Where's the "Gift Return" Receipt?

Introduction

Let's suppose there's a small town on the edge of Iraq, near the Saudi border. Let's call the town Mosel. It's a small community with no other ...

It's All About You, Lord

Introduction

A poet once complained to a friend, "Life's not fair. A banker can write a bad poem, and nobody says anything about it. But if a poet writes ...

The Blazing Fastball That Gives Us Confidence

Introduction

On July 15, 1986, Roger Clemens came to bat in his first Major League Baseball All-Star game. Roger was the sizzling right-handed pitcher ...

The Glory and the Muck

Introduction

A few months ago, I officiated my father-in-law's funeral. We arrived in Fresno and prepared for the first official gathering—the viewing. ...

Long Past Prime

Introduction

One of the happiest memories I have from this past Easter was the chance to see Judy and Ralph's daughter, Katie, coming into her prime. I ...

Get Ready for a Rough Ride

Introduction:

This is the sixth message in our series on First Peter: Living Bold in Tough Times. Peter wrote this letter to encourage believers to live a ...

The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Believers

In the first chapter of Peter's second epistle, he makes a bold promise, an astonishing guarantee. He says, in effect, "If you make an effort ...

What to Do When God Seems Far Away

When I became a Christian, at the age of 16, I experienced an incredible change in my life. It was like I became a new person. The most profound change ...

A Model For Greatness

Introduction

Our text for the morning, concerning who is greatest in the kingdom, reminds me of the story of a bus driver and a clergyman who were standing ...

The Most Unlikely One

Introduction:

An organization advertised for climbers interested in setting new records for climbing the highest point in each of the fifty United States ...

The Search for Significance

Have you ever noticed that during the eulogy of any funeral, the minister talks about how the deceased person's life impacted those around him? We have ...

Staying Right (Perseverance)

Last Sunday afternoon my youngest son and I were watching the Chicago Bears play the Cleveland Browns. A week before we had seen the Bears come from ...

Try Again

Today, as we conclude our series on the book of Proverbs, we will discuss a topic that is without a doubt the most important topic in the series. If ...

Practice of Patience

Someone handed me a little clipping this past week. A couple of young men from Chicago decided they were tired of the hustle and bustle of city life. ...

As for Me

I stood in that old church in Richmond where long ago Patrick Henry fired a verbal shot that was heard around the world. It was on March 20, 1775, a day ...

If at First You Don't Succeed

"If at first you don't succeed"—you know the rest—"try, try again." Now that's a maxim that we all grew up with. From time to time we are ...

Treasure in a Brown Bag

I get all kinds of things in the mail, and sometimes I think it's a conspiracy of "Yuppiedom." A while back I got a catalog, and inside were all kinds ...

Dealing With Discouragement

As you review the great names and personalities of the Scriptures, you become aware very quickly of the fact that almost all of them knew, at one time ...

Practice of Patience

Someone handed me a little clipping this past week. A couple of young men from Chicago decided they were tired of the hustle and bustle of city life. ...

How to Keep It Going

This morning one of the daily news telecasts mentioned the New York marathon. I thought of the Boston Marathon and a woman by the name of Ruiz. You might ...

Strong to the Finish

It was a hot dayTuesday, July 20, 1993, in Washington, D.C.as Vincent Foster sat in the Rose Garden. That morning he watched as President Clinton announced ...

A Generation with Purpose

Daniel spent his entire adult life in Babylon in exile, captive by a foreign power. Daniel lived in a perverse and twisted culture. He was part of a system ...

Through the Valley

It was near the twilight of his life, and quite possibly he sat on one of the curvaceous slopes of the hills of Judea, looked out into one of the valleys, ...