No nation, apart from Israel, has the spiritual heritage of America. It is impossible to understand or explain our country apart from this fact.
Our world rocks from a pleasure explosion! According to a leading news magazine, Americans will spend an estimated $913 billion dollars on movies, music, and sports this year. This preoccupation with pleasure takes on many different forms. Seventy-five million campers spend more than eight billion dollars on camping vehicles...
“Oh, what a relief it is!” says the TV commercial. The psalmist says the same thing. The commercial is talking about a digestive disorder. The psalmist is talking about the forgiveness of sins.
Robert M. Herhold, in his book Learning to Die, Learning to Live, said, “Death is the final separation of all that we have worked for and built up and hold near and dear. It is too bad that dying is the last thing we do. Death could teach us so much about living.” There are lessons to be learne...
I read in Reader’s Digest a couple of weeks ago a little quip about Christmas. It said, “Santa Claus was a jolly old gent who goes around saying ‘Ho, Ho, Ho.’ But who wouldn’t say ho, ho, ho, if you only worked one day out of the year.”
While Santa Claus goes arou...
When Edward R. Murrow was appointed as director of the United States Information Agency by President John F. Kennedy, he was interviewed by a Senate committee. Among other things, they wanted to know what he would do to counteract communist propaganda against America. He replied, “I believe that we ought to report all t...
Some years ago, a commencement speaker at Yale University said to the graduating class, “In 1776 you conquered your fathers. In 1865 you conquered your brothers. Now you must conquer yourselves.”
A song popular some years ago started out talked about "Me and My Shadow" taking a stroll down the avenue. This points to an undeniable fact: no man can escape his shadow. A truth of far deeper significance that applies to all men but particularly to Christians is that each of us casts a shadow of influence on other lives, ei...
The great value of the book of Psalms is that in it, we have godly men stating their experiences and giving us an account of the things that happened to them in their spiritual life.
Once we buried a young lady who was only 21 years old. She was killed in a head-on collision while on her way to church. The night before the funeral, my daughter asked why God allows things like this to happen.
I wish I knew. Things like this have puzzled saints, wise men, and philosophers since the world began.
There is simply no one easy answer as to why tragedies like this happen. The answer may lie in the fact that God made us free. He created us with the ability to make our own choices, and choices always involve consequences. If we are careless or foolish in our choices, or if others are, we may suffer because of them. If God did not allow us freedom, we’d be less than people. We’d be robots.
This may be the only explanation we will ever have for some suffering. However, we do not have to know why things happen in order to be victorious over them. On the cross Jesus cried out “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46) But the heavens were as brass. God was silent. He didn’t even answer his own Son. Jesus might have despaired and become bitter against God. But instead he said, “Father, into thy hands I commend [entrust, hand over] my spirit” (Luke 23:46).
This kind of faith is far more important than any answer we might receive. In our lives, as in the life of Jesus, it is faith that makes the difference between victory and defeat.
So keep believing in God no matter what. Commit your life to him and regardless of what happens, God will help you.