Week 11: James and the Fatherless Day 5: Of Daisies And Dollars (James 1:9-11) Grass does not do well under the burning sun. Last summer, we had a drought, and our yard suffered greatly. We were re-siding the house, and often couldn’t run the sprinklers because of it. We live in a semi-arid climate anyway, …
NT 11:4 – Not For The Faint of Heart
Week 11: James and the Fatherless Day 4: Not for the Faint of Heart (James 1:6-8) What does faith look like in an orphan ministry? The circumstances surrounding faith are rarely pretty. They are rarely simple. But somehow, they always seem to suddenly break out into something glorious, like a brilliant sunrise bursting into the …
NT 11:2 No Room For Doubt
Week 11: James and the Fatherless Day 2: Characteristics and Necessity of Faith, Part I – No Room For Doubt (James 1:6-8) God gives one requirement when He tells us to ask for wisdom: He wants us to do it in faith. Faith is a crucial part of our Christian lives. In fact, we cannot …
NT 11:1 The Source of Wisdom
Week 11: James and the Fatherless Day 1: The Source of Wisdom (James 1:5) [Ed. Note – This was written several weeks ago…] Before I crawled out of bed this morning, I already had a specific need for wisdom that wasn’t there when I got into bed last night… that is the nature of orphan …
NT 10:5 The Testing of our Faith
Week 10, Part II: James and the Fatherless Day 5: The Testing of our Faith (James 1:2-4, I Peter 1:6-8, Job 23-24) A few years ago, I helped out with an annual outreach in Central Montana. The pastor who organized it set up tents in 3 communities where we held Vacation Bible Schools and preaching …
NT 10:3 The Work of Patience
Week 10, Part II: James and the Fatherless Day 3: The Work of Patience (James 1:2-4) Very often the book of James deals with two primary things: Our heart attitudes and our actions. Though there are many subtopics, you can pretty well organize the entire book under these two headings. Looking at it from this …
NT 10:2 The Audience And The Servant
Week 10, Part II: James and the Fatherless Day 2: The Audience and the Servant (James 1:1) As we reach the last part of our look at the New Testament and the fatherless, we come to the only book in which the fatherless are actually mentioned by name in the entire second half of the …
God is Faithful – Central Asia Update
God is faithful – even when we don’t understand. In nearly eighteen years of working with various ministries overseas, I have never once had to cancel or postpone a trip once the planning was fully underway—until this spring. Now, I face that decision for the second time in a month and a half. I have …
How Would Job Celebrate Father’s Day
I shouldn’t be writing this. It’s eleven p.m. and I have a busy day tomorrow. There’s a good chance that I’ll wake up in the morning and scratch the whole thing because it’s not likely I’ll make much sense at this hour…But I can’t not write it. Sunday is Father’s Day. We all know that. …
NT 10:1 The Final Stamp
Week 10: The New Testament and Adoption Cont’d Day 1: The Final Stamp – (Ephesians 1:12-14) We always used to joke that in order to get anything done in Russia you had to have two things: A Spravka (certificate) and a Pechat’ (stamp). The stamp was particularly important because even if you had the spravka, …