The Sound Word

Philippians 4:6-7 do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. 7 And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.   How well do we really do this? How well do we really communicate with God? My wife and I had a discussion with our children at the dinner table the other night that revolved around discipleship. Funny that Sonja brought it up, as this was something that was very heavy on my mind. We just flat out asked out kids; how do you make disciples? WE began to look at the character of Jesus and His examples alone to give us some ideas as to how to make disciples ourselves. We broke it down to a few excellent examples, and so for the next few devotionals, that's what I wish to cover. Discipleship. The first thing that we identified, is that to make disciples, you have to be able to teach those you are discipling. Does this mea...

Galatians 5:22-26 22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law. 24 And those who are Christ's have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. 25 If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit. 26 Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another. Wow. Where to start? How about this: Been distracted lately? Perhaps the greatest marketing campaign of all time was the one done by the Dairy Council that we all know of as "Got Milk?" Shortsightedness on the part of the Dairy Council saw that they never did patent that them or trademark the font used in that original ad, so it has been copied thousands of times over now using the same font to say, "Got this?" of "Got That?" Well, I ask you this: Got Distraction? Sure you do. Children, bills, work, neighbors, health, economy, souse? Whatever that distr...

I could offer you a long discourse and present a solid defense for the argument that Jesus was a very politically active individual. He confronted politics in nearly every aspect of his religious life as He carried His message of salvation throughout all of Israel. But this devotional is not meant to be a lesson in apologetics about Jesus the politician. Rather, it is meant to be the foundational platform from which the rest of this devotional rests. Much has been said about the building of the Cordoba House Mosque. For those who do not recognize this title, you will surely recognize this one: Ground Zero. Why? Because that is where the Cordoba House Mosque, a Muslim mosque and community center is planned to be built, right across the street from where the World Trade Center's Twin Towers once stood before being toppled by Muslim pilots of two hi-jacked American airliners on 9/11/2001. Most Americans, to say the least, are at the very least at odds with this proposed construction p...

Romans 12:1-2   1 I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. 2 And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. "Creation", a large Christian gathering of bands, speakers and those who come to see them invaded our nearby town of Enumclaw this past week. Among the performers were names that we all know and love, names that have written modern-day hymns that we all occasionally sing in church on Sundays, and groups or bands that, while they call themselves "Christian", and make you wonder why. Knowing that there were 12,000 plus Christians in the area for the event, and that the night before that many of them had gathered at the local Starbucks until they got booted out at 1:00 AM, my family and I decided to go and see what we m...

We all love the characters made famous by author A. A. Milne in his book revolving around the 100 Acre wood and the leader of the pack, Winnie the Pooh. While Winnie can make a great metaphoric parallel to the average American Christian; one who is hungry for spiritual food, but often gets into trouble trying to get it, and makes plenty of mistake along the way as he matures, we must take notice. Eeyore is always close by. While the A. A. Milne/Winnie the Pooh character of Eeyore is certainly a loveable individual, if his attitude were the prevailing one in the 100 Acre Wood, there'd be a lot more trouble there than they already seem to have. When faced with hard times, we have a choice. We can look back through history to those before us who have suffered similarly, or even more so than us, and say, "hey, they made it through this, we are going to get through this as well" and work our hardest to make that happen. Or, we can do nothing, sit on our laurels, expecting some...

Romans 12:2 And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. `Having seen (by the Grace of God) a pattern in a biblical method of becoming more in-focus or in-tune with Jesus in our relationship with Him, we have been looking at a step-by-step process to do just that. First we looked at a refreshing. How not to allow the world to lead you by its inherent distractions on your flesh, but to stop and get the spiritual rest you need to have a functionally appropriate look at things to come. Secondly, we realize that a refreshing is not refreshing for long if we delve right back into that pattern and lifestyle that we had been following, and that saw us getting of His track and running full-bore on our own. If we do not refocus on Jesus, and I mean everything on Jesus, than we stand firmly set in a pattern that comes with a 100% failure rate. So what comes next? Our over-d...

Yes, sometimes we need to be refreshed. Of this there is no doubt. Not only is it desirable, it is biblical. But for it to remain biblical, our refreshing must come from God, and nowhere else. Once we seek, and have received our refreshing from the Lord, yes, there is still more to do. "There is more to do" is a line that threatens people. The first thing some will think is, "legalism!", "works-based faith and redemption!" And while these phrases should rightly so make our spiritual spider-sense tingle, it is a sure sign of an under-fed, immature Christian to stop there and look (or listen) no further. When I say there is more to do, what I am meaning in this is simply that once we have become a Christian and have begun growing in the spirit, a sure sign of a maturing Christian is an unfettered desire to grow all the more. As we are made new creatures in Christ, these new creatures will have habits and desires that the old creature, now supposedly dead, ne...