Resist Pride

In this final part of our series, Pursue: Chasing God in a Godless World, we talk about the one thing that has the greatest power to throw us off the path to life.  Having this thing in our lives is like having mold in our houses.  It can grow in ways we don’t notice or see until we’re sick from it.  What is it and how do we deal with it?  Keep reading to find out.

Resist Pride

We had a rainy November,didn’t we?  As the rain was falling a couple of weeks ago, I looked out at our swamp and we had more water standing in our yard than we did during Hurricane Florence.  And, given that we had almost as much rain over those few days as we did in the bigger storm, I shouldn’t have been surprised.  It still wasn’t the catastrophic rain they had not all that far east of here.  The real problem from that amount of flooding isn’t just the floodwaters themselves. It’s what comes next.  The North Carolina Baptists have and will continue to have disaster relief crews busily at work for the next 2-3 years to get life restored to where it was before Florence rolled through.  It’ll take that long because the clean-up is hard work. You’ve got to go into these homes and demo and replace everything from the ground up to above wherever the final water line was.  And you have to do all of that because of the threat of mold. 

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Live Courageously

This past Sunday we ventured into part three of our teaching series, Pursue: Chasing God in a Godless World.  One of the truths we need to embrace if we’re going to do that is that sometimes it’s hard to do.  So, what do we call it when someone does the right thing even though it’s hard?  Keep reading to find out.

Live Courageously

Our culture loves heroes.  Superhero movies have always been popular, but the last few years have seen their profiles rise to epic proportions.  For many moviegoers, the wait for the next Marvel film is agonizing.  I recently read a quote from Kevin Smith, a director popular among the nerd culture, who said that given the choice, he would rather see the next Avengers movie than direct another movie ever again.  This past Wednesday evening I couldn’t even begin to count how many little superheroes I saw running around here.  Since the year 2,000, sixteen of the 40 highest grossing films have been about super-powered individuals in one way or another.  If you add films about heroes more generally (like Star Wars or Harry Potter) that number goes up 28 and you could probably make a good case for adding a few more to that list. Read the rest…

Pursue Godliness

This past Sunday we kicked off a brand-new series called Pursue: Chasing God in a Godless World.  For the next few weeks, with the story of King Asa in 2 Chronicles 14-16 as our guide, we’re going to talk about this very thing.  How can we be bold followers of Jesus in a culture where such a thing isn’t nearly as acceptable as it once was?  In this first part we lay the foundation for what follows.  If we’re going to run after Jesus, it’s going to take looking like God.  Thanks for reading.

Pursue Godliness

This past week was an anniversary of sorts, although probably not one you’ve ever heard of before.  Fifty-five years ago this past Friday, Walter Ciszek was released from prison in Soviet Russia and returned to the United Stated after more than 20 years in captivity.  As a young man in the 1930s, Ciszek, a Catholic, felt a call to ministry.  Specifically, he felt a call to the mission field.  So, stepping out on his faith, Ciszek headed for the U.S.S.R.  He was in Poland training for the work to which he had been called when Russia invaded.  Recognizing how perilous was the situation he was facing in Poland, Ciszek did what any bold, young missionary would do in his position, he head further east to serve in the Ural Mountains in central Russia.  In 1941, he was arrested and sentenced to five years in prison—much of it in solitary confinement.  While serving this sentence, he was sentenced to an additional 15 years in the Gulag, several years of which included hard labor.  Even once his hard labor term was complete, however, he was still held as a prisoner, now forced to work as a mechanic. Read the rest…