The plumb line was created 3,000 years ago through Egyptian engineering. Ancient Egyptians used a plumb line attached to the top outer part of of a tool resembling a letter E. When placed against a wall, the plumb line would indicate a vertical line. An A-frame level with a plumb line hung from the vertex was also used to find horizontal; these were used in Europe until the mid–19th century. The plumb line brought balance or helped to create a leveled horizontal. What is your plumb line? What is it in your life that develops your priorities? Your measurement? Your consistency? When temptation and desire intersect, what is your plumb…

Operation Christmas Child’s goal is to ship more than 12 million shoeboxes for Christmas 2024. Operation Christmas Child is the number one shipper of shoeboxes each year in the world. How did this begin? The Making of the Shoebox: Until the 19th century, shoes were generally made by hand in small workshops by cobblers. As this footwear was made for a customer’s specific order or in limited quantities, there was no great need for shoemakers to create significant storage space or require adequate ways to protect their goods. However, the rapid development of innovative manufacturing processes within the footwear industry soon required good storage for the newly mass-produced product. The…

All of us from time to time will struggle with fear. Christians who say they never struggle with fear, will also share other falsehoods with you. Leading Christian Psychologists tell us there are different levels of fear. I suppose the greatest fear is pantaphobia; the fear of fear. If we are not careful, we can get sucked into a vortex of fear that pulls us downward each day. A friend of mine once told me, “Fear will take from you whatever you choose to give it.”  Yet, we do not have to live with the spirit of fear throughout our lives. Some Believes have been living with certain fears since…

    More than two thousand years ago, Mankind nailed his Maker on a cross of wood. On that horrific day, the devil laughed, the people sneered and the Father turned His back on his Son. Jesus Christ did not die and rise again for a percentage of the world, but for the whole world. While Jesus was dying on the cross, there were many miracles that happened to demonstrate Why Good Friday is Good. Easter is God’s grace for the human race. As we approach Good Friday, consider Why Good Friday is Good. According to Matthew 27:45-54, when Jesus died on the cross: He touched the sun. In Him,…

There is a joy and peace that passes all understanding; but in order to walk in this joy and peace, we must embrace Christ daily and live in the power of the Holy Spirit. God had given a land, a law, and a Lord to His ancient people Israel. They defiled the land, defied the law, and denied the Lord. As a result, the Babylonians came and carried them away to a strange land—a land of captivity. These people who were meant to sing lost their song. By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down and wept, when we remembered Zion. Upon the willows in the midst of it…

Happiness depends on what transpires, but joy enriches the soul and comes only from the Lord. Truly, the joy of the Lord is your strength (Nehemiah 8:10). As we begin our joy journey together, it important that we come to cognitive clarity as to what the differences are between happiness and joy. Much labor has gone into this book—not to help us to be happier but hopefully to help us to be full of joy. Learning the differences between happiness and joy can help us live a more meaningful life filled with greater purpose. The Lord does want us to be happy and healthy, but holiness is the Lord’s higher aim for our lives….

“These are spots in your feasts of charity, when they feast with you, feeding themselves without fear: clouds they are without water, carried about of winds; trees whose fruit withereth, without fruit, twice dead, plucked up by the roots; raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame; wandering stars, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever” (Jude 1:12–13).  What a poignant statement! What powerful verses these are! The Apostle Jude is providing us with a portrait of an apostate. There are spiritual criminals in the Body of Christ and local churches. An apostate is not merely someone who does not believe in the gospel—he is lost, but…

  In Colossians 2:20, we read, “Wherefore, if ye be dead with Christ from the rudiments of the world, why, as though living in the world, are ye subject to ordinances (Touch not; taste not; handle not; Which all are to perish with the using) after the commandments and teachings of men? Which things have indeed a show of wisdom in will-worship, and humility, and neglecting of the body, not in any honor to the satisfying of the flesh.” Many years ago, there was a man named Jim Jones who persuaded several hundred people to follow him in suicide in Guyana. How is it that several hundred people will follow…

Life is what you are alive to. Mention cars and many teenage boys come alive. Mention boyfriends and all the teenage girls come alive. Mention money and the stock market and a lot of people come alive. Life indeed is what you are alive to. That is certainly true in the Christian life. When you come to the Lord Jesus Christ, your life takes on a new perspective and it gains a new center. Paul put it this way in Philippians 1:21, “For me to live is Christ and to die is gain.” Life, for the believer, is Jesus Christ. You come alive in the Lord Jesus Christ and life…