Category: From the Pastor’s Desk

Racism, inclusion, bias; they are all words that are emotionally and politically charged.  Sadly, throughout all of human history, on every continent, nations and people groups have fought each other.  Whether the division is racial, national, or even socio-economic, one group has always been battling the other.  Pride, power, and greed has kept these fires of division burning strong. All of this breaks the heart of God.  The world as He created it was designed for us to dwell together in peace.  The diversity we see among humans was designed as a beautiful thing, an expression of God’s creativity. Sin …

Psalm 33:16-22 reads: No king is saved by the multitude of an army; A mighty man is not delivered by great strength. A horse is a vain hope for safety; Neither shall it deliver any by its great strength. Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear Him, On those who hope in His mercy, To deliver their soul from death, And to keep them alive in famine. Our soul waits for the Lord; He is our help and our shield.  (NKJV) I’m just wondering, where is your hope today?  There is plenty to despair about.  It …

As we get older, we gain a treasure that cannot be had any other way: experience.   It can only be learned “the hard way”, however, its fruits can be shared.  A good person will try to pass on the treasures of wisdom he or she has gained by experience and a wise person will try to learn them.  Unfortunately, experience is often forgotten, underrated, or misused. It is sometimes forgotten by us, and we miss out on many important benefits thereby  repeating past mistakes and relearning things we once knew. It is often underrated, and people repeat mistakes  unnecessarily.  Finally, …

Today we have the privilege of hearing what God is doing in Central Africa.  Rev. Kevin Cassidy, director of advancement for Central Africa Baptist University, will be speaking here today in both our Sunday School and Morning Service.  He will encourage us with the great things God is doing in the lives of people around the world and challenge us with the mandate we have all been give to fulfill the Great Commission.  Kevin is an experienced pastor, serving churches in Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and Maryland before accepting this position at the University.  We look forward to his ministry with us …

Does God care about children?  I hope you don’t have to ask that.  All over the Bible we see God emphasizing the importance of children and the blessing that they are.  In the Gospels we see Christ highly valuing kids and rebuking His disciples for trying to keep them away from Him.  The big question is, what is our view of children? In some homes today, children are the best cared for they have ever been.  Doting on and spoiling children is presented as the norm, as the thing good parents do.  Yet while  more money than ever is being …

In the previous message on Revelation, we looked at the struggle of reconciling God’s love with the picture of His judgment painted in Revelation 6-22. That message discussed why bringing peace will require a massive final judgment.  In this next message on Revelation 6, we see the Lamb begin to open the scroll and judgment begins to fall.  The events pictured here are truly terrible, and they are only the beginning. This message will  not only take a look at the judgment, but discuss how the church is exempt.  We will take a brief look at the larger picture of …

What will it take to make everything right on the earth?  What will absolute justice look like, where people get what they deserve and evil is erased?  Will that ever happen?  The book of Revelation has the answers, but before looking at the details, we have to discuss the rational behind it all. In the study on Revelation 4, we saw how the holy God of the universe is deserving of all glory.  We saw that He alone possesses the right and authority to judge the earth and to do so justly.  In Revelation 5 we saw that Jesus, the …

We ask this question often.  Right now there are people thinking “Who is worthy to go out with?” or “Who is worthy to marry?” Businesses are asking “Who is worthy to hire?” or “Who is worthy of this contract?”.  Each November election the nation is answering the question “who is worthy to lead us?”.  In just a little over two years we will once again be seeking to answer the question, “Who is worthy to be our President?”  Anyone? Regrettably, we often are faced with compromises, picking the lesser of two evils. As important as the President question may be, …

In this information saturated world that we live in, facts and statistics are everywhere and can be accessed in milliseconds.  The problem is not knowing information, it is knowing the significance of it.  This is not a new problem! We have been challenged since the beginning to appreciating the significance of the information we have.  Our sense are constantly bombarding our mind with information and our brain has to sift through all that input and triage it according to importance.  The “sifting” process, however, is not always reliable as it is something we train. It is  largely built on prior …