When God sends guests to your church, you must see them as a gift from God and treat them as such. Your reaction to them and response to their visit largely determine whether or not they will be your guest again.

An old Yiddish proverb says, “God gave burdens, also shoulders.” But have you ever felt that your shoulders were too weak to bear your burdens? This is one reason God has made the church a family—that we might bear one another’s burdens (Galatians 6:2).

Some of the final words written by the Apostle Paul under divine inspiration dealt with the subject of loyalty and particularly the loyalty or disloyalty of certain preachers to himself. Second Timothy chapter four speaks of Demas as having forsaken Paul, of Luke as remaining with him in his last days, and of the fact that at his trial, “No man stood with me, but all men forsook me.” Standing with Paul or forsaking him certainly appears as a theme in his final epistle.

When the twelve spies returned from their foray into the Promised Land, all of them gave testimony to seeing the same things. They all saw a fertile land that flowed with milk and honey and they saw the fruit that the land produced such as the grapes of Eshcol.

There is an old saying that is absolutely true; you never have a second chance to make a first impression. All of us have visited churches where our first impression was less than positive.

Our natural tendency is to create our own definitions of purity—building longer and more impressive lists of rules every year. But if we want to please God, we must get our definition of pure religion from the Bible.

What is a “motto”? It is a brief statement used to express a principle, goal, or idea; or it is a saying that reminds us of a truth. Here are some mottos of our support staff:

One of my favorite passages in the Old Testament deals with David and his band of men living in a place called Ziklag. Ziklag was a village or town that was under Philistine control. David had become weary of running from Saul and thought that it might be better to hang out in this outpost city.

Recently a young preacher from our church posted on Facebook that he was going to have the opportunity to preach on a Sunday morning while the senior pastor was on vacation. He was excited about being given the privilege of standing in the pastor’s place to feed the people of God in the most important service of the week.