A Pastor's Thoughts

For the purpose of this discussion, a regulation is a rule produced and enforced by a non-elected body.  For example the FDA is an unelected group of people and they produce rules and fines that are enforced by the power of the federal government.  The criminal code is not part of the regulations. All regulations are bad.  All regulations need to be repealed. All unelected agencies need to be disbanded and their employees fired.  When President Trump talks about the swamp and the deep state he is talking about all the organizations in the executive branch with all their millions of regulations. One reason, and perhaps the most important reason to do away with regulations is that they cost so much.  There have been studies which show that 1/2 of the cost of your food is paying for regulation.  So milk that is $4 would be $2 if there were no regulation.  Every regulation has an average cost increase of 2% over the base cost of an item.  Additionally, every regulation requires at leas

On Mission Blvd, in Hayward there is a church that seems to occupy the top floor of a small office and commercial building.  The name of the church is the “Apostolic Nation of Jesus Christ.”   Their tag line is, “Making disciples to change the world.”  I don’t think that their mission statement or tag line is biblical. Nowhere in the Bible are Christians commanded to “change the world” and nowhere in the New Testament does Christ say he is going to “change the world.”  In fact, the world is not redeemable, according to Christ and he is going to destroy it with fire and build a new one at the end of time. I think the motivation of trying to change the world is also misplaced.  Jesus himself said that if the world hated him, the world will hate his followers.  We see this today with persecution against Christians all over the world.  In reading the material from this church, it seems that they want to minimize this persecution.  If they get everyone saved and teach everyone Christian

9 / 3 = 3.  That is good division.  What I am watching on the TV this morning is sinful and evil division.  I am not taking sides, but this is what I saw and heard.  Last night a tax bill was passed and was sent to the president's desk for signing.  A normal thing that has happened millions of times during the life of this country.  No Democrats voted for it.  It was passed by Republican vote only.  Probably based on this, the Republicans held a party last night and this morning, expressing how proud they were of their vote. This morning, Democrats got on TV and said things like, 10,000 people were going to die because of this bill.  Tiny Tim was going to have his crutch taken away and all children would get coal in their stocking this Christmas, because of this bill.  In other words, one group is having a party celebrating this bill and the other group is saying that crutches will be taken away from crippled children.  That is a division like I have never seen in normal governme

I got hit with a red light camera ticket the other day.  The traffic light was green.  I did not slow down, and entered the intersection.  The yellow lasted 2 seconds, then the traffic light turned red and SNAP my picture was taken.  I got the first of two mailings which told me to confirm that it was me driving.  The camera takes a picture of the driver and of my rear license plate.  The camera does not take a picture of the intersection and there is no video to prove what I am saying is true. I called the court to find the law on red light cameras.  I was told that ever since June 1 of 2017, if one inch of a car is in the intersection when the light turns read, a traffic violation occurs.  In other words people cannot enter the intersection under green and have it turn yellow then red very quickly.  That is a traffic violation. I hate red light cameras.  The primary reason I hate them is that there is no human to see the big picture or the entire situation.  Well, there is a huma

There is much talk about a tax bill going through the government process right now.  Some say it favors this group and ignores that group and others say that they will not vote for it unless there are changes.  That is fine.  The Bible is clear and Jesus was very clear, we pay the taxes that are owed.  We do if for one simple reason, the government has a sword and can do great bodily harm and even kill.  So we pay taxes to stay out of trouble. Taxes steer the economic direction of a country.  If you tax something, you will get less of it.  If you subsidize something or give tax credit to something, you will get more of it.  That is simple economics.  So what a government chooses to tax is what they will get less of and what a government chooses to subsidize, they will get more of it.  With the current plan, for example, it is more expensive, tax-wise, to be married than to be single and co-habitate.  This is well known.  It is called the “marriage penalty” by tax experts.  Senior cit

To be vindicated means to be proven right.  People can be vindicated from wrongful accusations or from denial of rights.  Everyone wants to be right and correct in what they believe and what they do.  For those who knowingly do wrong, they want to avoid getting caught. For the Christian, it became a dangerous and delicate move to stand for our own rights or to prove ourselves right, even when we are standing for the absolute truth of Scripture.  This is because in modern society, if I prove myself right against some accusation, then I am also proving the accuser wrong.  Proving people, ideas political positions, ethic groups, sexual orientation right or wrong is what today’s most political climate is all about.  The result, as both sides claim, is dividing, not uniting.  If believers in Christ are divided over political rightness, then the kingdom of God suffers and Christ is not glorified.  If, however, people who follow Christ can stop seeking vindication, then unity in the body of

Last Sunday was the third Sunday of Advent, traditionally called the Advent of Joy.  When the angels announced to the shepherds, that first Christmas morning, they said there was “good news of great joy to all people.”  These were the first words spoke to the world concerning the joy of Christmas. The good news, the angels spoke about is the good news of Jesus Christ.  The good news will be fulfilled and filled in after the cross, yet this morning the whole process started.  The birth of Christ proved that God was serious and that this salvation spoken of in the Old Testament was real.  The good news to the Jewish people is that the Law was going to be fulfilled for them.  Striving and working for God’s favor was a thing of the past.  Belief in Jesus Christ, salvation by grace, through faith was the new order of the day. The second aspect of why the first Christmas was joyful was that now, God’s salvation would be open to all people, everywhere.  The gift of salvation through Chris

Today I came to the church and there was a camper in our parking lot.  I approached the camper and a man who identified as Brian came out to meet me.  I informed him that he could not live here and he had to move.  He then explained to me the last 30 years of his life, moment by moment.  Apparently everyone is against him and he cannot get a break.  All these things that he is owed by the universe have not been appearing.  Nowhere in the explanation of how he got here were any choices that he made.  Everything was done to him.  He bears no responsibility. When he arrived, apparently he had a tooth infection.  He explained that all he could do was sit in the cab of the his camper and sleep.  I understand that and I am sorry that he has an infection, but that does not answer the question of why he chose my church parking lot to sleep in. Next to his camper were all sorts of bicycle parts, chair parts and baby carriage parts.  He explained that he was using my parking lot to divide up

Thoughts and desires for revenge is built into the sinful nature of people.  From the very beginning people who have been wronged looked for ways to “pay back” the offender.  Books, movies and TV shows all rely on the idea of people getting revenge for some past wrong.  In Genesis 4:23, a man named Lamech said this: Adah and Zillah, hear my voice; you wives of Lamech, listen to what I say: I have killed a man for wounding me, a young man for striking me. If Cain's revenge is sevenfold, then Lamech's is seventy-sevenfold. Revenge was in the heart of people from the very beginning. Today there is much talk about revenge.  People seem to have long memories about being wronged and they hold onto a grudge, seeking for an opportunity for revenge.  I have met several people that fantasize over how they will have their vengeance on someone for a long ago offense.  They have no plans of carrying out any physical revenge, but think about how it might happen.  They think it gives t

There is much talk about socialism in today’s political world.  Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer are all admitted socialist.  They use the term “progressives” which is a fancy word for economic socialist and philosophically enlightened. There is a book written some time ago called The Forgotten Man .  In the book there is a story.  The story begins with person ‘A’ being in need.  The need can be great or small.  Person ‘B’ wants to fill that need so person ‘B’ takes money from person ‘C’ and gives it to person ‘A’.  ‘A’ appreciates person ‘B’ and ‘C’ is forgotten.  This is the story of classic socialism in a welfare society. Socialism means the redistribution of wealth.  Any need that exists is paid for by the government taking money from one person and giving it to another.  Socialism seeks equality in result, so if one person makes $10,000 in a year and other makes $100,000 in a year, the $100,000 person gives $50,000 to the government, the governme

Some time ago, I heard someone say that the best purchase for anyone today is to buy time. At first that seemed a bit odd and I was not sure how to do that.  I did some research and the idea of buying time means to buy something that frees up time or gives some time back.  An example would be a clothes washer and drying that are in the home.  It frees up time from going to the laundromat and standing watch over clothes.  A dishwasher frees up time from doing dishes by hand. In response to this line of thinking, we noticed that Roomba , robot vacuums were on deep discount for Cyber Monday.  We looked into that brand and other brands and finally settled on getting a Roomba. Our reasoning was this:  The vacuum that our family has owned and used for decades is a Kirby .  Kirbys are workhorse vacuums and when a house is mostly carpeted, they work great.  When we upgraded our house to hardwood floors, the Kirby became a hassle.  It has a great hardwood floor attachment, but to disassemb

I became a pastor when I was 44.  I had worked in the corporate world as a computer programmer for decades before that time.  I worked in several companies and made the rounds of startups during the dot.com era.  In every company there were divisions.  I do not mean the normal type of divisions like between Human Resources and Engineering.  I mean personal divisions between co-workers. There would always be one or more employee that was not trusted or that could not be counted on.  I knew a man in one company that would come in during the middle of the night and do work that destroyed or deleted other people’s work.  For months people thought that it was computer glitches or another division using the same server.  Then it became clear that a rogue employee was to blame.  The difficulty was that the management liked what he was doing.  They saw him as a “go getter” so he simply became untrustworthy in the engineering group.  No one told him anything, accounts were not open to him, p

San Francisco has shown the rest of America what it believes about laws and crimes and evidence.  The lawyer for the murderous illegal alien said that this is an indictment on Trumps wall and immigration policy.  So this is what we have become.  We are tribal, and when our side wins, no matter the cost we cheer and when the other side wins, no matter the cost, we riot. The murder of Kate Steinle was a national case, mentioned many times  and used as a plank for the 2016 campaign.  Everyone who followed that campaign heard that name and heard about the case.  San Francisco just stuck their finger in the eye of the Trump presidency and in the eye of every law abiding American. Let November 30 be an annual remembrance of the divided, tribal attitude of America today and may it be called Kate Steinle Day

From the first time pastor schools, or seminaries, came into existence, the plan was to train saved, dedicated, ministry oriented people in the business of being a pastor.  Most, if not all seminaries and Bible colleges in America required a statement of faith.  These schools wanted to know the salvation story, or testimony of their students, mostly to confirm they are saved. Over the past several years, seminaries have stopped requiring this statement.  It has been explained to me two ways.  First, many seminaries now teach counseling and social work.  These occupations are not people who preach the word, so the thought was that these people need not be saved.  Second, attendance and enrollment in seminaries were decreasing.  There are many factors to account for this, but to keep enrollment up, these schools reduced the entrance requirements, which included a statement of faith. The result is that seminaries and Bible schools are graduating people for the purpose of being pastors

Education is a big business in America.  It has been reported that the largest debt  of people under 25 is student loans.   President Bill Clinton opened the way for anyone to get a guaranteed loan and a chance to go to college.  Others have supported the idea because education is big business. Some occupations need a certain level of education.  A medical doctor needs to go through various stages of education and training before they can be called a doctor.  The assumption, when we go to a doctor, is that they have completed the required steps of education, and that they know something.  I was told by a doctor, some time ago, that someone needs to be at the bottom of the class in medical school.  Yet, they were still in school. Pastors are also a profession that requires a certain level of education.  Pastor’s education is not as official as medical education because there is no state license for a pastor.  Yet, it is important for a pastor to be education for several reasons. T

I am still fighting the county.  Every since 2010, every year, they claim we are no longer a non-profit and we must send cooperation documents, tax-free applications and many other forms.  Our two renting churches must also do that every year.  There is no way to perpetually call us a church and when we change, I will notify them.  No, they must demand forms and claim they don’t get them and just send us bills and penalties. Today I called the county again.  All forms were sent into their office back in October.  I received a return receipt on October 10.  They still have not opened their mail or even looked to see if they have my forms.  When I call, they say that they are busy and they will get around to it when they feel like it.  When I consider the private companies I deal with, if one of them put a $9,000 charge on my credit card and were lax and not interested in fixing it, I would immediately stop doing business with them and call the credit card company to fight this for me.

Everyone has bad days.  A bad day is usually seen as a day when all the planned things do not work right or take too much time or just don’t happen.  Bad days can occur when something unexpected or unwanted comes in to disrupt everything.  Bad days come to everyone, and thankfully they do not come every day, I have been pondering the idea of being grateful.   Rabbi Daniel Lapin says that gratefulness is the key to happiness.  If someone wants to be happy and optimistic, he says, then start each day by writing three things they are grateful for.  Each days list has to be different than the previous day, no repeats.  So I have been thinking about this since I tend to not be a very optimistic person. Then today happened.  I ran several errands and got the wrong things and went to the wrong stores.  Once thing that had to get done today was to cover the vent hole that leads to the crawlspace under our house.  On Sunday night a young skunk got under there and let loose. We know it was

“Hope is on the way” was the biggest pile of manure that any politician could say.  This is because politicians and government cannot bring hope, direct people to hope or even explain hope to the masses.  A good way to think of hope is to think of it as a favorable view of the future.  Someone who has hope has a positive outlook on the future, while the hopeless have a negative outlook on the future.  So when politicians promote hope, people gobble it up because they have not been hopeful for a very long time.  People lose all hope when the political landscape promises the moon and never delivers anything.  Trust is eroded and hope is lost. When people promise hope, they will always fail.  This is because people, governments, institutions and systems cannot predict the future or even control the future.  Therefore they cannot plan for the outcome of things.  God is the only one who can promise hope and make sure that promise is never broken. Jesus was born into an oppressive, capri

The Saturday after Thanksgiving is the traditional time our church decorates for Christmas. We put up garland and ribbon and banners and a large tree in the corner.  I love how our church looks during Christmas time.  It is bright and cheerful and it celebrates the glorious gift of love that God gave to his people.  People from our church all come and the team sets up everything.  It is a great time of celebration and fellowship during the setup.  We love to do that. Some Christians do not like Christmas trees and would never put one in their church.  They say that it is a pagan symbol and that December 25 is not Jesus’ real birthday anyway.  I say, “lighten up.”  No one but God, Mary and Joseph know exactly when Jesus was born.  This was for satay reasons, mostly.  Because of that we don’t know exactly when Jesus was born, but I want to celebrate the birthday of my Lord and Savior.  So do many others, so someone made up the date of December 25 and it has been on the books for close

We live in a world of comparisons, put-downs and bullying.  Instead of striving for excellence and doing their best, people find and comment on what is wrong with everyone else.  Perhaps this is how they feel superior in the world.  This has created a very negative and complaint centered world. Recently I heard someone say, Gratitude is the proper seat of happiness .  I heard this on Thanksgiving day, 2017.  This idea here is that if you want to be happy, show some gratitude.  Be grateful and express it and happiness will come to you.  This is because negative and critical speech causes our brains to focus on that way of thinking.  It is a downward spiral and can lead to a very grumpy and negative day. Being grateful is simple.  Pause for a moment and think of things or people you like, then either speak about it to someone or write it down.  There is a practice of writing five things that you are grateful for every night before bed.  This puts the mind in a state of gratefulness.

"There is one day that is ours. Thanksgiving Day is the one day that is purely American."  O. Henry Ronald Reagan’s Thanksgiving Proclamation,  September 15, 1983 Since the Pilgrims observed the initial Thanksgiving holiday in 1621, this occasion has served as a singular expression of the transcending spiritual values that played an instrumental part in the founding of our country. One hundred and twenty years ago, in the midst of a great and terrible civil conflict, President Lincoln formally proclaimed a national day of Thanksgiving to remind those "insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God" of this Nation's bounty and greatness. Several days after the dedication of the Gettysburg battlefield, the United States celebrated its first national Thanksgiving. Every year since then, our Nation has faithfully continued this tradition. The time has come once again to proclaim a day of thanksgiving, an occasion for Americans to express gratitude to

There are two types of people in the world.  Those who are saved and being saved and those who are lost.  Those who are lost are living in rebellion to the righteous and holy God who created them.  They hold themselves as their own god and do what is right in their own eyes.  They are futile in their thinking.  This means that they do not think straight.  When we see someone shoot up a Las Vegas concert and wonder why or what motivated him, we have to understand that his thinking was futile.  This does not mean that he was mentally ill in the classic sense, but just evil and totally depraved in the moral and spiritual sense. Every day new people are brought forward and being accused of sexual immorality.  They are accused by people who sleep around, watch porn and lust.  The perpetrators and the accusers are futile in their thinking.  They are coming at life with futile thinking.  Most cannot tell the difference between righteousness and evil.  Most only fear one thing:  getting caug

There are two basic views on the origin on morals.  One view is that morals are autonomous.  This view is held by evolutionists.  They believe that morals evolved as people and society evolved.  Morals are a way, they say for people to get along and behave in groups.  Morals, therefore, change as society changes.  People can also propose changes to morals and campaign for those changes.  Entertainment and writings can push the envelope of morals and, over time, change them.  Morals are not based on anything, so they are flexible. The other view is that morals are revealed.  The biblical view is that God, the creator of everything, has a proposal on how the created order should behave.  For humans, God gave the law.  The law is a set of rules that govern people’s behavior.  For the first people, there was one rule or one law.  Adam and Eve failed and sin entered the world.  God wants to limit our sin, so he gave rules, called the law.  From the law, moral and ethical behavior emerged.

Yesterday I preached John 21:24-25, the last two verses of the Gospel of John.  I spent over 5 years preaching though 21 chapters and over 800 verses.  This is the first Gospel I have preached in my 12 years at Cornerstone Fellowship. The Gospel of John is not considered to be like Matthew, Mark and Luke.  Those other three are considered more biographical.  Critics say that John’s Gospel is out of order and fantastical in its presentation.  It is, in fact, different than the other three, but it is not out of order and nothing in that book is fantasy, although it may be fantastic. John begins with Jesus in eternity.  The other Gospels start with Jesus in a manger.  They contain stories of shepherds and Wise Men and visits by angels and other things  most would associate with the “Christmas Story.”  In verse 1 of chapter 1, John declares that Jesus is God and eternal.  He then takes us into John the Baptist and into the life of Jesus. John wrote a different Gospel than Luke becaus

The Bible is God’s revelation to his people and the world.  The Bible is timeless, which means it is new and applicable in 2000 BC and 2017 AD.  The Bible is universal, meaning that it can speak to any culture, any people group or tribe, nation or language and it is timeless meaning that its message works in any age. That being the case, how is it for a Christian to live today.  There are Christians in all manner of situations today from opulence to inject poverty, from acceptance by the culture to being hunted and persecuted.  I shall restrict my comment to life in America and specifically the San Francisco Bay Area.  Famous church planters like Rick Warren and Bill Hybils have come to the San Francisco Bay Area and tried to plant churches and failed.  Their conclusion was that the Bay Area is the modern day Babylon, a culture that is completely anti-God.   I read an article once that said they shook the dust off their feet and went back home.  My experience living in this area is tha

Some have said that this is the worst time to be a believer in Jesus Christ because of the oppression and persecution.  Those calls are coming from Americans.  My thoughts are that we know nothing of oppression and persecution in America. In the time of Jesus, the world government was Roman.  They were sexually immoral, arbitrary in taxation and all it took was the word of an official and you would be killed.  As Christianity spread, Nero, among others, made it national policy that Christians were to be hunted and killed.  We all know the stories of Christians being thrown to wild beasts for sport.  Nero would dip Christians in tallow and set them on fire to light his garden parties.  The history of the post-cross world has not been favorable.  Even when Constantine became a “believer” the governments brand of Christianity was not the most pure. People came to America first, to escape religious persecution.  The church of England, a government based church, did not like free thinke

“Timing is everything.”  This is such a truism, such a universal thought that finding who said it first is impossible.  A quick internet search on the source of this quote yields over 200 people who have said it in song, print, interviews and the like, in just the last 50 years. Timing is the difference between something that works right and something that just happens.  Memorable events are timed perfectly.  Every person who can tell a joke has timing.  I have known a few people throughout my life who simply could not tell joke.  Their problem is that they have no timing.  Every actor that is well paid has timing.  Every preacher that has people listen to the has timing.  My best sermons are one's where my timing is great. Successful politicians are masters of timing.  Releasing reports at just the right time to be ignored or featured on the evening news.  Announcing accusations only work when they are stated at the right time.  Too early or too late and no one will care. Go