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greatest themes of all times
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Grown Up Bible Stories The Story in Easy English Discovering the Son of God
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Grown Up Bible Stories
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New Story: God's Man and the Devil's City
Of all the dramatic moments in Scripture, the disaster that befell the city of Sodom stands among the most dramatic. While time—not to mention fiery destruction—has placed many statistics beyond our reach, the disaster was huge. It involved multiple cities and a large rural area. Only three people survived. Those three survivors had no way of knowing, but they survived because of an important conference the day before.
He couldn’t just shake his head and mutter something about the will of God. He had too much at stake. He had one child, a twelve-year-old girl. She was his only one, and she was ill, deathly ill. Religious man or not, it is neither natural nor right to walk away from a dying child and assume that her death is the will of God. So today, this man went to seek a religious figure from outside the local organization.
A Man for an Impossible Situation
He was a legend in his own time. The first son of the nation’s first king, he stood to inherit the crown. He even showed promise of filling that crown better than his father did. A national hero, a man with great popular support, he had a lot going for him. Only, as the saying goes, "It’s hard to soar with the eagles when you work with a bunch of turkeys." In this case, it wasn’t a bunch of turkeys—it was his royal father.
She was desperate. Her three-month old baby lived under a death warrant, and hiding him grew more difficult by the day. She was part of an oppressed ethnic group living in the territory of one of the world’s superpowers. The government had decreed that all baby boys of her race must die. It was an effort at population control, an effort born of mistrust and prejudice. Today, we’d call the whole mess ethnic cleansing. When the midwives who delivered her people’s babies managed to outsmart the ruler’s command to kill all male children at birth, the command had become general. All of this king’s subjects were ordered to drown any infant boys found among the unwanted people. A command that broad was impossible to escape. Her baby had to go in the river. She had hidden him as long as was humanly possible. The end result was inevitable. It was time to face reality and let the sweet little thing go.
All They Did Was Show Up for Work
Whatever happened at the top, the people living out the hard realities of the situation were commoners. Peter was working class. His guards were soldiers. Both he and they were pawns in the hands of the big boys. None of their lives mattered to the man making the decisions.
One of history’s more interesting incidents involved a sin by one of its greatest kings. The incident isn’t so spectacular because King David did the wrong thing. David had already demonstrated the full range of human weaknesses despite his great devotion to God. Rather, the story grabs the attention because it lifts the curtain and gives a glimpse of the interaction between heaven and earth. It is one of those places in the Bible where the veil hiding the spiritual realm is eased back and we get a view of some of the forces at work in the unseen world. (Ends with a Christmas parallel.)
The histories of many
nations include periods of anger. Whether the result of oppression,
international events, or charismatic but angry leaders, whole societies
sometimes become enraged. Sometimes such anger rights wrongs. Other times, it
only maims, bereaves, and oppresses. An angry public, like an angry person,
often proves dangerous.
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Essays
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New!
One might say that even at a very early age, the lonely prairie left me restless. An example would be my reaction to the freight trains that clattered along lonely prairie tracks. They were pulled by boxy diesel locomotives. My books, on the other hand, pictured streamlined diesels pulling the matching cars of passenger trains. The streamliners looked so modern. The clunky old prairie locomotives just plain lacked culture.
“Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom.” The man who spoke those words had incredible gall. He had just admitted he deserved to be hanging by nails from a wooden rack in public. He had just admitted he was dying because he was evil.
What is eternal life worth? Is it worth everything? Think about death. Think about Hell. Such thoughts bring to mind the day a school bully was chasing me. He grabbed my jacket. I slipped out of my jacket and kept running. I was willing to pay about any price if only I could make it safely home. When making it safely home means making it to Heaven, there is no price I wouldn’t be willing to pay. That price leads to a problem.
“Dave, I want to show you something.” My flight instructor took control of the two-seat Cessna. Moments later the airplane pitched over. The sky disappeared from the windshield as we plunged earthward, spinning wildly. I felt like I was going to die as I braced against gravity. We were in what pilots call a spin. While the fear factor was real, I had asked for this very experience.
Are you willing to fail for the Lord? Fail for the Lord? Now wait a minute!
Anyone who has experienced winter in the northern forest knows how welcome springtime can be. The change to mild weather happens almost reluctantly, and snow flurries can occur after the first thunderstorm, but spring is still spring. The air warms. The snow melts. The soil thaws and begins to warm. The water left by the snow dries up. Trees bud. The grass turns green. The glories of a northern summer begin to assert themselves. Spring is a most welcome time in the north woods. Spring is also a dangerous time in the north woods.
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How to Have a Relationship with God
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A Father's Faith * A Man for an Impossible Situation * A Mother's Triumph * All they Did Was Show Up for Work * Angels in the Sky * Buried Alive * Challenging the Gods * Dealing with the Evidence * Enforcing the Enforcer * God's Man and the Devil's City * Magic Vs. Miracle * Reclaiming a Failure * Taking Away the Stone * The Beginning * The Decision * The Devoted One * The End of the Boy King * The Flood * The Good Samaritan * The King and the King of Kings * The Making of a Traitor * The Man Who Sold His Rights * The Man Whose Eyes Were Opened * The Outcast * The Secret Agent * The Stranger * The Testing * The View from the Cave * The Weak Commando * Two Men, Two Scandals, Two Results * Where Is the God of Elijah? * Willing to Pay the Price
Bridges to Burn * Come in Out of the Cold * Dropping Out * Dying Faith * Everything I Didn't Have * Failed Horizons * Failing for the Lord * Fire Danger * Living Water * Negligence * Sir * Spring or Rock Formation? * Stepping Toward God * Swimming with Piranhas * Tax Day * The Abandoned Skyscraper * The Beacon * The Cat in the Trash Can * Those New Antique Locomotives * The Road Through the Swamp * Tracks in the Woods * Trusting the Unseen
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