Jesus’ first miracle

On Tuesday of this past week, we began our Good News Club at one of our local elementary schools. What a great opportunity to share the message of the Gospel in our community! Our children are being bombarded daily with all kinds of ungodliness and as Christ followers, we have a sacred calling to take the life changing message of the Gospel to these kids. I take this calling seriously and I pray that you do as well. Along with a group of volunteers from our church, Southern Calvert Baptist Church, I had the privilege of teaching Christ to over 20 children. I want to share the lesson with you here in this article.

God’s Promises for Difficult Days

I have spent most of the past two days studying the Prophet Jeremiah’s thirtieth chapter. What a passage to consider! This coming Sunday at Southern Calvert Baptist Church, we are going to dive deep down into Jeremiah 30. I cannot wait. I want to share what I learned with you here in this article. I cannot believe we are about to enter the month of December. The year 2022 has one more month and then it is gone. In some ways, we are still trying to process 2020. The world has changed greatly over the past 3 years. We truly are living during difficult days. What are you doing to cope with these difficult days? Many have turned to idols, seeking satisfaction in things like drugs and alcohol. Others have turned to hedonism. None of that is working and it never will. What did the children of Israel do when facing difficult days in their history? They have the secret to success and we are going to learn that here in this chapter of the Bible.

We must obey God!

Today, I am going to teach from Acts 5 to a group of kids at our church in the AWANA program. This group of kids is learning the book of Acts. This lesson is about obeying God rather than man. Just like there is such a thing as righteous indignation, there is also such a thing as righteous rebellion. This seems like a contradiction but, it actually complements the teachings in the Bible about subjection to earthly authority. In the heart of every human being, there is a spark of rebellion. We have this rebellious streak because of our sin nature. When raising children, we do not have to teach them to be rebellious. It comes naturally to them, just as it comes naturally to us. The definition of rebellion is “resisting an established law“.

God’s Righteous Judgments

Once again, I sit here in front of my monitor writing down my thoughts on this next Bible lesson that we are teaching in our Connect Groups at Southern Calvert Baptist Church. This week, we are going to dive down in the book of the prophet Nahum. The Bible presents the nature of God, in other words, the character of God to humanity. The main character trait that people remember about God is that He is love. Some people ignore all of the other character traits of the Lord and simply focus in on one aspect, love. God definitely is love. He is also righteous and just. He punishes sin. He protects victims. He takes revenge for those who cannot defend themselves. When we examine God, we need the full picture of who He is. The book of Nahum presents God as being wrathful. Nahum explains to the readers WHY God judges people and nations. The focus of this week’s lesson is the righteous judgments of God.

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.

Zephaniah: A Truth Teller

I have heard many people say that the Old, dusty Bible is not relevant to modern mankind. When I hear something like that, I immediately realize that the person saying this statement is not a diligent student of the Bible. When a person digs down into the Bible, he will quickly see just how practical the Word of God is. That is what I want us to discover in this lesson. When is the last time that you studied the book of Zephaniah? Have you EVER read the Old Testament book of Zephaniah? Many good, church going people have not read a lot in the Old Testament, unfortunately.

Who is influencing YOU?

At Southern Calvert Baptist Church, we are continuing our journey through the entire Bible over a 3 year period. We are currently in the Old Testament book of II Chronicles. Many times, when people seek to read through the entire Bible, they tend to lose steam somewhere in the historical books of First and Second Kings or First and Second Chronicles. Has that ever happened to you before? I have mentored many people in Bible study who have shared that testimony.

God is Always with us

I have the privilege of teaching this week during our AWANA program. I get to hang out with and invest in our T&T kids. We are going to discover, from the Scriptures, that God is Omnipresent. What in the world does “omnipresent” mean? Omnis, in the Latin language, means, “all” or “every“. The word present comes to the English language from Latin via French. It means, “to be within reach“. When we put all of this together, it means to be within reach at all times, everywhere. The Scriptures teach us that God is everywhere, at all times. This is what we are going to cover in this lesson.

The Futility of Idolatry

It’s another Monday! I am excited to prepare our Connect Group lesson for this coming Sunday. As the old pastor preached, “It’s Monday, but Sunday’s coming“. I hope that you had a great weekend that culminated in attending church and worshiping the Creator of the universe. In our journey through the Old Testament, we have covered some amazing subjects. One reoccurring subject in the Old Testament is the futility of idol worship. As human beings, we were all created to worship something outside of ourselves. But, because of our sinful, human nature, we have a tendency to worship ourselves. When surveys are done, people tend to think more highly of themselves than they think of others. We are born with this tendency. God created us to connect with Him and worship Him in our daily lives.

Dysfunctional Leadership

Leadership is a topic that is widely discussed in our modern world. Leadership has always been a hot topic because, as humans, we were created to be led. Our number one leader is God. He created us to follow Him. Following a leader is embedded deep within the human psyche. The question is not, “do we have a leader whom we follow?” because that is hardwired in us. The question is, “what kind of leader are we following“?  The Bible is full of examples of positive and negative leadership. I believe that we have much to learn from the positive and the negative leaders and that is why it is important to study the characteristics of both positive and negative leaders.