Verses For The Week

 I Corinthians 13:13 -- "And now these three remain; faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love."

Psalm 119:114 -- "You are my refuge and my shield; I have put my hope in your word."

A Word On Sunday

 I am posting today because I feel as if I really need to communicate something. One of the reasons that I began this blog almost a decade ago is that I wanted to tell people that Jesus loves and cares about them. 

There are still many people in this world who don't realize that Jesus loved the world so much that He was willing to leave Heaven and come to this Earth in human form. He showed us how to live by living a life without sin. He was the Lamb of God who bore our sins in His body on the cross. Love kept Him on the cross even as people mocked and ridiculed Him. He died because of His great love for us. He wanted us to be free from sin, death, hell and the grave.

Jesus loves everyone, and He invites everyone to come to Him and receive new life.

I don't know all those who read the blog. I hope that you have accepted Jesus as Savior and Lord. If you have not, put your trust in the loving Lord Jesus today.

If you have come to know Jesus through reading the blog over the years, I hope that you will post a comment. I don't always see the comments due to some glitch in the blog, but please try if you can. May God bless you.

Weekend Sermon -- Christian Characteristics -- Love

 Welcome to the sermon. I hope that everyone had a happy Thanksgiving Day. I am thankful for this blog.

This week, we will continue our series on the characteristics that should be present in the life of a Christian who is growing in the Lord. The characteristic that we will explore more about is love.

Love is what God is all about. In fact, I John 4:8 tells us that God is love. God loves all that He has created. He loved the world so much that He sent His Son the Lord Jesus into this world to provide the way to forgiveness of sins and eternal life in the Father's house.

Jesus is our example of what it means to live a life of love just as He is our example in all of our existence. Jesus' love led Him to stay on the cross in spite of the pain and shame. He suffered for us because of His great love for us. Jesus even loved and forgave His persecutors by asking the Father to forgive them. 

In order to imitate and obey Jesus, love must be a characteristic of our lives. Jesus gave the commandment that we are to love one another. 

The Bible tells us that we are to love our brothers and sisters in the faith. Jesus also told us that we are to love our enemies as well. 

One thing that is true of God's love is that it seeks what is best for the other. As followers of the Lord, we must seek to do that which is best for those whom we know. One of the most loving things that we can ever do for another person is to share with them the truth about Jesus and His love and forgiveness.

One of the great chapters in the Bible that tells us what love is all about is I Corinthians 13. This chapter tells us that love is kind. It leads us to be patient people who forgive others. It leads us help others to reach their full potential. When we love, we work for the good of this world. We work to help people in the hard times of their lives.

Love is what Jesus is all about. He gave His life out of love. He is not willing that any should perish. Jesus invites everyone to come unto Him, and that includes you. If you have never accepted Jesus as Savior and Lord, I hope that you will do that today. Experiencing the love of Jesus will lead you to love others. Amen.

Prayer Requests

Please continue to pray for an end to the coronavirus pandemic. Pray that the sick will quickly recover.

Pray for those recovering from storm damage in Central America, and in other parts of the world.

Peace is needed around the world. Pray for peace in Ethiopia, Syria, Libya and Yemen.

Our prayer focus countries this week are Bangladesh and Benin.

Next week, we will continue with our current sermon series. I will post the verses on Monday and a review on Wednesday. May God bless you all.

Happy Thanksgiving and a Review

 Tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day, so I would like to wish all of my readers in the United States a Happy Thanksgiving. I hope you have a great day.

I have a different kind of book review today. The book for this week is "Who Killed The Fonz?" by James Boice. I am a big fan of the American TV  show Happy Days, so when I saw this book at the library, I knew I had to read it. 

This book is set 20 years after the end of the TV program. Richie is a screenwriter in Hollywood who is currently down on his luck. He gets word that his old friend Fonzie has died in a motorcycle crash. Richie goes back to Milwaukee for the funeral and discovers that Fonzie's death wasn't an accident at all. Along with his old friends Ralph and Potsie, Richie attempts to find out who killed the Fonz.

If you are a fan of Happy Days, you will enjoy reading this story about what the author imagines happened to the characters down through the years. This isn't the outcome I imagined for the characters, but it is interesting nonetheless. 

Verses For The Week

 Psalm 100:4 -- "Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise; give thanks to Him, and praise His name."

I Corinthians 15:57 -- "But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ."

Weekend Sermon -- Christian Characteristics -- Thankfulness

 This is the day the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it.

Today, we will continue our current series of messages dealing with Christian characteristics. Today, we will talk about thankfulness, and that works out well since the Thanksgiving holiday is this week in the US.

The Bible tells us that God's people are to be a thankful people. I Thessalonians 5:18 tells us to give thanks in all things. Psalm 107:1 says, "Give thanks to the Lord for He is good." Thankfulness should be in our hearts since we serve a God who is good, kind and wonderful.

As I've mentioned here on the blog many times, we always need to look to Jesus, because He is our example in all things. Jesus gave thanks. One place we see this is during the miracle of the feeding of the 5,000. Before Jesus distributed the bread and the fish, He gave thanks for the food that they were all about to eat.

It is easy for a Christian to be thankful, because we have so much to be thankful for. II Corinthians 9:15 says, "Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift." That gift is the Lord Jesus. Jesus died for us so that we could have forgiveness of sins and atonement with the Father. We can have a relationship with the ruler of the universe, and that is an awesome thing to be thankful for.

James 1:17 let's us know that every good and perfect gift comes from above. Everything we have in this life that is good comes from God. He has given us our food, clothes and treasured relationships. I know that I have much to be thankful for. The Lord wants us to tell Him that we are thankful for all that He has done for us. Amen.

Prayer Requests

Please pray for an end to the coronavirus pandemic.

Please pray that the storms predicted for my area will not produce too much rain. Also, please pray that I can quickly find a new part-time job.

Central America has experienced some bad storms recently. Pray that the people will receive the aid that they need.

Continue to pray for peace in Syria, Yemen, Ethiopia, Libya and Afghanistan.

For our prayer focus countries this week, let us pray for Bosnia and Maldives.

Next week, we will continue our sermon series. I will post the verses on Monday and a review on Wednesday. May God bless you all.

Good Wildlife Conservation Books

 Alan Rabinowitz was an expert on big cats with a special expertise in Jaguar conservation. He worked for the Wildlife Conservation Society for many years before leading Panthera which is an organization committed to big cat conservation around the world.

Mr. Rabinowitz wrote several very good books. Three that I would like to recommend are "Chasing the Dragon's Tail", "Beyond the Last Village", and "An Indomitable Beast." All three of these are very well done and informative. They give a lot of good information about wildlife conservation and saving big cats like tigers and jaguars.