Life Goes On

Many times we interpret our circumstances through the lens of our past experience or our expectations.  I was reminded today that my interpretations are not fool-proof.  A couple of weeks ago I had a little A-Fib episode which entailed a trip to the ER, several tests and an overnight stay at the hospital.  With the exception of a few minutes that prompted the visit to the ER, I felt fine.  A day after getting out of the hospital I was back in the office; played golf on Saturday and preached twice on Sunday.  Today I went for a scheduled stress test that I was told would take about 4 hours.  Most of the other people in the waiting area went through the first segment of their test and were told to go eat something, drink some caffeine and return for the balance of the test.  When I finished my first segment, they told me that I was done for the day.  The only discomfort I felt was being mildly out of breath for a few moments.  I left thinking, ...

Recently, as I was thanking God for my bowl of cereal, I was reminded to thank Him for the farmer who prepared the land, planted the seed and tended the grain and then harvested the crop.  Then I was prompted to pray for the people who prepared the grain into cereal and the those who packaged it, those who transported it to market, those who stocked the shelves so that I could purchase the cereal.  That led to me giving thanks for the finances that enabled me to buy the food I need.  Before long, my "blessing" on my breakfast turned into an intercessory prayer session.  I didn't have to use a prayer list or a notebook.  I just allowed Holy Spirit to guide as one prayer led to another. That experience has helped me understand Paul's admonition to "pray without ceasing".  It has also made my prayer time more exciting because I know I'm praying for those people and those things that Holy Spirit brings to mind. Some time ago I told one of my granddaughters...

Monday mornings are probably not the best time for a pastor to update his blog...at least not this pastor.  However, I feel the need to have a "mind-dump" so that I can get on with my day and week. Yesterday was somewhat of a nightmare.  To begin with, at the opening assembly of Sunday School (yes, we still do that) our church organist fell and broke her shoulder.  Then, for whatever reason, our attendance at both Sunday School (we still have that too) and worship was down significantly from last week.  Then, just before the evening service (need I say, we still have that as well?) I got a call from a member whose wife had bent over and hit a wire in the corner of her eye.  Thankfully she is OK and the scratch on the eye should heal soon. Now I am faced with a busy Christmas season without our best accompanist.  Who knows how long she will be out recovering, or if she will be able to continue as organist and choir accompanist.  This is not a good time ...

Faith Baptist Church in Lake Placid was established back in 1984 with a vision to reach residents in the Sun n Lakes community. Since that time the church has been relocated to the corner of CR 29 and Holmes Ave, meaning that many people beyond the Sun n Lake area have access to the church. Most of the effort of the church has been "come to us" oriented. If you come to the church we will teach you, pray for you, minister to you and be your "church family". What if...we began to be an "as you go" church? Here's what I mean by that. In addition to the Sun n Lake community we now have people who are members here who live in Placid Lakes, the Lakeview Community, Sylvan Shores, at Henderson's Fish Camp and other spots on Lake Ishtapoga, in the Lake June area and even Sebring. What if we began to think of taking the church to our neighborhood? What if in each of these areas where we have members there was at least one Home Group, hosted by reside...

Recently as I was reading about people from countries where Christians are persecuted, I came across a particular story regarding house churches in Russia. It seems that 3 House Church pastors had started multiple House Churches, but none of the groups knew about the others. This is a security thing. Wanting to somehow let them know that they were not alone, the 3 pastors got government permission to hold a week long Youth Convention. All told 700 students showed up. None of them had Bibles yet all of them were in House Churches. During the week they were given the assignment of getting with their particular group and writing down all they could remember of the 4 gospels, and to write the lyrics to all the Christian songs they knew. At the end of the week when the results were compiled, they had all 4 gospels written with less than a dozen mistakes and they had lyrics to 1200 songs. Phenomenal! However, some years later, after restrictions had been lifted and almost everyone h...

I took the title of this blog post from Revivalmatters.com in the information they put out about a "National Week of Repentance" scheduled for Oct. 30-Nov. 6.  You can find out more by going to their website at the link above. I want to "springboard" from their title to talk about our personal and corporate need for repentance.  As I mentioned in a recent sermon, when Achan violated God's command about taking "loot" from the destruction of Jericho, God did not say, "Achan sinned." Rather He said "Israel sinned."  Just because we individually may have never had an abortion, God holds us as a nation responsible for the death of millions of unborn children.  Israel bore the consequences of Achan's sin.  Not only did Achan and his family pay the ultimate price of death, but 3,000 Israeli soldiers died unnecessarily because of his sin.  In the same way we, as a nation, will bear the consequences of the murder of millions of childre...

I think that first I must identify myself.  I'm a pastor who has 2 church music degrees and spent the better part of 20 years as a Minister of Music and Youth.  As pastor of a fairly "traditional" church (we have a choir and sing hymns from hymnals) I often get "suggestions" from people that they would like to see more "praise and worship" (meaning choruses or JOY-FM music)  Let me hasten to say that I like it all from classical to contemporary (which varies depending on where you live) to hip-hop to rap.  I decided to look in the Bible to find what I could about worship. Interestingly enough, I found very little about music, except in the Psalms and in Revelation.  The defining words about the "new" church in Acts 2 are fellowship, praising God (which incorporates more than music) and meeting needs. To steal a phrase from Rick Warren, "It's not about you!"  We are to worship God...not a genre of music or a style of preaching. ...