Why Do Things Have to Change?

In some ways, things change, and in other ways, they remain the same.  At our prayer retreat this year, a ball hockey game was organized and to play we were requested to show up to the tennis courts at 2 pm.  Everyone heard the announcement; anyone could come.

I hummed and hawed a bit, mostly because I had forgotten my knee brace (usually essential equipment for me).  I convinced myself I could take it easy and not run a lot (pretty much hang out in front of the other team’s net and wait for the ball).

ballhockey-goal

Really, though, there was no decision.  You see, when I hear the word “hockey”, somewhere inside my brain an automatic switch gets turned on and I can’t really help myself.  And, of course, I always have my sticks in the car ready to go!

Not so for many of the guys – they had to use the sticks available from the resort.  I guess the people who normally stay at Deerhurst Resort shoot right because all the sticks were right-handed … total frustration for the guys who were left-handed.

I noticed something when I got to the game.  I was in a different category than everyone else.  There was a bit of an age gap.  I was born the year Elvis Presley released his first hit song, “Heartbreak Hotel”, and none of the others playing were born till after the Beatles broke up!

When I first started as a pastor, I had all kinds of buddies in ministry and we would dominate when we got together.  Back then, the old guys wouldn’t even consider trying to compete with us.  They just smiled as if to say, “You’ll get old like us one day”.

I remember being at our National Meetings, one year into ministry.  There was about 20 of us guys in our first 5 years of being pastors.  We decided to take one afternoon and hit the water park at West Edmonton Mall.

We took over the place – we were loud and created a ruckus.  The lifeguards couldn’t control us; they were yelling at us not to run or climb up the side of the pool, or get too close to the turbine that drove the wave pool.  We just laughed and kept having fun.

That was a long time ago …  “Where were those buddies now?”, I wondered.  Then they announced we were going to play “old guys” versus “young guys” and I thought, “What? I have to take them all on myself?!”

Apparently, now you only have to be 35 to be an old guy (I was thankful).  And things do change: we “old guys” hammered the young guys; they barely got a goal on us (they must have been embarrassed).

But then, some things stay the same: I still answered the call to play when the invitation was made.

Here’s the thing: God desires for us to change and grow.  He never wants me to stop growing in my understanding of Him, or in my trust of Him, or in my service to Him.  God always calls me to more, to a deeper, richer, fuller relationship with Him.  But as I continue to change, I can be confident that He remains the same.  The target isn’t moving.  It is always clear, always in reach, always right in front of me: become more like Christ (He’s “the same yesterday, today and forever.” Hebrews 13:8).

Until Next Time!

Pastor Paul

Question: What do you do to ensure you keep growing?  Leave your comment below.

Lasting Memories

This past week Lily and I attended our 27th district prayer retreat.  Prayer retreat is a getaway for pastors and their wives.  It’s a time to be refreshed and renewed, and focus on ourselves both emotionally and spiritually.  I look forward to these retreats every year.  Just three days, but they’re special.

winter-day-view

Over the years, the retreat experience has varied in a number of ways.  When I started in ministry in Alberta, our prayer retreat was in Banff.  Now THAT was a tough place to be with the mountains, the hot springs close by, and the shops lining the main street that Lily loved to check out.  I’m not sure we ever bought much there, but we did have to go in every one of them!

At prayer retreat we reconnect with all our friends, many whom we had gone to college with.  After the evening meeting we couldn’t wait to get to the restaurants or hot springs just to hang out.  We’d even hang out at the Christmas shop on the main street. It had a bench just inside the door, I called it the husbands bench. My buddies and I would sit there and make comments about and to those coming into the store, while our wives shopped. We had some great times, a lot of laughs together.

Because prayer retreat was always in the off-season when the rates are cheap, we got amazing deals on great accommodations … except for one year, and my friend, Dave, and I continued on and on about it until our wives were ready to kill us.  (But Pastor Dan’s room WAS bigger than both our rooms put together!)

So, it was a real change moving to Ontario and attending our first prayer retreat at Joy Bible Camp.  The contrast was extreme!  We were in the middle of nowhere; we stayed in tiny rooms where we either shared a washroom with another couple, or had to walk outside and down a flight of stairs to get to the shower.

But Joy Bible Camp had a gym, and every night after our meetings many of us hit the gym for some ball hockey, or basketball.  It was so different from the retreats in Banff, but in some ways, the retreats at the camp had their own charm.  Oh, those afternoon broom ball matches, with Gerry knocking bodies around!

And, at the end of the retreat, there was always the bonus excitement of whether the cars would start … retreats in those days were at the end of January with temperatures well below zero!

Well, this year prayer retreat came full circle.  The retreat was in Huntsville, at Deerhurst Resort (that’s right – where the G8 Summit was held).  Our accommodations certainly rivaled those days in Banff.  And, like the retreats at Joy Bible Camp, there was even a ball hockey game!

Now, I haven’t said much about the speakers and times of prayer.  Over the years, I’ve been challenged, encouraged, made fresh commitments, prayed for others and been prayed for by others.  We have had rich times with God and each other.  And Lily and I have experienced them all together!

Here’s the thing:  God puts a variety of experiences in our path, and He brings a variety of people along to experience them with us.  God uses those experiences and those people to shape us and mold us along the way.  We should treasure each experience we have and cherish every person He brings alongside.

Until Next Time!

Pastor Paul

Question: What experiences has God used to shape you? Leave your comment below.

Another Amazing Burger King Experience

The other day, my wife and I ate at a Burger King.  It’s not our habit to eat there; in fact, neither of us could remember the last time we had a whopper.  But we were traveling, needed to eat, and BK was all we could find.

So, here’s a question:  What does “Burger King” stand for?  Maybe they mean their burger is the biggest (they don’t call it the whopper for nothing).  Maybe they mean it’s the best burger out there (that’s debatable).  I’ll tell you what they don’t mean – they don’t mean they have the best, most efficient, and fastest service of all the fast food restaurants!

When we went in, there was a crowd of people standing in a semi-circle in front of the serving counter.  You don’t see a line up like that everyday, so I was a little confused as to where I should stand.  I asked one person if he was waiting to order, and was told he was waiting for his food.  So I went right up to the counter; there was no one else ordering.

Just before the server asked me for my order, I looked over my shoulder at this semi-circle of people.  I noticed two things:  they all had little white pieces of paper in their hands that resembled receipts, and none of them were smiling.

As I started to get an uneasy feeling, the server asked, “Can I take your order?”  His voice reminded me of my hunger and the smell of food caused me to forget about the semi-circle of people behind me.  I gave him my order and paid.  Then I turned around and found my place in the semi-circle.

I wanted to look frustrated like everyone else, but I just couldn’t.  You see, years ago I had a similar experience at another Burger King, and as I stood in that semi-circle I had a flashback …

I was with my whole family, and our kids were about 15 and 13 at the time.  When we got inside that Burger King, the line up to order was huge.  But strangely, no one was taking orders.

There was lots of activity behind the counter, and about seven bags of food sitting on the counter.  The person who was supposed to be taking the orders was busy opening the bags to see what was in them.  Apparently, they kept making food but couldn’t seem to figure out who it belonged to!

People in line were mad; some even left to eat elsewhere.  We debated leaving, but we had started conversations with people around us and didn’t want to abandon our new found friends!

The manager was a little man, who looked like Quasimodo or Mr Creeply from the Flintstones.  He was running around with a shifty looking smile on his face.  At one point, he took five bags of orders out to the drive through (because no one out there had gotten their orders either!).  When he came back in, he still had the five bags!  He put them back on the counter and chuckled in his sinister way.

After we finally got our food that day, we sat down and watched the show from our seats.  We were laughing so hard at the workers and the customers – it was great entertainment!  Hey, maybe that’s what “King” stands for … best fast food entertainment of all!

Here’s the thing:  There are things on earth we call “king”, and there are some heads of state we acknowledge as “king”.  But the Bible says there is only one King of Kings and Lord of Lords.  All others pale in similarity.  All others are laughable comparisons.  The Bible also says that every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.

Until Next Time!

Pastor Paul

Question: What counterfeit “kings” vie for your loyalty? Leave your comment below.

Inspiration Can Be Unexpected

Inspiration can come at any time – sometimes when we least expect it.  This week I was woken up at 5 am with inspiration.  I don’t normally get up at 5.  My alarm regularly goes off at 6 am and if it doesn’t, I’m afraid that I would naturally wake up around the time my 21 year old son does on a Saturday.  Does noon sound like a good time to get up?

Five in the morning was pretty early for me to wake up on my own, but there I was, wide awake, looking at the red glowing numbers on our ceiling.

I like my projection clock because I don’t find the blazing white light of an alarm clock staring me in the face when I turn in bed … that’s too much like heading down a tunnel with a bright light at the end of it!

This particular morning I wasn’t just awake; I was awake and focused.  My mind was fully engaged and I was ready to get out of bed.  I had struggled the day before putting my sermon outline together, and just couldn’t see how I should organize what the passage was communicating.  I was extremely frustrated and my deadline for completing my sermon was clearly on my mind and getting closer.

In the midst of my frustration I did what you are supposed to do when you are in a jam – I prayed. I asked God to help me complete my outline.  After all, I want to preach what God wants the congregation to hear; it’s really His message.  Maybe that bugged me even more when I didn’t get the outline by the end of the day.

The week before I had been in a similar place and somehow it all came together by Friday.  But that was last week.  That was little comfort given my current situation; I was not happy.

It’s totally quiet in our house at 5 in the morning … not even the turtle is stirring at that time of day.  What woke me up, and what captivated my thoughts was my message.  I popped out of bed, and for the next hour I finished putting together my outline.  It was all in my head; my mind was brimming with words and verses and how they connected together.  It wasn’t like I was working; it was more like I was a secretary taking dictation. God had filled my mind with what He wanted communicated.

I closed my computer at 6:08 and got ready for my 7 am men’s prayer meeting.  I was energized, my outline was complete, and I wasn’t just ready to write my sermon, I was eager to get at it!  It’s funny how God didn’t give me the outline piece by piece the day before when I had asked Him.  Instead, He put it all in my head during the night.

Here’s the thing:  I write a sermon every week and I can become comfortable thinking that it is my sermon, my message that He’s helping me complete.  This week God reminded me that it is His message, and His sermon that I preach.  No matter what we do, we work for Him; He doesn’t work for us.  How often do we forget that?

Until Next Time!

Pastor Paul

Question: What has God inspired you with this past year?  Leave your comments below.

10,000 Steps A Day

You may have heard this before, but then again maybe you haven’t – I hadn’t until recently.  Research shows that we should take 10,000 steps a day.  Doing so can help to lower your BMI, reduce your waist size, and increase your energy.  It can help with hypertension and lessen your risk for Type II diabetes and heart disease.

If this is true, TVs should be hooked up to treadmills to make them work.  Doctors’ offices shouldn’t have parking lots, forcing us to walk to see our doctors!

10,000 steps equals about 8 kilometers (based on about a 2.5 foot long stride).  That’s about the distance I travel to work each day … and, uh, I would walk it if I … uh … didn’t need my car.

Some people have jobs where they walk all day, but not me.  As a pastor, I don’t walk very much.  I work at a desk and mostly walk to or from my car.  Tapping my feet to music while I work on my computer certainly doesn’t add any steps to my day.  I bought a pedometer to track my steps and, by noon some days, I’ve only taken 500.

So, to get a few more steps in, I started to walk for 30 minutes a day at a fairly brisk pace.  I walk with Lily around our neighbourhood, or go on our treadmill while watching TV.  I would take our turtle, Winston, for a walk but his legs are pretty short and I think I would end up dragging him around.

A thirty minute walk can give me about 4000 steps, which is pretty good, but still a far cry from ten grand!  So I’ve started to do something else: I get up from my desk mid morning and mid afternoon and walk for ten minutes around the sanctuary of the church.

It’s not the most interesting walk – it’s a little boring walking up and down the pews.  The only break is walking up the outside aisles and looking out the windows.  The problem with that is, if you see something interesting, you can’ t stop to get a better look.  You have to keep moving and just hope that it’s still visible on your next lap!

But I’ve found two things that make those walks exciting.  I either take time to think about what I am presently working on, taking my phone along and dictating into it any ideas that come to mind, OR, I use the time to pray.  I’ve found that I have some good times with God in those 10 minute intervals of walking in the sanctuary.  The time goes so fast as I walk that rather boring route.

Here’s the thing:  I’ve done my devotions early in the morning for years.  But I don’t have blocks of time later in the day that I spend in prayer.  I’m finding these 10 minute walks perfect for telling God what I’m thinking or feeling about right then.  I can talk over with Him what I’m wrestling with or what’s captured my immediate attention.  These short spurts of prayer or thought are inspiring and stimulating.  They’re like an injection of energy into my day.  I never would have thought of it.

Until Next Time!

Pastor Paul

Question:  What do you do to keep God in your day?

 

Bring Back My Old Appliance!

My wife, Lily, was away on the weekend.  She had left me some things to eat that I could just heat up.  I thought it would be a nice idea to try out some of the kitchen appliances I hardly ever use.

I decided to toast a bun and then put some peanut butter on it – that would be natural peanut butter, not the Kraft kind.  You can tell the difference because when you open a fresh jar of natural peanut butter, there is about an inch of oil on top that you need to stir into the peanut butter.  If you have ever mixed cement, that’s pretty much what you have to do with the peanut butter.  You get out an auger and  . . . okay it’s not quite that bad.

Anyway, I decided I would toast the bun in our toaster oven.  We haven’t had it that long and I don’t use it all that often.  We had an old one that is now up at the cottage.  We inherited it from my dad; it’s pretty old, but it does the trick.

I noticed with this new toaster oven, however, that though it was clean and shiny and looked all modern, it takes forever to heat something up!  Normally, things progress by getting better and faster and more efficient.  I’m not sure this new toaster oven is more efficient or better, but I’m positive it’s NOT faster!

I put the bun in, set it to toast, and watched.  Nothing seemed to be happening.  I finally went and read the paper.  I almost forgot it was there.  Finally, after a section of the paper and two flyers, the bun had sufficiently been toasted.

What is the deal with that?  Why so long?  I wondered if maybe some two year old child had tried to stick his head in a toaster oven one time and some activist got the idea that we have to make toaster ovens safer.  So instead of heating things up fast, now they’re designed to heat things up over the course of a day.  That would give a two year old and his parents enough time to get his head out of the toaster oven before he singed a hair or something.

I’m longing for our toaster oven at the cottage.  You can burn yourself on that one if you’re not careful.  But you’re supposed to be careful; it’s an appliance that combines electricity and heat – two things that kids shouldn’t be playing with!  So maybe they could turn up the heat on new toaster ovens if we just promised to keep them off the kitchen floor, or out of the baby’s bedroom.

If we promised to place them on the kitchen counter that should be sufficient.  We had a climber in our family, but he was at least three and a half before he could scale or mount cabinetry.  By then he knew what to keep his head out of.  Hey, but what do I know?

Here’s the thing:  When I pray I want answers fast, preferably immediately.  But I don’t control the timing, I don’t even know all the details that go into answering a prayer.  It’s possible that to answer my prayer God has to answer several other people’s prayers.  I also don’t know whether it is best for God to say “yes” or whether “no” would be the right answer to my prayer.  All I know is I want my answer quickly, and I want it to be “yes”. God will do what’s best; I just need to be patient.

Until Next Time!

Pastor Paul

Question:  What do you need patience for?  Leave your comment below.

Does a Seminar Count as a Date?

This past weekend, my wife and I attended a marriage seminar.  We had been planning on going for some time, though truthfully, I wasn’t super excited … maybe I would have been if it had meant a weekend away in a nice hotel with my wife!

I know what happens at seminars: someone talks for long periods of time, you take all kinds of notes, and leave feeling overwhelmed, not knowing where to begin.  Often you get right back into your life and work, and don’t have time to process it all … so you end up doing nothing.

Afterwards, people ask you how the seminar was, and you reply, “It was great; I learned so much and the speaker was so good.”  But the reality often is that you didn’t do anything with what you heard.

A week earlier, I had been to another two-day seminar with ten speakers talking about leadership.  Talk about overload!  I decided there were three things that three different speakers said that I wanted to pursue further.  Still, it’s a struggle to take the time to incorporate them into my life, so that it makes a difference.

I have to say, this marriage seminar was more than I thought it would be.  Not that I found out things I didn’t know before, but I came to understand the “why” of what I already knew.

Let me explain:  I know that when I bring flowers home, it does something to melt Lily’s heart.  I don’t know why.  I look at flowers and they don’t do anything for me. The reality is the flowers are in the process of dying and will be dried out in a week or less.

Still, she marvels over them, and feels something when she looks at them … and I know those feelings are directed towards me!  I don’t understand it one bit; I just know flowers work this way on Lily.

Well, what this seminar did was help me understand why Lily works the way she does.  It gave me context to her thinking, actions, and responses.  In the end, women came away feeling good about being women and men felt good about being men.  Now that’s something amazing in this men-bashing culture we live in!

Still, the key is not just understanding each other, and feeling good about being a man or a woman.  The key is in the follow up, what you do with what you now know.  For that seminar to make any impact on my marriage, I need to implement some things.

Here’s the thing:  As good as that seminar was, as funny and insightful as the speaker was, it all comes down to what I will do with what I learned.  I need a plan, or I need to commit to doing a couple of things or it won’t have been a help.  The same principle applies with sermons, devotions, small group study.  If I don’t take something from the message and do it, or commit to it, then God’s Word won’t help me.  It will just be good information.

By the way, the seminar was called “Love and Respect” (you can google it),  and ran on Friday evening and Saturday morning … and guys, Saturdays morning was the best part!

Until Next Time!

Pastor Paul

Question:  How do you ensure that you implement what you learn, whether from a book, a sermon, seminar, Bible study or your personal time with God? Leave your comment below.

Live vs. Prerecorded

This week I attended a conference on leadership.  It was the annual Global Leadership Summit that Willow Creek Church puts on.

Years ago if you were to attend this conference you had to travel to Chicago to be there in person.  Then they made it easier for people by having simulcast sites all over North America so you could still attend the conference “live”, in your home town, or at least close to where you lived.

I’ve done both in the past, and though being there live is kind of special and you get the real feel of the conference, I have become pretty comfortable watching the speaker on a screen.

What helped was realizing that even when I was in Chicago, because the auditorium was so big, I found myself watching the screens there.  You could see the speakers better that way.  So being somewhere else watching a screen wasn’t a difficult adjustment – at least you knew it was happening in present time.

Now this conference has taken things to a new level.  Not only do you not have to be in Chicago for the conference, but now you don’t even have to attend when the conference is taking place.

I attended this week, but the conference actually took place and was recorded in the middle of August.  This week, Bill Hybels (the host speaker) was probably speaking some other message, somewhere on the other side of the world, while we were taking in the conference like it was happening live.

The host sites do a good job, though, of keeping it fresh, and “live-like”.  We had a live band to lead us in some songs and a live host, who lead us to the all important refreshments at break times.

But we were also encouraged to respond to things like it was happening live.  For instance, at the end of a message, the audience in Chicago (back in August) all clapped.  We were encouraged to do the same, but our clapping was pretty feeble, since we were only clapping to a screen.

At the very end of the conference, Bill Hybels challenged everyone to pray and give our all to making the local church the hope of the world.  He asked us to pray a set prayer for the next 30 days, and if we agreed to do it, to sign the card the prayer was on … and to do it in the presence of a witness.

And that is when any sense of it being live fell apart for me.  He said “If you don’t have someone who will witness you signing your prayer card, I will be up here at the front and would be happy to witness it for you.”  I looked, and I hung around at the front for a moment; Bill wasn’t there.  He was in Chicago, or Zimbabwe, or some place else.

Here’s the thing:  I’m good at pretending something is live when it has really been recorded.  For the most part, I don’t miss the live action.  God, however, is live all the time, 24/7.  When I want to respond or need a response, with God I’m never left hanging around, waiting for someone who’s not there to show up.  I never want to take for granted how much better my live God is.

Until Next Time!

Pastor Paul

Question:  How often do you take advantage of God being live, 24/7? Leave your comment below.

Late Night Banking

It was late on a Sunday night, around 10 pm when I arrived at the bank machine to deposit a check.  It was dark; the parking lot was wet from a light rain; there was no one around – not another car in the parking lot.  I went into the bank, deposited the check, withdrew $120, got my receipt and left.

There weren’t many cars on the road; there wasn’t much open.  It was kind of a nice drive.  I had the music in the car cranked, yet it was peaceful.  I had other errands to make, but it was so enjoyable with empty streets and I was getting all the lights.

On my way home, when I got to the last set of lights before my house, for some reason a thought came into my head.  At the bank, I remembered getting a receipt for depositing the money and taking a receipt for the cash I withdrew.  But I didn’t remember taking the cash.

In an instant my quiet, calm peaceful drive turned into panic.  I drove past my turn and put the gas pedal down.  I was about 7 minutes away from that cash machine and I was imagining someone arriving right then to find my bank’s slot machine (I mean, bank machine) had just cashed out, and they won.

I started praying, “Lord, I know there is almost no chance of this happening, but would you keep that money safe for me?”  My mind went back and forth from “maybe it will be there” to “there’s not a chance on the planet that money will still be there”.

The car was moving fast – faster than it should have been moving – but I had no control over it.  I was just trying to steer the vehicle and glad that the streets were clear.  There may have been the odd car that thought I must have had a pregnant wife who was about to deliver her baby, but I went by so fast they couldn’t even tell if there was someone else in the car or not.

I turned at a set of lights, all four tires barely on the road, then made a quick left up to the parking lot.  At first it looked clear but then I saw a car parked outside the bank and my heart sank.

For sure there had been others who had been to the bank.  After all, it had been a half hour since I made that withdrawal.  I screeched up to bank, got out in a flash and went inside the doors.  I looked at the machine . . . no money.  My heart sank, but its not like I  hadn’t pictured it this way.

I turned and went out the door.  That’s when the window of the car parked outside rolled down and a guy called out, “Are you missing some money?”  I said, “Ya, I left $120 in the machine.”  He hopped out of his car and said, “I have it here.”  I thanked and thanked him.  He simply said, “I hope someone would do the same for me.”  I couldn’t believe it.  It was a miracle.

Here’s the thing:  I prayed and asked God to keep the money safe for me, and even though I wasn’t sure He would do it, He even got someone to mind the money for me till I got there.  This reminds me that there is nothing I can’t pray about, nothing that God will refuse me of if I seek Him, even when I have my doubts.

Until Next Time!

Pastor Paul

Question:  When has doubt kept you from praying and asking God?

Anyone Need Their Grass Cut?

Sometimes you start a simple task or job and it grows into something bigger. I have certainly experienced this at times in my life.

One time we had a water leak in our vacation trailer.  I decided to see if I could fix it myself.  I checked and found the problem needed to be fixed from the outside, which meant peeling off the metal shell at the front of the trailer.  I started at the bottom and noticed the problem extended a little higher so I took off the next strip, then the next, and the next.  When I had the whole front of the trailer removed, with just the wood frame left in place, I stepped back and thought, “What have I done?!”  It was way more work than I had thought.

Another time we had a leak in our basement.  I thought I would dig a hole outside and patch the foundation where the leak was.  In the end, the hole I dug was over 5 feet deep and about 12 feet long.  Again, that job got way bigger than I had first thought!

Reading about those two experiences, you might think they weren’t that bad, and that I must be a handy guy.  That’s where you would be VERY wrong!  I’m not that handy, and for all the handy work I have done, I don’t really like it.  It takes me too long; I don’t have the right tools; I make mistakes; I get frustrated; I get discouraged; I cut myself (another story).

Recently, we were at our cottage on a rainy weekend, when we happened to get a break from the rain for a few hours.  I decided I’d better take the opportunity to cut the grass since we wouldn’t be back for a few weeks.

It’s such a small piece of lawn that the job really doesn’t take much time.  But, as I was running the lawnmower over our grass, I thought about my brother’s lawn.  He had left his cottage a few hours earlier in the rain and I had noticed that his lawn needed a cut.

Since he’s up at his cottage almost every weekend and often cuts our grass (because we don’t get there all that frequently), I thought it was my chance to return the favour.  So, when I finished our lawn, I walked over to his place and started to cut his grass.

As I got close to finishing, I started to think about my brother’s neighbour who’s wife had just had surgery and was in intensive care at the hospital.  I thought, “That guy doesn’t need to be bothered with his lawn”.  So, as I finished with my brother’s lawn, I just kept going and worked on his neighbour’s.

As I walked back to my place pushing my lawnmower, I realized this was one of the few times a job that got bigger didn’t become frustrating or discouraging.  In fact, I walked with a sense of satisfaction that I had, in some small way, been a help to others.

Here’s the thing:  One of the greatest ways we can show the love of God to others is not by telling them but by showing them.  The problem is it takes time and, for many of us, time is precious.  We don’t have a lot of extra time to allow the task or job we are working on to become any bigger.  But sometimes that is exactly how we are to “love one another as I have loved you” John 13:34.

Until Next Time!

Pastor Paul

Question: What kind of “loving one another” acts have you done recently?