“Watch and pray, lest you enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Mk 14:38). A steamboat was stranded in the Mississippi River, and the captain couldn’t get her off a sandbar. Eventually a rough-looking fellow came on board and said, “Captain, I understand you’re looking for a pilot to […]
David Gooding comments on the repentant thief: Personally he had never thought much of kings, had never felt like obeying any of them. But a King who would pray forgiveness for the very men who were spiking His hands and feet to a cross…you could respect a King like that. He wouldn’t mind being in […]
Do you recall what you were doing at age 7? Imagine being sovereign of the Lord’s own land! Joash was an infant when put into hiding with his nursemaid in the temple. Six years later, he was crowned king. Thus we read the astonishing fact that “Joash was seven years old when he became king, and […]
Tornadoes tend to do that—turn your life upside down, I mean. But on a mission of mercy to help a dear Christian who had been a step from death and whose life’s papers had been scattered far and wide across her little farm, we discovered something more powerful than a tornado: a still small voice. […]
I was born on a bitterly cold Canadian winter night in January. The snow lay deep across the landscape. Nobody was thinking about gardening. Well, that may not be exactly true. The diehard gardeners, at the very moment of my birth, might have been sitting by the fire, turning the pages of their Stokes Seeds […]
“You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up” (Deut 6:7). British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, whatever her failings, was not afraid to speak the truth. In a speech delivered […]
“How good is a timely word!” (Prov 15:23). My brother-in-law, Bob, who was a public school teacher, spent a great deal of time with special needs students. Many of them were deeply damaged by issues in the home. One 11-year-old girl seemed to be in trouble much of the time. One day, in exasperation, he […]
She debased her husband, corrupted her son, murdered her grandchildren. Death was too good for her. Athaliah couldn’t help but hear the hubbub outside her palace window. It wasn’t regular activity, especially for a Sabbath. It sounded like the people were praising a king! Then she saw it: “there was the king standing by his pillar […]
“The Lord make the woman who is coming to your house like Rachel and Leah, the two who built the house of Israel; and may you prosper in Ephrathah and be famous in Bethlehem. May your house be like the house of Perez, whom Tamar bore to Judah, because of the offspring which the Lord […]