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.
I once talked with a man who was convinced that Christianity was a failure. His conclusion was based on the fact that while our cities are full of churches and preachers, our world is getting worse and worse.
If you think about this criticism, you must agree that there is much religion in America that has little effect on the daily lives of people. While the number of church members may grow each year, so does lawlessness and immorality. But does this mean that Christianity is a failure? No. At the close of World War I a soap manufacturer, walking down the street with his pastor, was bemoaning the “failure” of Christianity. He said to his pastor, “After 19 centuries of preaching and teaching Christ, there is still so much evil in the world. I don’t see how you can go on preaching the Gospel.”
“I don’t see how you can go on manufacturing soap,” retorted the pastor. “Look at the little urchin playing in the gutter. Neck and ears filthy. There’s still so much dirt in the world. Soap is such a failure.”
“But,” countered the soap manufacturer, “If people will just apply the soap, they’ll be clean.”
“Yes,” concluded the pastor, “and if men will but apply Christ to their daily living, they will also be clean.”
The evil of today’s world is not due to Christianity’s failure, but to our failure to apply our Christianity. As writer G.K. Chesterton said, "Christianity has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and not tried."
Attend church Sunday, listen to God’s word, then apply it to your daily life and you and the world will both be better because of it.