What do you think of when you hear the word, “discipline”? Some people read it with a negative connotation. Others read it with a positive connotation. The Oxford Dictionary defines it as, “the practice of training people to obey rules or a code of behavior, using punishment to correct disobedience“. Discipline has it’s roots in Latin and is defined as, “instruction given, teaching, learning, knowledge“. Used as a verb, it means, “to correct, chastise, punish“. Based on the definition and etymology of the word, discipline is portrayed as positive. It is necessary. God deals with the subject of discipline all throughout His Holy Word. In this article, we are going to focus on one passage, Hebrews 12. Continue reading
Nehemiah is a great book of the Bible that demonstrates the connection between the Word of God, confession of sin, and dedication to the Lord. This is a question that many are asking today, that is, “why are there so few dedicated people to the Lord in our society”? Have you ever asked that question? Have you ever heard someone else ask that question? Well, according to Nehemiah, dedication comes as the result of the Word and confession of sins. In this article, I would like to examine Nehemiah 8-10. This is the study for next week’s Connect Groups here at Southern Calvert Baptist Church. 
Is it possible for God to show mercy and grace even in the midst of His judgment? Can judgment/discipline be a positive event in our lives? Is it possible to view judgment in a positive light? Let’s discover the answers to these questions and more as we turn to the book of Hosea. Here at Southern Calvert Baptist Church, we have been walking through the entire Bible over a three year period. Currently, we are in the book of Hosea. Our goal is to examine every book of the Bible and discover how each book points to the person of Jesus Christ, the Savior of mankind. 
I finished off the last article with a cliffhanger. 
I am getting ready to teach a lesson to a group of elementary kids this morning and the lesson is supposed to be about the importance of spiritual health and its role in an overall, healthy lifestyle. In this lesson, we are going to come across the English word “sanctified”. It is a translation of the Koine Greek word, “hagios” and it means to be set apart, different. As followers of Jesus Christ, we are to be different from the people who do not follow Jesus. This difference is seen in our intellectual life, our spiritual life, and our physical bodies. What does this look like in reality? Let’s turn to the Scriptures to discover the answer. 
As I have spent the last couple of days planning this sermon, I have been blessed by the Lord through His Holy Word. I do not know about you but, when I open the Word of God to study, I discover new things about Him and about myself every single time. The New Year is almost upon us. 2018 went by so quickly. It seems that 2019 will go by even faster. I want to be useful to the kingdom of God in 2019. I want YOU to be useful to the kingdom of God in 2019. The Lord teaches us how we can be useful. This is an article based on the sermon that I am preaching this coming Sunday at Southern Calvert Baptist Church in Lusby Maryland. If you are in the area, stop by and encourage me. If you are not close enough to come, the sermon will be available online in the near future. God has truly blessed us with modern technology. I often wonder what all the Apostle Paul would have accomplished if he would have had the internet 😀 
I am sitting here reading over my notes for the Sunday School lesson at Southern Calvert this Sunday. We just spent the last quarter walking through part of the book of Acts. It was amazing to learn about life on a mission to be a witness, in the context of making disciples. God really motivated our church to be more intentional about being witnesses with the goal of making disciples. Now, we are moving into the Epistles in the New Testament. This week, we are looking at Paul’s epistle to the churches in the region of Galatia. A great need arose in the church causing Paul to take parchment and ink and write out his letter to them in order to give important Christian doctrine to these young, growing churches. Paul was a man who had been discipled by one of the greatest Jewish teachers of his day. After that, Paul was directly discipled by the resurrected Lord Jesus Christ. Now, he has been on a mission to be a witness for Christ everywhere among the Gentiles. While on mission, he is constantly looking for people to disciple. The Galatians had been discipled by Paul and they still needed to be discipled. They needed someone to confront them, in the love of Christ, and help them get back on the right path. We all need this in our daily walk with the Lord. We have a tendency to get sidetracked by false teachings and the desires of our sin nature. We all need a Paul in our lives who will love us enough to tell us the truth, even if we do not want to hear it at the time. 
It has been a lot of fun teaching through II Thessalonians. I have taught this book many times and, each time I teach through it, I learn new things about God and new things about myself.
Disciplining children is a hot topic in our day and time. Many people have many different opinions on how to do it and how not to do it. The belt and paddle are looked at as things of the past, archaic. Of course, the 
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