A question for you. If you had the opportunity to take an all-expense paid vacation anywhere in the world, where would you go? Would you go to Hawaii or the Bahamas or maybe take a fishing trip to Alaska or a shopping trip in Paris. If you could afford to purchase whatever your heart desired,…
1 out of every 2. According to recent research carried out by the American Psychological Association, 40-50% of marriages now end in divorce. Not surprisingly, with the large number of divorces, couples are living together before marriage more than ever before. A 2013 study reported that 75% of women 30 and younger had lived with…
Have you every stopped to consider why you do what you do? For example, what are you doing right now? You are about to listen to a guy preach a sermon based on a book that was written between 2 and 4 thousand years ago. Really? Why would you do that? How could that possibly…
I’ll never forget the feeling of cradling our baby girl in my arms just after she was born. She was so tiny, so new. I remember thinking how she had her whole life ahead of her. And though she was only minutes old, my mind was spinning with all the good things I wanted for her, not just in the days and…
Would you call yourself a wise person? Would you define your life as one wisely lived? You might think that’s kind of a subjective question. Some of you consider your life and think “Yeah, I think I am pretty wise from my experiences, from years of school and work.” But maybe you’re thinking of foolish decisions you’ve made, things you’ve done, or…
You’ve all heard of the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat, right? It’s a common way we explain that enormous gap that exists between winning and losing. It’s quite a different feeling being the general who accepts the enemy’s surrender than being the general who is doing the surrendering. It’s thrilling when the Packers had what seemed to be an…
This morning I want to begin with a question for all the parents here today. Have you ever struggled to know how to properly discipline your child? I mean, we all want our kids to behave. We want them to be polite, respectful, obedient. But when they aren’t, what are we supposed to do? Should we give them a lecture or give…
There’s a pretty prominent concept in our society called “paying it forward.” Anyone heard of it? For those who haven’t, it’s the idea is you do something nice for a stranger. Then, they’ll doing something nice for another stranger. A chain of nice grows person by person, and ideally these actions make the world a nicer place. I’ve noticed that paying it…
Dear fellow children of God: This is the old Bible history book that we used for family devotions for a number of years. Did you know that of the usual heroes of faith we think of in the pages of Scripture: Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David and the apostle Paul: none of them come close to the number of chapters covering the…
The Word of God we’ll consider today is from Hebrews chapter 10. Let us pray: O Lord, your Word is a lamp for our feet and light for our path. Open our hearts and enlighten our minds that we might understand your Word, believe your Word, and live our lives according to it. Amen. (Based on a prayer by Johannes Bugenhagen –…