A Pastor's Thoughts

America has various levels of government.  I, personally, have a city government, a county government, a state government and a federal government.  Because we are in a situation where people can vote for the people in government, I think about what constitutes good government.  I have come up with simple rules on how I judge governments.  If they do well, I vote for them to stay.  If they do poorly, I vote them out. The first and really only rule I have is this:  A good government will leave me alone.  That's it.  This simple rule has come about because in the days of my youth, I rarely, if ever interfaced with the government.  Police and fire people would come to my elementary school, and as representatives of the government, they would talk about their work.  So, my rule back then was this:  If I needed help from the government, I would find a police or fire person. As I grew up, after High School, I joined the military. ...

From time to time over the last decade or so people have come to my church and called my church.  People call asking for money, work and lodging.  I am intrigued by their motivation in calling my church and wondering why they choose churches in general  and Cornerstone specifically. Reading through the book of Acts, it is clear that church people help church people.  Everyone brought their money and put it in common, not to feed the entire country but to feed those in the church.  Yet there are those today who believe that if they pick up a phone book and start calling random churches, people will give money, houses, clothing and employment.  The way people speak to me indicates that they feel I owe them something, like they are entitled. My belief is that people that call or visit my church are also calling every other church in the phonebook.  For them it must be some sort of lottery.  Every church I know in the area does not help anyone tha...

Halloween is now the third most profitable holiday.  Christmas wins, by far.  Valentines Day is second and Halloween is third.  More and more people are decorating their homes with the latest in lights and animatronics and the cost of a good Halloween showing is going up. Albert Mohler stated that the themes of Halloween are getting darker and darker,  more satanic and evil focused than ever before.  He attributes this trend to the slasher movies of the 70s and 80s and the fascination with the occult that seems to be everywhere these days.  Vampires, who used to be portrayed as evil monster are now sold as teenage heartthrobs.  Zombie fantasies are all over TV and there are even people who are preparing for a imminent zombie apocalypse. Young people may find it fun to play with the spiritual realm but people of all ages need to realize is there there really is a spiritual part of our physical world.  It is not a counterpart place, but a differ...

Ever since Cain Killed Abel there has been division in the world.  The classic division is between good and evil, light and dark, righteousness and wickedness.  This type of division exists everywhere and cannot be avoided.  Through the millennia, people have learned to divide themselves many additional ways.  Language, ethnicity, geography, skin color, national origin, income level, education level and anything else people can think of to label and divide ourselves. In Galatians 3:28 , Paul explains that in Christ, there are no divisions.  There are no divisions because everyone is saved the same way, to the same level.  We all have the desperate need for Christ.  No one brings anything to the cross to aid or improve the work of Christ.  We all start at the very bottom and Christ lifts us up.  So in Christ we are all the same.  Paul explains that ethnicity difference, economic differences, even gender differences make no difference in...

Sunday, October 29, 2017 is Reformation Sunday.  Reformation day is October 31 of each year.  When we speak of the reformation and reformed churches, we have to look back 500 years to know what they mean. Martin Luther was born in 1483, into the Holy Roman Empire which was not holy, nor Roman nor an empire, but the Catholic Church wanted to regain its political and international power that it seemed to enjoy at the end of the true Roman Empire so they made this title for their influence.  Politics, power, influence and cash were on the mind of the Cardinals and the Pope at the time Luther was born. The trigger point for Martin Luther was the practice of the Roman Catholic Church and the idea of purgatory.  Purgatory does not exist, yet the Catholic teachers needed a way to explain what happened when people accept Christ then fall away and sin greatly.  Around 1160 someone suggested the idea of Purgatory, a place where sinners pay for their own sin.  It ...

…that every Christian must be able to answer.  What are these two questions?  A Christian must be able to tell people how they were saved.  If someone seeking God asks a Christian how they were saved, there needs to be a truthful, sort answer for that question.  Second, a Christian must be able to tell anyone else how they may be saved.  So if someone seeking God asks a Christian how they might be saved, the Christian must have a truthful, short answer. There is a one word description of each of these answer is known as the gospel .  Gospel literally means good news .  Evangelism means sharing or telling good news .  The one difference between telling how I was saved and telling how you may be saved is that I may include the events of my salvation, which would turn my story into a testimony .  A testimony contains the gospel and how a single individual came to accept it.  All testimonies are different, yet the gospel remains the sam...