Ten years ago, I weighed almost 300 pounds. I’ve lost over 80 pounds since then. It wasn’t easy to do so I did it in stages. When I was at my maximum weight, I began exercising and cutting back on the number of calories I ate each day. I lost thirty pounds but then something happened. I plateaued and quit losing weight. The only way for me to keep losing was to further decrease the number of calories I consumed. As my body got smaller, I had to keep eating less. What got me to one level wouldn’t get me to the next level. The only way I could get there was to change what I was doing.

During my first interview with the search committee at Snake Spring Valley CoB, I was told, “We’re looking for a pastor to help take us to the next level, whatever that is.” My question to you is this: Do you really want to go to the next level? The reason I ask is because what got you to this level won’t get you to the next one. If it could, you’d already be there. The only way to get to the next level is to change some things. (more…)

Even though you’re here at church this morning, do you really know Jesus as your Savior? If you do know him as your Savior, how close is your relationship with him?

To help figure this out, we could do a series of Bible studies followed up by a questionnaire. Obviously, we don’t have time to do this right now so let’s simplify things. Please take a moment and honestly answer one question: The emotions I feel when I think about my own death are:

The way we answer this question reveals a lot about how much we really trust Jesus and how close to him we really are. The truth is that even though we’ve been taught Christians shouldn’t fear death, sometimes our attitude about it is the same as Woody Allen’s – “I’m not afraid of death; I just don’t want to be there when it happens.” (more…)

The ministry training program I went through required my classmates and I to go to class on Tuesday evenings and every fifth Saturday. To be honest, these Saturday’s got long sometimes, especially when the professor wasn’t an animated speaker.

Occasionally, a professor would let us out of the classroom and take us on a fieldtrip. Once our class was told we would take a day and look at the problems facing the inner-cities. We would either go to New York City, Philadelphia or Allentown. I quickly spoke up and said, “Let’s go to Allentown.” At the time, I lived 100 miles from New York City, 60 miles from Philadelphia but only eight miles from Allentown. I really didn’t think there was any way we would go to Allentown since the other cities are so much bigger. But that’s where we went. (more…)