Clever Free Methodist

Before time began! No, I am not writing about some space odyssey movie or some wild adventure novel involving a time-machine. I am thinking about a moment long before earthly time began. A spectacular and incredible moment occurred that touches every human life that ever existed, now exists or will exist well into the future. This incident was recorded in the Bible in the New Testament book of Ephesians. We see in Ephesians 1:4-5 , “Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure.” Grasping the love of God can be very challenging for our finite, human minds. Can we work on fully grasping the fact? The fact that God took the initiative, paid the price, absorbed the penalty of sin by giving up and sacrificing His Son Jesus….all for us…all because He lov

Just like you, I have seen video clips or have read a plethora of responses to the alleged racial issues plaguing our country. However good and helpful some discussions, responses, and “fixes” may be, we still have those that are a bit extreme and unnecessary to bring healing. What is the answer? What is the fix? Whether it is disbanding Police Departments, bringing down Confederate (or any) monuments and flags, or trying to “rewrite history” to make us feel better, it is still a momentary solution to an ongoing problem. All the laws of Country, State, County and City are still not enough to deter crime, hate, prejudice and other forms of lawlessness. Sadly, we don’t need any more laws. What we have in place, now, is enough to cover everything we need for a just society. So, then what’s the issue? Jeremiah 17:9 , ““The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is?” What we have is a heart problem. The Hebrew

The months of March through June of 2020 have been quite the spectacle of emotions, tensions, anxiety and even fear. If a pandemic of COVID-19 were not enough to challenge us, we found ourselves staring glued to our media devices watching riots, looting, destruction and protesting take over many of our major cities. Now, take all of that and add the political climate in our country with the insipid, vile and volatile hatred many are expressing towards the President of the United States, we could be easily conclude that there is a lot of evil and hate in our Country. Jesus comforted us in John 16:33 , by saying “…In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” I believe this ties in with the reason Jesus taught us to pray for such troubling times. Jesus teaches us to pray, in Matthew 6:13 “…but deliver us from evil.” For many years, I have always assumed that this part of the prayer was just referring to Satan and his demons. Although