OUT OF THE BOX

  SUBSTANCE VS STYLE Leadership should actually feed the sheep, equip the saints, and strengthen the church, and see actual growth and progress in the Lord's people. My cry is that the real church, the true church would emerge, rather than the typical routine, fluff, and imitation. Too often the church is like "processed Christianity," Nothing like the original, designed for buyer appeal, and lacking the nutrition it is meant to have. Religious people often substitute ritual and ceremony for real relationship with the Lord Himself. People who are short on intimacy with Jesus seem to find security in the outward forms. An organization can do the same thing. It is interesting that God gave Israel a portable tabernacle long before He gave them a stone temple. In Israel’s journey across the wilderness, they had to follow the cloud of God’s presence that rested above the tabernacle. When the cloud moved, they moved; when the cloud rested, they remained still. The cloud did ...

Samaritans Purse set up a tent hospital in Central Park in New York City to help with the overflow of patients from the hospitals there during the corona virus pandemic. I read an article at that time stating that New York’s mayor De Blasio expressed concern that Samaritan’s purse is operated by Franklin Graham who is accused of having a “virulent hatred of homosexuals and is Islamophobic” and that Samaritan’s Purse will discriminate against  homosexuals and anyone who “disagrees with their fundamentalist beliefs.” Some had even expressed concern that the Christian organization would deliberately refuse to aid those who disagree with the organization’s beliefs, or that they would intentionally spread the disease. How foolish and erroneous are such charges! You and I know the sincerity and love that motivates this organization. But we are living in a culture where this type of false accusation and unwarranted hate and prejudice will be directed at those who have the testimony of Jes...

No matter what your religion or spiritual belief system is, it logically must bring you to the intellectual and philosophical conclusion that there has to be a creator and a Sovereign manager over it all. For instance, reincarnation is a complicated process, if it were true. If you believe in reincarnation, I would have to ask you, “Who manages and directs it? Where did the spirits come from that keep reincarnating upward or downward? Who does the evaluating regarding good and bad and which ones move upward and which ones move downward?” You always come back to the necessity of a creator and manager. Even the dynamics of pantheism that pervades eastern religions and the New Age movement require the existence of an all-powerful, higher power to create and manage the processes.   Therefore, all religions bring you back to the need for a personal God who created and manages His creation. However, all  “roads” and philosophies do not lead to God, but all “roads” point to the fact ...