Thoughts From The Pastor (Page 2)

Thoughts From The Pastor (Page 2)

September 2022 Reading Challenge

September 2022 Reading Challenge Bruchko: The Astonishing True Story of a 19-Year-Old American, His Capture by the Motilone Indians and His Adventures in Christianizing the Stone Age Tribe by Bruce Olson 224 pages Missionary Biography Amazon Link (Available as a print, ebook, and audiobook)   Book Summary From Amazon: What happens when a nineteen-year-old boy leaves home and heads into the jungles to evangelize a murderous tribe of South American Indians? For Bruce Olson, it meant capture, disease, terror, loneliness, and torture. But…

August 2022 Reading Challenge

August 2022 Reading Challenge The Discipline of Grace by Jerry Bridges 331 pages Christian Living/Theology Amazon Link (Available as a print, ebook, and audiobook)   Book Summary From Amazon: Over 200,000 copies sold You are never beyond the reach of God’s grace―or the need for it. Being a Christian is about more than just accepting salvation―it’s about regularly becoming more like Jesus. This is hard work. As we struggle to become more like Christ, we can easily lose sight of grace in…

How Pornography Ruins Marital Sex

The following quote is from the book Married Sex by Gary Thomas and Debra Fileta: Guys, one thing is clear: the best way to ruin your desire for your wife is to look at pornography. If I need to think about what gets me going, I first need to rid myself of anything that stops me from getting going. And if statistics are to be believed, more than half of today’s husbands are sabotaging their marital bed by viewing pornography.…

One Bad Reason To Wait To Have Sex Until Marriage

Does “saving yourself” for marriage mean you will have an amazing sex life? A few years ago, after I preached on a biblical view of sex, someone came up to me and said, “Wow! I felt like I was in youth group again.” I wasn’t sure if that was good or bad, but I smiled and continued on, saying hi to people. I later learned that he was implying that was bad. It was as if he was saying, “Thanks…

July 2022 Reading Challenge

July 2022 Reading Challenge Becoming Elisabeth Elliot by Ellen Vaughn 322 pages Biography Amazon Link (Available as a print, ebook, and audiobook)   Book Summary From Amazon: Elisabeth Elliot was a young missionary in Ecuador when members of a violent Amazonian tribe savagely speared her husband Jim and his four colleagues. Incredibly, prayerfully, Elisabeth took her toddler daughter, snakebite kit, Bible, and journal . . . and lived in the jungle with the Stone-Age people who killed her husband. Compelled by her…

Ask The Pastor: Do Pets Go To Heaven?

Question: Do Pets (Animals) Go To Heaven? Answer: If you know me at all, you know I am not exactly a big dog person. I do like cats and I have also grown fond of my silkie chickens, perhaps because they remind me of cats 🙂 But I do recognize that many of you out there love dogs and other animals and have likely thought at some point, “Will my dog go to heaven? Will my pet hamster go heaven? Will…

June 2022 Reading Challenge

June Reading Challenge A Praying Life: Connecting with God in a Distracting World by Paul E. Miller 304 pages Christian Living/Theology Amazon Link (Available as a print, ebook, and audiobook)   Book Summary From Amazon: More than 300,000 copies sold! Now updated and expanded! Prayer is hard. Often, unless circumstances demand it―such as an illness or saying grace before a meal―most of us simply do not pray. This kind of prayerlessness can leave us with a distressed spirit and practical…

May 2022 Reading Challenge

May Reading Challenge George Whitefield: God’s Anointed Servant in the Great Revival of the Eighteenth Century by Arnold Dallimore 224 pages Biography Amazon Link (Available as a print, ebook, and audiobook)   Book Summary From Amazon: God’s accomplishments through George Whitefield are to this day virtually unparalleled. In an era when many ministers were timid and apologetic in their preaching, he preached the gospel with zeal and undaunted courage. In the wake of his fearless preaching, revival swept across the British Isles,…

The Power of Last Say

When I was younger I loved to play a video game called Plants vs Zombies Heroes. It is a turn-based game that goes like this: The zombies first get to place their fighter down, the plants get to place their fighter down, and then the zombies get to play tricks. Afterward the battle begins. The zombies have the power of last say because anything the plants place down; the zombies can completely and utterly destroy it. Assuming they have the…

The Dawkins Delusion

Richard Dawkins is an atheist who wrote a well-known book called, “The God Delusion” back in 2006. The book seeks to, “make a case that belief in God is not just wrong but potentially deadly” (from the Amazon description). I am currently working through the book for the first time. While I do not consider myself a great philosopher and I have no doubt that Dawkins is intellectually much smarter than me (I am obviously more handsome though), I am…

April 2022 Reading Challenge

April Reading Challenge Is God A Moral Monster by Paul Copan 256 pages Theology Amazon Link (Available as a print, ebook, and audiobook)   Book Summary From Amazon: A recent string of popular-level books written by the New Atheists have leveled the accusation that the God of the Old Testament is nothing but a bully, a murderer, and a cosmic child abuser. This viewpoint is even making inroads into the church. How are Christians to respond to such accusations? And how are…