildoers, they will observe your good works and will glorify God on the day he visits.”
And also in 2 Peter 3:11-14, “… it is clear what kind of people you should be in holy conduct and godliness as you wait for the day of God and hasten its coming.”

We are the people of God, saved by grace through faith in Jesus, called to be a holy people who bring honor to our heavenly father, people who live with the knowledge and understanding that we are just passing through this world on a journey towards our real home in heaven.

I encourage you to live each day with the certain knowledge that you are a child of God headed for a glorious eternity in a perfect paradise prepared for you by Jesus Himself. Let your thoughts, words, and deeds be governed by that great truth. Be joyful, be kind and merciful, and share with others the good news that they too can have salvation through faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. That’s the impact our understanding of salvation should have on how we live now.

God Bless,
Pastor Jim

Our mailing address is:

Our theme for this month: “Understanding Salvation”

Our Bible verse for today: “God, you are my God; I eagerly seek you. I thirst for you; my body faints for you in a land that is dry, desolate, and without water.” Psalm 63:1 (CSB)

Our thought for today: “Our longing for God will be fulfilled.”

Psalm 63:1 is one of my favorite expressions about longing for and seeking after God. Psalm 42:1-2 is another: “As a deer longs for flowing streams, so I long for you, God. I thirst for God, the living God. When can I come and appear before God?”

Two other expressions about longing for God that I have always appreciated come from the minds of great Christian thinkers. The first is from Saint Augustine writing sometime around 400 A.D. “You have made us for Yourself, oh Lord, and our heart is restless, searching, until we find our rest in You.”  The other comes from the French philosopher Blaise Pascal writing around 1650, “There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of man which can only be filled by God.”  

All of those four expressions are consistent with what Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes 3:11 that “God has placed eternity in the heart of man.” God has created human beings with an innate understanding that He does exist. We also have a deep longing to know and experience Him. That’s why every culture that has ever existed in the history of the human race has always had religious beliefs. All cultures have had a belief that there is a spiritual world, there is a God (or gods), and that there is more than just this life. That’s simply how God has designed us – to want to know and experience Him.

Today we can know and experience Him by means of a personal relationship with Jesus as Savior and Lord, and with the Holy Spirit living in our heart. That relationship goes a long way towards filling the God-shaped vacuum in our hearts and satisfying our innate longing for God. It goes a long way, but it still falls short. There is still that longing, that sense that there is still much more of God that I don’t know about or understand. The longing is still there.

But in heaven the limits and restrictions between God and His people will be removed. Then we will see Him as He is, and being in His presence will be our primary joy. It won’t be our only joy – as we have learned in this series we will spend eternity exploring and enjoying a spectacular perfected creation – but being in the presence of God and seeing Him as He really is will be the best thing about eternity. There will never be a time when you are not aware of His presence, and the longing for Him which you have always had will be fully filled. You will see God and know Him as He really is.

Tomorrow we will conclude by considering how this new and fuller understanding of salvation, which we have gained through this study, should impact how we live now.

God Bless,
Pastor Jim

Our mailing address is:

Our theme for this month: “Understanding Salvation”

Our Bible verse for today: “… the creation itself will also be set free from the bondage to decay into the glorious freedom of God’s children. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together with labor pains until now.” Romans 8:21-22 (CSB)

Our thought for today: “Eternity will not be boring.”

No, eternity will certainly not be boring. We will have lots of interesting and wonderful things to do – and the new earth will feature prominently in our activities. As Romans 8:21-22 reminds us, the old earth and all of creation has been marred by sin and is therefore spoiled in many ways. But the new creation will be perfect and we will spend all of eternity enjoying it. In his book “Heaven” author Randy Alcorn made an important observation about God’s creation. He wrote, “… by finding happiness in God’s creation, we will find happiness in him.”

This is an important and helpful observation. It tells us something about eternity, but it also provides insight that is helpful to us now as we enjoy life on the current earth. Perhaps you’ve heard it said that we will spend eternity worshiping and praising God. That’s a true statement, but a big part of that worshiping and praising will consist of simply enjoying and appreciating what He has created.

God’s creation is His beautiful and wonderful handiwork. His creation is a source of joy and pleasure for Him. When we His people enjoy and appreciate what He has created, that’s a form of worshiping and praising Him. That’s true now in this lifetime (even in a fallen and broken world), but it will be even truer in eternity as we enjoy and appreciate a redeemed and perfected creation forever.

Also, when the current creation passes away it’s not that God is going to replace it with things that are entirely different, but rather that God will make all things new. He will take what exists and improve it to the point of perfection. The current creation is a reflection of the creation to come. It will be similar but perfect. Think for a moment about how much you enjoy God’s current creation. When you appreciate and enjoy what He has created, that is an act of worship and praise. That will be true in eternity too but to a much greater extent.

In eternity you will be with friends and loved ones enjoying the perfect existence you have always longed for. You will laugh and sing; you will eat and drink; you will rejoice and enjoy endless pleasures; you will marvel at all the good and perfect things our wonderful God has created. If you’re enjoying God’s creation now, you will really enjoy it then!

Tomorrow we will think about what our relationship with God will be like in that day, and then we will end our series with some thoughts about what impact all of this knowledge should be having on how we live now.

God Bless,
Pastor Jim

Our mailing address is:

Our theme for this month: “Understanding Salvation”

Our Bible verse for today: “The wolf will dwell with the lamb, and the leopard will lie down with the goat. The calf, the young lion, and the fattened calf will be together, and a child will lead them. The cow and the bear will graze, their young ones will lie down together, and the lion will eat straw like cattle. An infant will play beside a cobra pit, and a toddler will put his hand into a snake’s den. They will not harm or destroy each other on my entire holy mountain, for the land will be as full of the knowledge of the Lord as the sea is filled with water.” Isaiah 11:6-9 (CSB)

Our thought for today: “Will pets be with you in heaven?”

So, will Fluffy the cat and your favorite dog be with you in heaven? I hope so. I love animals and I have loved every pet I have ever had. I would love to know that they will be in eternity with me.

The passage in Isaiah 11:6-9 describes a time in the New Eden and it is filled with animals. That shouldn’t surprise us, because God has always valued and enjoyed animals. Animals are not more important to God than people are, but they are important. He created them before He created us. And when He sent the great flood during the time of Noah, He saved many more animals than humans. In this scene in Isaiah we see a time when there is no longer any animosity among God’s creatures. Animals that were once dangerous are now tame; snakes that were once poisonous are now harmless; creatures that used to be natural enemies now graze together in peace; and human children are in the picture too.

So there’s little doubt that animals will be with us in eternity. But will “my” animals be with me? Will I see Duffy, Lady, Missy, Kiki, and Roxy the dogs? How about my cats Midnight and Sam? And let’s not forget Henry the duck.

It’s a difficult question. The Bible does tells us that animals have the breath of life in them (Genesis 1:30, 2:7; 6:17; 7:15); and the Hebrew word used to describe that breath of life in them (nephesh) is the same one that is used to describe the breath of life in us. Also, that word is commonly understood to describe our soul. However, even with that being said, we cannot then assume that animals have a soul like ours. They were not created in the image of God as we have been. And yet, evidently they do still have a soul of some sort.

There is strong evidence in the Bible that there will be animals with us in eternity. But there is nothing that tells us anything about our specific pets. Therefore all we can do is speculate about it. In his book “Heaven”, author Randy Alcorn writes,

“Animals aren’t nearly as valuable as people, but God is their Maker and has touched many people’s lives through them. It would be simple for him to re-create a pet in Heaven if he wants to. He’s the giver of all good gifts, not the taker of them. If it would please us to have a pet restored to the New Earth, that may be sufficient reason (for him to do it).”

I don’t know if my actual pets from this life will be there in eternity with me or not. I hope so. But I do know there will be animals, lots of them. And that’s a beautiful thing.

God Bless,
Pastor Jim