Confrontation and Repentance

In a couple of weeks, our children’s Sunday School classes are going to host a rally to celebrate the fifth Sunday of this month. On fifth Sundays at our church, our adult Sunday School classes all meet up in the sanctuary for a Fifth Sunday Rally. We encourage and challenge all of the classes to reach out to the community before the next fifth Sunday and do some kind of ministry that draws in new people. We discover some creative ideas as each class shares an experience. We are going to launch the same plan among our children. After our Bible lesson, the kids are going to break up into small groups and stuff Trunk or Treat bags with information about our church and Gospel tracts. These bags will be used during our major outreach on October 31. I am so excited to see the children serve in their own capacity. Before we do the service project, we are going to study II Corinthians 7:8-12. I want to share that message with you here in this article.

In Whom do you trust?

This week, in our Connect Groups at Southern Calvert Baptist church, we are continuing to study the Old Testament. We will be in the book of Isaiah. The children of Israel, like all people, struggled with their sin nature. That struggle manifested in the form of idolatry. God, because of His great love, was and is patient with His people, even when we disobey Him. It is His nature. He interacts with humanity based on love. Even when He disciplines people, it is done out of love, seeking to produce repentance. God has to humble His people, and even that is done out of love.

God, Morality, and Judgment

I am excited to prepare a Bible study for our high school kids this week during our AWANA meeting. We are coming off of Christmas break plus one week due to Covid and I am excited to be able to spend some time with the teens. They are such a good group of kids. I love their passion to learn. As we study, they always have tons of questions and during each study session, we discover answers to those questions. Some of our previous lessons were on such subjects as:

‘Tis the Season for hope and salvation

I am so excited to prepare for Christmas. What a tradition! We get to remember the promise of the First Advent of the Messiah and celebrate the fact that it happened in human history. All of human history was split in half by the birth of Jesus Christ. He is the most famous human being of all time. His book, the Bible, continues to be the best selling book of all time. The birth of Christ has set our Western calendar for the past 2,000 years. To me, Christmas is a magical season. Sometimes, it is easy to get caught up in the hustle and bustle of the Christmas season that we forget the reason WHY we do all of this every year. It is a time of remembrance. It is also a time to reflect on the fact that the First Advent implies that there will be a Second Advent. I have written several articles on the Sundays of Advent and you can read them by clicking on the following titles:

The Dangers of a Critical Spirit

I have the privilege tonight to meet up with our young teens during our AWANA program. I love meeting up with these kids and studying the Scriptures. I am very proud of them for all of the hard work that they put in memorizing Scripture. I wish I would have begun memorizing Scripture at that age. I am grateful to be part of the team that ministers to these young men and women. They are going to do great things for the Lord! This week, we are going to study and interesting passage of Scripture to learn the difference between serving others and criticizing others. It is very easy to criticize others. Stepping up and serving those in need is much more difficult. Many more people will sit around and criticize rather than help. Few step up, roll up their sleeves, get their hands dirty, and help others. This is true in daily life outside the church. Unfortunately, it’s also true within the organization of the church. We are always going to be faced with the choice of criticizing or helping. I heard an old adage years ago that has stuck with me ever since.

A Relentless Rescue

I had the privilege of attending the Relentless Love conference hosted by CareNet, Southern Calvert Baptist Church, and Real Life Church all here in Southern Maryland. A young man whom I mentored a few years ago, Austin Reed, was the keynote speaker at the event. I had the opportunity to lead a break out session on an inductive Bible study about the subject of “love” from I John 4. I had 20 high school students in the session. Praise God for the power of His Word.

Moses and Conservatism

There is a lot of discussion about politics going on right now because of all that has transpired in our country over the past year. Many of us have grown weary of hearing about it. I had a conversation with a guy the other day about Christians and Politics. I mentioned that I am a Conservative when it comes to politics because I am a student of the Bible and a born again Christian. He mentioned that he is just a Christian and was not concerned with politics.

Jesus’ Call to Discipleship

Here are Southern Calvert Baptist Church, we are continuing our journey through the entire Bible over a three year period. Currently, we are in year three and we are studying the Gospel of Luke. We spent two years walking through the Old Testament tracing the promise of the coming Messiah and how God worked in human history to fulfill that promise. Almost two thousand years ago, several Jewish people who had spent their lives looking forward to the coming of the Messiah were blessed to be an integral part of the fulfilled Promise. These people all had several things in common. They were all good students of the Word of God. They had all surrendered to the will of God in their lives. In other words, they all had a relationship with God, based on the fact that they were looking forward to the coming Messiah to be their Savior.

The vanity of happiness

“But God wants me to be happy, doesn’t He“? I have heard people declare this many times, in the form of a question of course, even though their minds are already made up. Mantras like “YOLO” were popular at one time. “If it feels good, do it” was another popular saying for a time. If you do not know, YOLO means “you only live once” which implies, have fun at all costs because you only get one time around. Each older generation declares that the younger generations are selfish, unlike themselves, when they were younger. I want to look at a passage of Scripture that speaks of people about 3,000 years ago. According to our modern way of thinking, the people 3,000 years ago should have been much less selfish than we are today because each generation claims that the next generation is much more selfish. Let’s take a practical look at the people of Israel, almost 3,000 years ago.

Mercy and Grace through Judgment?

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.