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As a quick recap, here are habits 1-5. Godly leaders:

1. Face each day with a priority mindset.
2. Make daily Bible reading and prayer indispensible in their lives.
3. Hold wisdom in high regard.
4. Are intentional about the message.
5. Make “iron sharpens iron” a way of life.

Here are my additional observations about godly leaders:
6. They see continuous learning as a lifestyle. The more information they gain, the more godly leaders sense fulfillment. They are continually reading, thinking, taking notes, and exploring new ways of doing things. They study the faith walk. They constantly want to learn something new about God’s attributes and His creativity. They know you never get too old to learn about the God of the ages.
7. They exhibit convictional courage. Godly leaders are not interested in the opinions of the masses. They care much more about what “God has said . . .” This one thing most clearly illustrates the godly man or woman in comparison to leaders who gain public notoriety. Godly leaders are people of principle and they are willing to “go to the mat” for biblical principles. This means they must often work overtime at demonstrating kindness toward those who are making rebellious lifestyle choices. It also means that they aren’t people who are constantly pointing out what is wrong. Instead they point to what is good. Philippians 4:8 speaks to the godly man or woman: “Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there be any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, let your mind dwell on these things.”
8. They learn to balance the stuff of life. There is a constant barrage of demands from life, and godly people learn the delicate balance between their bodies, mental and emotional health, their relationships and their faith walk. Watch what they do when a storm comes. Ask them to tell you about their most difficult time in life and watch the tears swell in their eyes. But notice they continue on the walk of faith with deeper resolve and greater balance.
9. Their hearts and hands are open. The most generous people in the world are godly people. Part of the reason is that they know they don’t own anything. Everything they call theirs is a trust from God and they are managers of what God entrusts to them. So their hands and hearts are open to give themselves and their possessions away to Kingdom purposes.
My friend and state executive director in Indiana, Cecil Seagle, says it this way, “What does GENEROSITY, God sized look like? I can tell you, it may include a tithe, but it does not camp out there. No, no – when we see His world, His creation like Jesus sees it, then we don’t ask how much or how little. We declare, ‘whatever it takes’! Soooo, what will it take to reach His world with the gospel of Jesus Christ? Whatever it….. Finish it for yourself, I already know my response! MARKED BY HEAVEN SIZED GENEROSITY!!!”
10. Their heart of service is exceeded only by their selflessness. Godly people are those people in life who are the least concerned about who gets the credit for something. They are abandoned to the mission of demonstrating the heart of our loving God in all circumstances.

Those are my observations. Think about them. More importantly, think about that person in your life you would classify as a godly leader. Bless that man or woman with an email or a note or a FaceBook post.

What do godly leaders practice that set them apart from other leaders?

Godly leaders may be observed in every walk of life: pastors, plumbers, farmers, homemakers, clerical assistants, medical professionals, executives, students, academicians. You name it; there are godly leaders in every sphere of life who make a difference.

I’ve observed a few common habits that godly leaders possess that I think separate them from the crowd. This is not a researched list of habits – just some commonalities that seem to occur as I have watched and listened.

Here are five habits. I’ll share five more in the next column. Godly leaders:
1. Face each day with a priority mindset. Jesus set the tone for this when He taught the Sermon on the Mount (specifically Matthew 6:34). Every day we have choices to make. Will we make those choices based on biblical priorities, or will we be victimized by whatever comes our way? Godly leaders measure their choices by considering that the Lord Jesus is the Lord of our days – not just Sundays. Consequently, the leader has little time to flirt with what God considers unholy behavior.
2. Make daily Bible reading and prayer indispensible in their lives. Godly leaders know they cannot live apart from the reality of Christ. Relationships are dependent on communications with the person you love. To experience the life of Christ, a believer must receive the Word of God and practice the privilege of prayer. No one can do that for you. To be the godly person the Lord wants you to be, you must establish a time for you meet daily with the Lord.
3. Hold wisdom in high regard. Wisdom views what is happening in life from the perspective of eternity. The only way to gain wisdom is through a proper response to life’s experiences. Godly people hold wisdom in high regard, as something that the riches of the world cannot buy. Godly people search for wisdom from God and from others. They are fearless in asking others for counsel and insight. Then by humbly receiving the wise counsel, godly leaders have the opportunity to make informed choices.
4. Are intentional about the message. Godly people really only have one message in life and everything else is stacked against that reality. The message is that there is one and only one way to God and that is through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. So you don’t talk with a godly man or woman very long until the conversation turns toward eternal truth and how it is impacting their life. Their conversation about the Gospel, like their life, guides their walk with the Lord.
5. Make “iron sharpens iron” a way of life. The godly leaders I know are participants in a network of godly leaders. Their network exists at the local church level or may be more global as a result of shared cell numbers or common conferences or the Internet. Godly leaders glean from each other, pray for each other, share stories and come to the rescue when needed. Isolated, independent leaders spend too much time protecting their insecurities.Authenticity is a companion to the man or woman who chooses to move toward relational vulnerability.

Next time: habits 6-10.

Join the dialogue. You may have some additional traits of godliness you have observed.  Comment on this post.

Last week I was asked by a pastor how to reach students. His church was working hard to discover a way to reach the next generation. Besides thorough examination of gospel barriers and placing high value on loving people as they are, I found the following article by Cameron Cole offers some great insights.

“I have ministered to adolescents for eleven years, eight of them as a youth minister. Based on my conversations with kids and observations in the culture, I consider these five theological tools essential for parents, pastors, and youth ministers hoping to minister effectively to today’s teens.

1. Knowledge about the canonization of Scripture.

Perhaps it is a result of The DaVinci Code or maybe the effects of deconstructionism and revisionism in historical studies, but one of the primary apologetic questions I receive from students involves the formation of the canon of Scripture. In no subject area have I observed more misinformation. Students have told me that their high school English teacher taught that the Gospel of Mary Magdalene was not included in the Bible because Christianity is misogynistic. A kid told me that the Gospels were actually written in fourth century.

If a student does not trust the Bible as God’s Word, ministries will have a hard time giving them any confidence in the truths of Christianity; the Bible serves as the authority and foundation for all Christian doctrine. Those ministering to youth must possess a strong understanding of the history and system by which the early church discerned certain books as authoritative and rejected other books as either uninspired or heretical.

Recommended Reading: F. F. Bruce, The Canon of Scripture

2. Developed theology of sexuality, particularly homosexuality.

Questions about premarital sex, gender, and sexuality are increasingly common in youth ministry. For many kids the make-or-break issue about Christianity is homosexuality. Many kids think the actions of anti-gay fanatics, such as Westboro Baptist Church, represent Christian theology regarding homosexuality, and, needless to say, they hold reservations about the faith. Meanwhile, [and mythologically] other kids espouse the secular portrayal of homosexuality as a civil rights issue akin to racial segregation.

Youth ministers need a balanced, scriptural theology that neither amplifies homosexuality as worse than other forms of sexual sin nor permits it any more than we condone pornography or adultery. Equally important, they need a humble, gentle, and compassionate tone in dealing with the issue.

Recommended Reading: Wesley Hill, Washed And Waiting: Reflections on Christian Faithfulness and Homosexuality

3. Ability to teach the Bible in the greater context of redemptive history.

Earlier in my career, people said that postmodern kids had rejected metanarratives and only listened to the micro-narratives of personal storytelling. Some of my colleagues and I now agree that the fatalism of denying a defined metanarrative for life and the world seems to have bottomed out. Kids are more likely today to want to believe there is reason and design behind everything that happens in the world. Students greatly benefit from knowing salvation history.

As a way of taking students through all of redemptive history, I teach each one of my small groups a study on “Top 25 Events from the Bible” that travels from Genesis to Revelation. When teaching Scripture, I make a point to connect the content to the broader context of biblical narrative. It reinforces for kids the belief that a good, sovereign God rules the course of human history, as well as the events of their individual life, at a time when they desire it.

Recommended Reading: Vaughan Roberts, God’s Big Picture

4. Theological, not only moral, understanding of sin.

Most students—Christian and secular alike—believe morality is individually relative. Therefore, explaining sin simply in moral terms will not resonate with most teenagers. You may say that all people judge, lust, envy, and lie, but your teenage audience likely can justify any of those sins at the personal level, believing they have ultimate authority over morality.

Consequently, those ministering to teens need a theological understanding of how sin originates from the human desire to live independently from God and to be the “god” of our own lives. Most students will accept that they do not depend on God for all matters of their life, if at all, or that they do not have a relationship with him. (In truth, these matters represent our deeper issue as sinners and the source of our immorality.) Students will accept the theological argument for human sinfulness far more readily than a moral explanation.

Recommended Reading: Tim Keller, Counterfeit Gods

5. Understand adoption as an element of salvation.

I charge myself as guilty for neglecting this element of salvation, and it cost me big time. The church often exclusively preaches salvation as an individual matter. In a sense, we camp out on regeneration and justification and stop there. I know I did. The persistent teaching of my colleague, Mark Howard, and the talks from Ray Ortlund and Mary Willson at the 2012 Rooted Conference opened my eyes to this blind spot.

Far more than previous generations, today’s teenagers value community. If they do not see how groups or beliefs yield corporate fellowship, they are less likely to embrace it. Adoption represents the aspect of salvation whereby God adopts sinners as his sons and daughters. Our salvation does not simply save us individually but also makes us a part of a greater body of intimate connection. Having a fuller understanding of salvation in both individual and corporate terms will help a person ministering to teens offer the gospel in a way that appeals to their high view of fellowship and need for loving acceptance.

Recommended Reading: Trevor Burke, Adopted into God’s Family (in the NSBT series edited by D. A. Carson)”

With every generation, honesty and authenticity are highly valued when preaching the word. When we speak to their hearts and not so much craft teaching to their heads, we can witness God doing transformational things in their lives.

Robert E. Coleman writes in The Coming World Revival, “To a remarkable degree, revivals have molded the course of the church in America. Peter G. Mode of the University of Chicago says that ‘more than any other phenomenon, they have supplied the landmarks of our religious history.’ William Warren Sweet has characterized revivals as ‘cascades in the stream of the church, recreating the main course of its waters.’ Were it not for these seasons of refreshing during critical periods when the republic was in jeopardy, it is doubtful that our country could have survived.”

Sadly, no genuine awakening has occurred since the middle of the 20th century. We’ve experienced little fires at one location or another. But no culture-shaking movement of God has occurred since the late 1800s to early 1900s.

The outcomes have been horrific:

- If international terrorism is not enough to contend with, the level of rage and disillusionment among segments of the population is precipitating a homegrown variety that we cannot fix with our national intelligence network or our military.

- The American home is so fractured and there is so much confusion that the Supremes must determine how this culture redefines human relationships and when they are finished it won’t look anything like what God has said.

- The abortion industry has killed so many children and the moral conscience is so seared that gross negligence by an abortion provider barely makes news headlines.

- The acceleration of taxation, the burden of new bureaucratic regulations (68 new ones per day), inflation, loss of jobs, and the contraction of incomes for working people have facilitated an economic crisis that exceeds the government’s capacity to repair without rioting in the streets and other severe consequences.

The above tragedies and others like them are symptomatic of a culture that has denied the reality of God and chosen its own way. It is the result of abandoning bedrock, biblical principles of justice and governance. And the big question is: Will the nation survive?

So what can one person do? What can a small group of people do? The one thing we must always do is — pray!

It is time for sackcloth. We must start by humbly repenting of our own sin and calling out to our Holy God. Only God can bring about a revival movement that sweeps our churches and reframes the cultural conversation in terms of reformation.

It is reported that at the funeral of General William Booth, an iconic Christian figure and founder of the Salvation Army, something interesting took place. As the people were leaving the building, a lone man was seen kneeling at the altar. As a reporter drew near to the man, he heard him pray, “O Lord, do it again! Lord, do it again!”

Could that be our heart? As we prepare for the National Day of Prayer May 2, this is a golden moment for God’s people to call on the Lord and express our neediness. How needy are we? The latest news reports read like they are a “foreword” to a book about the end of the age and the return of the Lord. If there was ever a time in the history of this nation for God’s people to pray, it is now.

The vile choices our culture has made with the good gifts God has given us – like economic resources and human sexuality – would warrant His holy hand of judgment. There is no reason, not one, that God should not judge our nation for shedding the blood of 54 million innocent children. For us to think He shouldn’t is fantasy thinking. We deserve the worst, but let us join in concert with others to plead for God’s mercy.

There is hope provided we believe and act on the words of God, “If My people, who are called by My name, will humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and will heal their land” (2 Chronicles 7:14 KJV)

God will hear His people. However, we may not see the answer to our praying in our lifetime. Daniel prayed and God answered, but the fulfillment of the vision was not until generations had passed.

God is calling His people to prayer. Trust Him in spite of the circumstances. His answers to our praying are perfectly on time. Remember: “the effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much” (James 5:16b NASB).

Unless your local church has already announced a specific time to pray on May 2, ask your pastor what he has in mind, or use your Internet search engine and find a gathering of people to join in prayer specifically for our nation, our communities and our families.

Sage counsel from my friend, Joe McKeever. He penned the following for his blog.

“Here are 7 lines pastors do not want to cross.

1) Do not use cologne. Women are sensitive to fragrances, my wife says, which is why they wear them in the first place. When a man wears them, he sends out a subtle signal, the type no wise minister needs to be emitting.

2) Do not hug women. One pastor said he hugs no one between the ages of 6 and 66.

To the minister who argues that “Well, I am a toucher and people need to be hugged,” I reply: a) Granted, but let women hug women and men hug men, if necessary and appropriate. b) In most cases, your “touching” indicates some physical or emotional need in yourself, and is not what healthy ministers do.

Even if your intentions are pure, you make yourself vulnerable to charges of inappropriate touching. And–do not miss this–in the minds of many, to be charged is to be convicted. Best to guard against these dangers.

3) Do not be in your office with a woman alone.

A pastor of a large church told some of us why he does not counsel in his office. “All she has to do is run out of the office screaming and your ministry is over.” When someone catches him following a worship service with “Pastor, could I come by and talk with you about a problem?” he answers, “Let’s sit in a pew right over here and talk now!” Their visit is in public, but far enough removed from people so that no one hears their conversation.

4) Do not be in the church alone with a woman.

This is more difficult for small churches that have no one on staff but the pastor. In my first post-seminary church, the secretary worked half-days. Often she and I were in the building alone all morning. In those cases, you do the best you can at keeping your distance, making sure the doors are unlocked and drop-ins are welcome, and when possible, have others in the office too.

A pastor I used to serve with would sometimes ask me to remain after hours because he was counseling a woman, and wanted to make sure someone else was in the building.

5) Do not make pastoral visits alone. If you knock on a door and find that a woman is home alone, do not go inside but visit briefly at the door. Many pastors take a deacon or their wife with them on such calls.

6) Do not compliment a young woman on her appearance. My wife says with women middle-aged and older, you can say, “You’re looking nice today.” But do not compliment a woman on her dress, her figure, tell her that her diet’s really working, and such. You are stepping over an invisible line.

7) Do not fantasize about women. Most sins of a sexual nature had their beginnings long before as the individual imagined certain situations with some individual. Then, when the opportunity presented itself, he was ready since he had been over that ground a hundred times before.

“Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable unto Thee, O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer” (Psalm 19:14).

The “do nots” clearly have no end. But here are 7 “do’s” which a minister will want to observe to keep the enemy at bay….

1) When complimented inappropriately, laugh it off and change the subject.

“Oooh, pastor, you look so good today.” “Mmmm, preacher, I like the way that suit looks on you.” “Have you been working out, Brother Al? You’re looking good.”

The insecure pastor soaks this stuff up like a sponge. But you are not insecure. “You are complete in Christ” (Colossians 2:10).

Do not acknowledge the compliment. It will only encourage her. Laugh briefly, then ask about her family or something–anything!–to change the subject.

2) Anticipate situations that may arise during the day and plan appropriately. That is, if you know a woman is coming for counseling, make sure your secretary or another minister is just outside the door. Pray always the Lord will guard you and give you wisdom about these things.

3) [Know when to run.] When you are close to some woman other than your wife, and you begin to sense all the signs of attraction–your temperature rising, your blood pressure elevating–walk away quickly. Make up an excuse, even if it’s only that “I just remembered something; I’ll be right back.” Then, get to your office or pretend to make a phone call and talk to the Lord. Ask for His divine protection. Just because your chemistry with that person is strong does not make it right. As a mature follower of Jesus Christ, you are beyond running your life by your feelings. (You are, aren’t you?)

4) Center your love, your energies, your everything on the Lord and your wife. (The Lord does not mind being lumped together with her. He planned it that way. See Ephesians 5:25ff.)

The biggest safeguard against sexual transgressions in the lives of ministers is a good relationship with one’s spouse. After numerous cautions against sexual sin, the writer of Proverbs counseled his son, “Drink water from your own cistern, and fresh water from your own well” (Proverbs 5:15). In the margin of my Bible, I’ve written: “Focus on your wife, son!” Read on past verse 15 and he gets more explicit that that, with vs. 19 being one you probably won’t read in church, but it definitely communicates!

5) Have an accountability partner or a mentor. Or both.

If you are truly wise, you will have someone–usually an older, mature minister–to whom you can say anything. Such a veteran pastor has seen it all, has the scars to prove it, and has come up a winner. (The one thing you do not want in such a mentor is someone who has never suffered! Spurgeon said, “God gets His best soldiers out of the highlands of affliction.”)

Once you find such a friend, you must meet with him frequently enough to be comfortable in speaking what’s on your mind. He must be a man of prayer who will pray with you and for you later. There is no way to over-emphasize this.

6) A healthy fear of the Lord is a good thing.

One pastor’s wife said of her husband, “I don’t have to worry about Frank straying. He’s too afraid of God.” He laughed and said, “You’ve got that right!”

Someone asked Andrew Murray the greatest thought that had ever occupied his mind. He answered, “My accountability to God.” Indeed. It’s enough to strike terror into our hearts and to drive us to repentance and submission. “Knowing the fear of the Lord,” Paul said, “we persuade men” (II Corinthians 5:11).

That said, we also rejoice that “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). Nevertheless, even the saved will give account for what they have done in this life. God help us to be found faithful.

7) Encourage younger ministers to be faithful.

If you’ve been in the Lord’s work as long as a decade, you are a veteran compared to those just leaving seminary. You have a lot to offer them. Reach out to the new ministers coming to churches in your area. Take them to lunch. Then, after the first session, both of you bring your wives. The ministry can be a lonely profession. No church member understands the stresses you and your family have to endure. That’s why no one ministers to pastors better than other ministers.

The goal is to be faithful. Do this and you will find a strength and courage beyond your own. “Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God” (I John 3:21). Yes, and confidence before men, too.

Toward the end of His ministry, our Lord told the disciples, “The prince of this world is coming, and he has nothing in me” (John 14:30). I like that. Readers may recall I told recently of meeting an old couple in a rural Alabama cafe. The man was in his 90s and the woman wasn’t all that far behind. They had been married four years, I think, and were clearly still in love. With a twinkle in his eye, the old gentleman said, “I have iron in my blood and she has a magnetic personality.”

When the devil waves his magnet over us, let there be nothing inside us that responds to his enticements. May we say, “He has nothing in me.”

And nothing “on” me.”

I saw this Spurgeon quote on a hero’s facebook wall. Powerful word.

“Lower the Law and you dim the light by which man perceives his guilt; this is a very serious loss to the sinner rather than a gain; for it lessens the likelihood of his conviction and conversion. I say you have deprived the gospel of its ablest auxiliary [its most powerful weapon] when you have set aside the Law. You have taken away from it the schoolmaster that is to bring men to Christ . . . They will never accept grace till they tremble before a just and holy Law. Therefore the Law serves a most necessary purpose, and it must not be removed from its place.” (Spurgeon)

What I saw at the Gosnell trial

By J.D. Mullane | Posted: Friday, April 12, 2013 5:00 pm

It is hard to decide the most appalling images to emerge Thursday at the murder trial of Philadelphia abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell. What happened in his abortion clinic is beyond any morbid Hollywood horror.

Tiny severed feet and hands stored in jars over a sink in the “procedure” room.

Digitalis injected into the stomachs of pregnant women to stop the beating hearts of their unborn babies so that they would be born dead.

Survivor babies whose spinal cords were severed, whose brains were removed with suction, whose tiny bodies were placed in a waste bin for disposal.

Then there is commonwealth exhibit C-147, depicting a large baby balled in the fetal position, bloody, stuffed in a bin. “Big enough to walk me home,” joked Gosnell when he saw the child’s remains, testified Ashly Baldwin, a clinic employee.

Gosnell, 72, is charged with killing seven born-alive babies and causing the death of Karnamaya Mongar, 41, an immigrant from Nepal who had sought an abortion at his West Philadelphia clinic. The clinic was busy, doing brisk cash business, catering not only to local women in West Philadelphia, but also women from the affluent surrounding suburbs of Bucks and Montgomery counties. Gosnell’s reputation for no-wait abortions was so well known, women would fly in from other states.

The prosecution alleges that Gosnell’s clinic regularly delivered live babies in the third trimester and killed them by severing their spinal cords or a “snip,” which according to testimony is what Gosnell called the procedure.

On Thursday, when I was there, Ashly Baldwin, 22, testified that she began working at the clinic when she was 15. Though unqualified and unlicensed as a medical technician, she began medicating women, even administering injections with a butterfly needle, under Gosnell’s instructions.

She testified that she saw digitalis injected, and explained that its purpose in abortions is to kill the unborn child so “it would come out dead.”

But in some of the most horrifying testimony of the day, Baldwin described how she saw babies born alive, with hearts beating rapidly, some of them moving and “flinching,” and some making baby sounds or “screeching.”

Until the FBI raided his clinic in 2010, he had operated for 30 years at 3801 Lancaster Ave., in the clinic he called the “Women’s Health Society.”

There was little healthy about it. Bloody floors, dirty equipment. The filthy gynecological bed with stirrups on which Karnamaya Mongar went into cardiac arrest from a drug reaction, and later died, sat in the middle of the courtroom, in front of the jury.

Tina Baldwin testified that Gosnell treated women differently, based on their race. White women “with money” were taken to an “immaculate” upstairs room where Gosnell treated them personally. Poor black, Latino and other women were kept in the clinic’s dingy, dirty downstairs rooms, and were usually treated by medically unqualified staff.

Tina Baldwin said she asked Gosnell about why he treated white women differently from the others. She recalled him saying, “Sorry, but that’s how it is.”

Thursday’s testimony had sensational details. The court staff, convinced it would attract journalists from around the nation, has set aside three rows of seats to accommodate up to 40 reporters. But all Thursday morning, as Ashly Baldwin testified to horror after horror, only one reporter was in the reserved seating — me.

Several local news outlets were there, scattered about the mostly empty courtroom. The Philadelphia Inquirer had a reporter there. NBC10 sent a blogger for its website. The AP stopped in, but the reporter told me that resources are thin and trial coverage is not gavel to gavel.

An hour into afternoon testimony, Jon Hurdle of The New York Times showed up, and a few minutes later was gone.

The lack of daily media coverage for the most sensational abortion trial angers pro-lifers who said there is a “media black out” on the Gosnell trial.

I asked one of the court staff why so few are interested.

“If you’re pro-choice, do you really want anybody to know about this,” he said, motioning to the filthy medical equipment set up in the courtroom.

It’s a good point. As saturation coverage of the Sandy Hook elementary school coverage has caused Americans to reconsider the limits of the Second Amendment, saturation coverage of Kermit Gosnell’s clinic would likely cause the same reconsideration of abortion rights.

The details are that horrifying.

It’s spring break for some states this week, and two of our nine grandkids got to come to PaPa J’s and Ema’s house for the week.

We love it. With no parents around, we have the incredible opportunity to pour our family legacy values into our grandkids our way, the fun way. Not only do we get to do the value stuff, but we also do some really fun stuff like eating ice cream at any time of the day, cracking open a real coconut, reading children’s story books while they sit in your lap, putting jigsaw puzzles together, playing board games, eating loads of candy, running in the wood’s, and driving Ema’s golf cart.

In the evening, we gather upstairs with Papa J and Ema and read a Bible story together. Then we pray. Then off to bed they go.

Continue Reading…

The Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission celebrates the Yeats family adoption story. Grateful for the opportunity to share our story with the world for the glory of the Lord.

Adoption: Look Here, Papa J!

What would you do if you knew you had one week to live? What would you change? One thing that would be evident is that you would live each hour with intentionality. You would want to make sure everything you did had value . . . lasting value.

Passion Week is the time believers use to commemorate the last week of Jesus’ life prior to the cross. When you study the Gospel accounts from his arrival in Bethany to the cross, every action and every word has meaning for all men and all history.

This week is historical for our nation’s history, too. Who would have thought that these United States would come to the place where a discussion even exists about the sanctity of marriage and more specifically about same-sex marriage? Children, cover your ears this week!

Continue Reading…