The Small Branch

  This morning I was reading in Luke chapter 7, about Simon the Pharisee and the “sinful woman” and it hit me.   I have been struggling with pride my whole life, most of us do, I guess, but the last year or so it has been more and more obvious to me.   Have you ever noticed how much more we see our sin as we get to know the Father better?   Anyway, it hit me that I am, in many ways, a Pharisee.   I often think that my idea of how things should be is actually the way things should be.   As I was answering the questions in my study book, it became clear.   Simon was looking at the outside of a person, only her past actions, her clothes, her situation, etc.   How many times do I do that?   I was raised in a Christian home, but it was also clear that being a “successful, upper middle class American” was equally important and people were definitely judged by that standard.   I have worked in a private Christian school where students were ma...

  I don’t know that I truly appreciated the sunshine until I   moved to the Black Hills of South Dakota.   I spent the first 37 years of my life in the southeastern United States where it is often cloudy and always humid.   Here in western South Dakota, not only is it drier, the sky just seems bigger and bluer and the sun brighter.   Some of that is because there are less trees and the trees we do have are shorter than the very tall pines of Georgia.   Some of my appreciation of sunshine is because it does get a little cold here in the winter and I am grateful for the warmth.   Today, we went on our second hike of the season.  My daughter and I try to hike most weeks May-September (although we haven’t been good about sticking with it in previous years).  The Black Hills have many great places to hike, although I am partial to Custer State Park.  I am amazed at the difference in how I feel when we are being consistent with hiking....

  2 Corinthians 10:5 tells us that we are to “take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.”   This phrase is part of a sentence and larger section discussing spiritual warfare.   A large part of fighting the sin in our lives, those strongholds that don’t seem to let go, begins in the mind.   Just because we don’t act on our thoughts doesn’t mean we haven’t sinned.   Letting thoughts that are not obedient to Christ run rampant in our minds is sin.   Yes, just the thoughts.   It seems like our thought life should be private and not censored because no one else can see it.   But our thought life greatly affects our actions, even if we don’t go as far as we are thinking about going.   When we harbor bitter or angry thoughts towards situations or people, our words come out bitter and angry, even to people not involved in the original thoughts.   When we harbor lustful thoughts, even from fiction stories, we begin to be unsatisfied...

  Dealing with our sin is an important part of our walk with Christ.   We start the journey by repentance, because of the faith He has given us (there are many who debate which comes first, faith or repentance, and I’m not really qualified to join that debate other than to recommend, again, The Doctrine of Repentance by Thomas Watson).   We continue the journey by repenting as sin in our lives is revealed to us.   Today, though, I’m not really addressing dealing with our own sin.   Today, I have a lot of questions about dealing with other people’s sin. We all know that the sins of others can affect us, sometimes in very detrimental ways.  Sometimes, we are directly hurt by their sin, whether  physically, like with a drunk driver causing an accident, or emotionally, like with an adult child who chooses rebellion rather than obedience to the Lord.  Sin also has affected creation and means that we have natural disasters like hurricanes, floods,...

The dictionary defines a prepper as , “a person who believes a catastrophic disaster or emergency is likely to occur in the future and makes active preparations for it, typically by stockpiling food, ammunition , and other supplies. "there's no agreement among preppers about what disaster is most imminent”.” So, basically, preppers are preparing for something that might happen in ways that might help.  But what about something that is a sure thing?  Do we prepare for that?  Unfortunately, most do not.  Jesus coming again to judge the world is a SURE THING.  It will DEFINITELY happen.  And repenting and believing in Jesus is the only thing that will save us.  And not believing something will happen doesn’t make it not happen. We need to prepare for the sure thing and not be anxious about tomorrow (Matthew 6:25-34).  Sure, some common sense preparedness is a good idea.  Look at COVID.  Everything shut down, so we needed to hav...

 Here's a question:  if you have a toddler and he is trying to climb into the fireplace while there is a fire burning in it, is it more loving to let him climb into the fire because he wants to and you want him to be happy OR is it more loving to snatch him away from it and paddle his behind so that he knows not to do that again?   Why do we think God should respond to us "climbing into the flames" of our sin any differently?   And why do we respond to others' sin by excusing it, claiming that we are being loving?  Be loving.  Speak truth.