I've had an Epiphany!

Luke 22:54 Then seizing [Jesus], they led him away and took him into the house of the high priest. Peter followed at a distance. 55 But when they had kindled a fire in the middle of the courtyard and had sat down together, Peter sat down with them. 56 A servant girl saw him seated there in the firelight. She looked closely at him and said, "This man was with him." 57 But he denied it. "Woman, I don't know him," he said. 58 A little later someone else saw him and said, "You also are one of them." "Man, I am not!" Peter replied. 59 About an hour later another asserted, "Certainly this fellow was with him, for he is a Galilean." 60 Peter replied, "Man, I don't know what you're talking about!" Just as he was speaking, the rooster crowed. 61 The Lord turned and looked straight at Peter. Then Peter remembered the word the Lord had spoken to him: "Before the rooster crows today, you will disown me three times....

A few weeks ago, our tour group was sitting on the steps leading up to the Temple Mound in Jerusalem. In one direction, the other pastors and wives in the group could hear the clarion call of the Muslims, calling to pray to their god who cannot hear them. In the other direction were the Jews writing their prayers on little slips of paper and sticking them into the Wailing Wall, praying to a god who cannot listen. We sat on those Temple steps and listened to a devotion filled with words coming from the true God who still speaks to us and singing a hymn to the Lord who really can listen. We were standing in the place where Jesus taught and Peter preached at Pentecost, David’s holy city, the location of Solomon’s glorious temple, yet the Muslims and Jews who control Jerusalem have rejected the one true God. Jesus lamented, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks...

One night lightning struck the chicken coop and burned it to the ground. Ike arrived just in time to help his dad put out the last of the fire. The next morning as he and his father sorted through the wreckage, they came upon one hen lying dead near what had been the door of the hen house. Her top feathers were singed brown by the fire's heat, her neck limp. Ike bent down to pick up the dead hen. As he did the hen's four chicks came scurrying out from beneath her burnt body. The chicks survived because they were insulated by the shelter of the hen’s wings. This is a picture of what our Lord does for us. Jesus said, “How often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings.” (Luke 13:34) God’s protection and salvation is often pictured in the Psalms as being under His protective wings. Psalm 17:8 Keep me as the apple of your eye; hide me in the shadow of your wings Psalm 57:1 Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy on me, for in y...

Now this is paradise. The Bible tells us that after “the heavens and the earth were completed in their vast array … the LORD God … planted a garden in the east, in Eden, and there he put the man he had formed. And the LORD God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground – trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food … a river watering the garden flowed from Eden” (Genesis 2:1,8-10). So it’s hard to believe that Adam and Eve didn’t consider the Garden of Eden paradise at all, but prison. Instead of thanking the LORD God for creating a luxury home for them they cursed Him for not making it better. With the help of the devil they longed for their dream paradise waiting just beyond their reach. Just a taste is all they needed. Then they’d be happy. So Adam and Eve took the fruit that God had prohibited and the devil had promoted, eagerly anticipating the paradise that would be theirs. What they chewed and then swallowed was not paradise at all, but poison. These are our pare...

One of the beautifully somber expressions of our Lenten faith is the Nail Pin. At the beginning of the Lenten season we ask our members to wear this pin during the season of Lent until Good Friday. Wear it to work, to school, at home, for shopping – everywhere. If someone asks you about it, tell them the symbolism and give them the nail and get another one from church. The Nail symbolizes our sins and our need for repentance. At the end of our Good Friday services, the worshipers are invited to take the Nail Pin and place it in the cross at the back of our church. This symbolizes giving your sins to Jesus and having them taken away. Throughout the Lenten season we see the cross at the back of the church. Throughout the Easter season we see the same cross at the back of the church, now pierced with nails and covered with a white cloth symbolizing Christ’s resurrection. The sins that have been placed on the cross have been buried in the open grave – never to return. Psalm 103:12 ...

“It is a tricky battle, it is not against flesh and blood. We deal with the superhuman, with the faceless, the contourless, the formless, the nonidentifiable power. All the terror of vagueness, all the terror of the nonmeasurable, the non-calculable, the nonpalpable – that is in this battle … We can identify our adversary only by his grunts and scufflings, only by the loathsome smell of his sweat. We are in the land of senseless panic, of self-generated and self-perpetuating fear, of senseless cowardice and equally senseless self-confidence … Just where we meet the blessing of the elective love of God, there we meet this Satan” (p. 17). Martin Franzmann, Ha! Ha! Among the Trumpets.

Mark 1:1-13 The beginning of the gospel about Jesus Christ, the Son of God. 2 It is written in Isaiah the prophet: "I will send my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way"-- 3 "a voice of one calling in the desert, 'Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him.'" 4 And so John came, baptizing in the desert region and preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. 5 The whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem went out to him. Confessing their sins, they were baptized by him in the Jordan River. 6 John wore clothing made of camel's hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. 7 And this was his message: "After me will come one more powerful than I, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. 8 I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit." 9 At that time Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was ...