With Joy In Isaiah 12:3, there is a wonderful phrase, “with joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation” or as the NLT renders it, “with joy you will drink deeply from the fountain of salvation!” In the past few years I…
After an arduous, but edifying journey for the past two years, the revised Hymns for Family Worship is finally available. There are 100 hymns in this new edition, with each hymn accompanied by its history, lyrics for the piano, and chords for a guitar. The…
God was everything to David. In the first verse of Psalm 23, David declares, “The LORD is my Shepherd, I have everything I need.” (Good News Translation) A survey of the BibleGateway’s usage data reveals the Psalms to be the most read book in…
As I have been feasting on Psalm 23, I was struck by a phrase in the first line. He didn’t say the Lord is ‘A’ Shepherd, but the Lord is ‘MY’ Shepherd. We know David was himself a shepherd on the hills of Judea and he knew what it took to be…
You are With Me Over the years God has quickened parts of this inspired Psalm at different seasons of my life. When I was a young believer, I hoped I would escape life’s problems after I asked Jesus to forgive my sins and be…
One of the benefits of having a newsletter is sharing by email what I forgot to say when I was present. A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to speak at a church retreat. During one of the sessions I skipped this paragraph in…
I heard a young man speak about the parable of the sower(recorded in Matthew, Mark, Luke) at our local men’s prayer breakfast. He noted we often focus on the soil when we read the words of Jesus, but his attention had been drawn to meditate…
If you have heard me speak since 2013, you know how John 15:9-12 has transformed my life. The truth that God loves and likes me is revealed in verse 9, “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you.” Verse 12 provides a…
The Word of God is Eternal, Inspired, Accurate, and Profitable Since God is love and God is good, we are assured His in-spirited word flows from a heart of love and was written for our good. This passage in Deuteronomy 5:29 expresses this conviction…
Prizes and Rewards One more week in February. If you are still keeping track of how many days you are reading or listening to, some portion of scripture, send me your totals on February 28th and I will arrange for you to receive your…
Last year, for the first time, I was asked by a reader what my belief was about the nature and person of Christ. I recognized I have never clearly articulated my assumptions and convictions. Now seems a good time to begin. My first declaration…
In November I was attending a conference when I heard some sobering statistics from a representative of Back to the Bible. After surveying over 200,000 people for many years, they discovered the magic number of 4. “A key discovery from the CBE(Center for Biblical…