Bible Reading: 2 Corinthians 4:7-18 Have you ever felt that the pressure is too much for you, and wanted to give up. Despite all that God has done for us there are still times when we come under tremendous pressure and feel like giving up. Even church life can be a pressure. After listing all … Continue reading How not to lose heart.
I’m sure it’s the little boy still hiding in my 57-year-old paralyzed body, but I enjoy trying to pull off a good April Fools Day joke on Mary. In our thirty-two years of marriage, I probably have a 75% success rate.
It can be a real challenge to carry out a successful April fools joke with ALS because I can’t speak so I have to attempt to fool her via email or using my computer’s (no inflection) robot voice (the only “voice” I’ve had for the last twenty years).
As I’m sure you know, April Fools Day and Easter (the day we celebrate Christ’s resurrection from the dead) fall on the same day this year. The two have not fallen on the same day since 1956.
Are Christians foolsfor believing that Christ was literally raised from the dead?
Atheists, agnostics and those of other faiths, believe it…
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Franklin Graham, the eldest son of the Rev. Billy Graham, who died last month at the age of 99, shared with his followers on social media what’s written on the “simple” marker on his father’s grave.
On Twitter, Graham wrote that his father “was laid to rest on the grounds of @TheBGLibrary” beside his wife, Ruth, and the etching on the marker reads:
Billy Graham
Preacher of the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ
John 14:6
The verse reads, “Jesus answered, ‘I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.'”
In another tweet, Graham wrote that his father has said, “I’m prepared to die, in fact I’m looking forward to it—And when you’re prepared to die, you’re also prepared to live.”
Earlier, he explained on the Today show the reason behind the epitaph: “When my mother passed away, we knew…
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And this is the testimony: that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son.
1 John 5:11
For nearly a century, Martha Mossberg celebrated her birthday on August 11. Then she needed her birth certificate for a cruise, and imagine her surprise when she saw the real date of her birth—August 4, 1917. She was a week older than she thought. When she turned 100 earlier this year, she celebrated on the right day. Her birth certificate left no doubt.
As Christians, we have a birth certificate. The moment we trust Christ as Savior, our names are recorded in the Lamb’s Book of Life, and the whole Word of God becomes a personal birth certificate—our document assuring us of salvation.
The Lord doesn’t want His children worrying about whether they are truly His children—whether they have really been born again. When we believe on the…
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by Cecelia Lester The thought recently came to me that we are all needy people. Some of us are not aware of the needs we have. Our primary need is that of salvation. “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (2 … Continue reading Needy People
In the midst of a trial, the greatest temptation we face is to hunker down and wait for the storm to pass. I don’t believe this is ever God’s will.
We tend to view trials as a kind of imprisonment, thinking our life is on hold until the day we’re released from the grip of the life challenge. ALS has made me a virtual prisoner of my own body for the last 18 years. It has been a very cruel warden. But I look around me and see other people fighting illness or trying to overcome addictions, depression, abuse, debt and so many other cruel masters.
We must continue to hope and pray for freedom from whatever is trying to “holdus,” and we should do everything in our power to move toward that goal. But, in the meantime, we should look for opportunities for God to use…
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I was thinking about Good Friday when I woke up early yesterday morning. Then I thought about people using the phrase “Thank God It’s Friday” to celebrate the end of a work week and the start of the weekend.
Even though I haven’t worked in over 19 years, I remember that feeling of being so glad a work week was over as I was sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic on a Friday evening or landing at the airport after being gone all week on a business trip.
Then I thought about the darkest Friday of my life.
After three days of grueling tests, which included cutting muscle samples out of my thigh without any anesthetic and a spinal tap that left me with a debilitating headache for three days, the neurologist, flanked by a group of interns, told to Mary and I that I had ALS. He went on to say…
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I almost made it through a whole year without being hospitalized or having any additional health problems. Almost. Then, with just a few days left in 2016, I caught a cold. The “commoncold” is not much more than an annoyance for otherwise healthy people, but for someone like me with weakened breathing muscles and only 30% of my lungs functioning, the common cold is much more than an annoyance.
On the morning of the last day of the year, I was having an extremely difficult time breathing even wearing my breathing mask. In addition to that, I couldn’t keep anything down. I was a mess, more than usual. Mary and I both assumed it was pneumonia again so she called 911 and within minutes we were in an ambulance en route to the hospital. ALS has brought us one adventure after another over the last 20 years.
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I had a dream about a year ago and in this dream, I stood before a great king. He seemed larger than life and he sat on a great throne. It seemed I was only 1/3 of his height. We were going back in forth in debate- well only I was debating- on the subject of salvation, but the king only had one answer and would defeat my argument each time.
My Dream:
I walked into a room and there was a great king on a large throne and between us seemed to be desk. I stood and argued that it was not possible to be saved by grace alone. I argued with all the scripture I knew and the king would reply each time “No, it is only by grace that you are saved”
What! That can’t be, I would argue back. The bible is clear that we are not saved unless we…
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