As he admitted to a wrongdoing, the young man said, “I just couldn’t control myself.” Self-control is a difficult thing. It has to do with discipline, and discipline is hard. We live in an out-of-control society and If you don’t discipline yourself, someone else will control you. Thus the importance of self-control. It is similar…
It is finally healing – the scar left following my ninth skin cancer surgery, and it’s not my mother’s fault. I remember my mother often telling me that if I was going to play outside, I needed to wear a hat. No way! Sissies wore hats. Many decades later, I am paying for my disobedience,…
After he confessed a sin in which he had been caught, the student seated across my desk, shrugged his shoulders, and with a sigh, exclaimed, “Oh well, God has forgiven me!” While I could not disagree with him, in regard to the possibility of God’s forgiveness, I could assure him that, even though forgiven, he…
I spoke recently at a Men’s Breakfast for a nearby church. Present at that gathering was a man who had been a member of a neighboring church where I had served as Interim Pastor thirty-two years previously. Unfortunately, his wife was having memory issues, and it prompted him to share a story with me. A…
I completed another Interim Pastorate yesterday. I only served as Pastor of two churches before I went to work for the denomination, but since then, I’ve served as Interim Pastor of twenty-six churches. This time I was asked if this was my last interim or if I planned on taking on another one. Since number…
Last week’s Monday Morning Manna was deleted by Facebook. Some thought it was because I quoted scripture, but I quote scripture in every issue of Monday Morning Manna. Others thought I offended the FB standards because of my comments on “men and women.” Still others believed it was a computer program, not an individual that…
My mother was a great student of the Bible, but I’m not sure she cared much for the Book of Esther. She often said that my father was the head of the house, but then added, “I’m the neck, and the head does not turn without the neck.” Not sure where she got that idea,…
Do we have to ask God to hear our prayer, or does He automatically hear? When Nehemiah was preparing to go before the King to request permission to go to Jerusalem and rebuild the walls of the city, he prayed, “O Lord, I pray, please let Your ear be attentive to the prayer of Your…
According to Wikipedia, bullying is “the use of force, coercion, hurtful teasing or threat, to abuse, aggressively dominate or intimidate.” It is a serious issue in our culture today. While I am totally opposed to bullying, especially when it happens to the young, I think there are times, we can laugh it off and go…
A lot has been written on social media recently about sermon plagiarizing – preaching someone else’s sermon, although one of my preaching professors told us if you preach another’s sermon it is called plagiarizing, but if you combine parts of several sermons, it is called research. My pastor-father used to say, “When better sermons are…