I teach the women’s Bible study group at my church and have for over 10 years. We have prayed for each other weekly during all that time and have seen miracles. But there is one recent miracle that I will never forget. Alice is one of our long-time members. A delightful, feisty, funny, fighting daughter of God. She’s in her 80s but always had great physical health and is still a caretaker for the sick. But then she got sick with severe altitude sickness — which is ironic since she’s lived in the mountains for years. One of her symptoms is severe nosebleeds. A couple of Tuesdays ago she came…

In the I-could-have-told-them-that department, a recent study on Canadian churches reported that evangelical churches were growing faster than their liberal counterparts, even in the same denomination. (BTW, please keep in mind that “evangelical” doesn’t mean a political conservative, although many are — it means a conservative approach to the literal truth of the Bible.) The Christianity Today article titled “Even in Canada, Conservative Churches Are Growing” discusses the research. It’s good, please read it. And here is my take: liberal churches are essentially telling their congregants to be nice and go out and help people. But you don’t need to attend church to do that, so why bother going on…

We don’t like the word “obey” much, do we? “I’m independent, gosh darn it. I’m strong, free, and self-directed. You’re not the boss of me.” When you’re Christian and hear yourself say things like that it’s pretty funny stuff. In fact, as much as we might not like to think that we obey someone, there’s some of that in everyone’s life. Healthy obedience means to obey a law enforcement officer’s legal order, especially as pertains to getting you out of a dangerous situation. We obey our bosses’ ethical requests. We obey street signs. There is all sorts of good and healthy obedience of the world. And when God directs us…