Fall Creek Christian Church

“A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a broken spirit saps a person's strength."  Proverbs  17:22 Most of us love to laugh. I do. It makes us feel better. During a recent trip with a great group of guys, we laughed ... a lot. I felt refreshed and energized, grateful for the adventure. As I understand it, there is a whole science behind the link of joy and health. Conversely, emotional darkness or the "broken spirit" leaves a person listless and mopey.  The writer of our proverb for today needed no explanation about endorphins to understand the impact of a broken heart. A thick crushing canopy of darkness takes down the heartiest among us. The cure? Cheer. Where does one go to find cheer? It's not found on the street corner or the changing of any circumstance in our lives. Nehemiah spilled the beans ... "The joy of the Lord is your strength." A joy rooted in something or someone other than God himself will ultimately lead us to a place of sapped streng

“For David had done what was pleasing in the Lord's sight and had obeyed the Lord's command throughout his life, except in the case of Uriah the Hittite."  I Kings 15:5 I remember reading the roster for the sixth grade basketball team. I felt pretty confident going into the tryouts that I would get on the team. If memory serves me correctly, there was an "A" and a "B" team. Surely I was on one of the lists. Nope. It felt like everyone made a team except me. I learned very quickly the sharp stinging edge of the  except . The narrator/author of I Kings was compelled to publish David's  except  once again. Adultery. Conspiracy to commit murder. It was a very ugly story.   David followed God ... most of the time. In Psalm 51, he came to terms with his e xcept  ... "Have mercy on me, O God." God did.  You and I have some of those  excepts  too don't we? We can let them haunt us. We can pretend they never happened and hope they go away. We c

“...God did promise, however, that eventually the whole land would belong to Abraham and his descendants -- though he had no children yet. ... As the time drew near when God would fulfill his promise to Abraham, the number of our people in Egypt greatly increased."  Acts 7:5, 17 Promises are a big deal. We receive them. We give them. We are angered when others break them and grieved when we break them. I am so thankful that my wife has kept hers to me ... "till death do us part." It hasn't been easy for her. Trust me. Yet, through all these years, she has stood behind her promises. Stephen, in his speech to the religious leaders, made a point to emphasize promises ... specifically, the promises of God. He reminded them of their fulfillment as a precursor to identifying Jesus as the fulfillment of God's ultimate promise, the promise of a deliverer. Their rejection of God's fulfillment of his promise placed them outside of the blessing of the promise. Their res

“Then he said to Thomas, 'Put your finger here and see my hands. Put your hand into the wound in my side. Don't be faithless any longer. Believe!' 'My Lord and my God!' Thomas exclaimed. Then Jesus told him, 'You believe because you have seen me. Blessed are those who haven't seen me and believe anyway.'"  John 20:27-29 "You won't believe your eyes!" shouts the carny. "Come see the three-headed chicken!" ... The emcee calls out, "Do you believe?" and then asks for quiet as the master illusionist attempts to perform the "impossible". With a bang and a flash of smoke, the elephant is gone. The crowd cheers. ... What we believe or not believe is the primary course setter for our lives.    Jesus continually called people to believe in him. In the verses for the day, he made an intentional decision to challenge Thomas to believe. He told Thomas to look and touch. He did. He believed. Seeing was believing for Th