What would you do if you could visit every nation on earth, even if it took years and years to complete that list, from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe? Some might just want to visit and have their passport stamped. After all, how amazing would it be to say you had set foot on every nation! Some might want to buy a small trinket or souvenir to have proof of their visit to every nation. One British man, though, recently completed a very different type of worldwide tour. In the city of Athens, he ran a marathon. That run added Greece as the 196th–and final–nation (recognized by the United Nations) that he…

Religious surveys have revealed that there is a growing number of people in our society that are now being identified as “the nones.” The nones are people who profess no affiliation with any particular religious group, philosophy, doctrine, etc. A significant amount of material has been written about the nones. They are the subject of numerous lectures, seminars, workshops, etc. Religious leaders have given much attention to trying to figure out why people profess no religious preference and how to reach them.   It may be of interest to know that, according to one article I read, there is one reason for a person identifying as a none that stands out above all…

The title of this post is the title that some man gave to chapter 14 of the book of Hosea. For weeks (possibly a few months), our Tuesday afternoon ladies’ Bible class has been studying the book of the prophet Hosea. It is uncomfortable, to say the least. Those first three chapters are really hard for us to understand since God tells Hosea to marry a wife of whoredom – a prostitute if you will – a woman named Gomer (if that’s your name, I’m sorry). We recognize that Hosea represents God in this writing and that Gomer, his wife, represents Israel. The northern Kingdom of Israel is involved in many different sins…

I’ve watched a couple of programs that have been on television lately about the history of college football. I hope to watch all of them at some point, but have not been able to do so. One of the programs I watched was focused on how the entire process of recruiting young men (boys) to play football has changed over the years. Two scenes from that program still stand out in my mind. The first scene was an interview with a man who played football for a legendary college coach a number of years ago. He described one memorable Thanksgiving dinner. At the time, he was a senior in high school. During the dinner, the…

One of the questions that I receive often as a preacher comes from people who are unhappy with their circumstances. In their efforts to steer their life in a certain direction, when things just don’t seem to work out the way they hoped, they ask in their discouragement, “Why is all of this happening to me?” Or maybe, “Is God punishing me?” Just google: “Is God Punishing Me?” You’ll find out that people ask this all the time and there are a lot of wild and false answers coming back to them. But I want to attempt to answer the question from Scripture. In other words, why don’t we just…

I suppose that it has been somewhere around forty years since the suggestion was made. I lived in a small community and was preaching for a relatively small church. The good people of this church had taken a chance on a fellow with absolutely no experience in “full-time preaching.”    I decided that one way I could serve would be to conduct a regular Bible class at the only nursing home in town. I didn’t realize that somebody besides the residents was listening to that class. I found out that this was the case when the lady who served as the activity director approached me with the following suggestion: “You need to talk…