My Online Faith Journal

    It is my desire to be as transparent as possible with folks who read my blog here in the hopes that my sharing will help others.  With that in mind, I want to share with you some of my struggles and how my faith has helped me deal with some of my issues.     Since I was a teenager, I have struggled at times with feelings of depression.  For months I can do very well only to struggle occassionally.  At this stage in my life, I am doing better than I have in a long time, but I can't honestly say those feelings don't come back sometimes because they do.  One thing that helped me is that I remember that God sent his only son to died for me.  God sent his very best for me because he loves me that much.  If God was willing to sacrifice like that then I must be pretty important to him.  And if God feels that way about me and he created me then I should also be able to accept myself.  After all, God is our creator and if he thinks that much of you then who else's opinion matt

    Our pastor is in the middle of a series about the fruit of the Spirit.  As I have been thinking about that I thought about one thing that I think is so important for everyone who calls themselves a believer including me.  I think it is important that we renew our minds daily with God's presence and Word.  I have been trying most mornings to start off with a short time of prayer and Bible reading.  I need it.  It helps me prioritize my day and helps me to focus on what is really important.      In several places in scripture it tells us to renew our minds.  Some people will say they don't have time.  Yet, those same people won't have a problem going to a football game for 3 hours or more or going to the lake.  You have time if you want to have time.  We make time for what we enjoy.  What your really saying is that you don't enjoy it, so you don't do it.  You can do it if you want to.     What I do and have done for nearly 30 years of being a believer is that

          The other day in the small group I attended there was a discussion about the nature of salvation. One man noted that when we ask people to “pray a prayer” to receive Christ it seems that in some ways it may be that we are making it too simply. As we have looked for a church over the last few years, that struggle has been something I have also become familiar with. To me, it seems in many cases Baptist simply ask for someone to pray a prayer and then don’t follow up very well in calling the person to discipleship. While, the Methodist churches I have been in seem to make it more about a process and never seem to call a person to make a decision. One seems too simply, the other too drawn out. So, who is right?            Let me backtrack a little a share a story with you, back in 2005, I was a pastor of small church in West Virginia. I call it “the church that enjoyed hurting me”. It was a church where the previous pastor was very different from me. The church seemed to hav