The Christmas Promise

One of my fantasies while growing up on the farm was to have a pony. This would make a perfect Christmas gift and would further my ambition to become a cowboy like some of my childhood movie heroes. The pony I wanted was advertised in a mail-order catalog and would be shipped to my house for only $599.00. Looking back on this, I now realize $599.00 was a small fortune to my parents, who were living paycheck to paycheck. My pleading for the slightest hint of a promise was dismissed […]

Gratitude

What do you do when you are having a bad day? Maybe you’re having a bad week or even worse, a bad year. What I have to say to you may not immediately change your circumstances, but it can change your attitude, leading you to a better way of thinking and acting. Better thinking and acting will help you address your problems more positively, rather than giving in to the temptation of victimhood. I’m about one month away from my eighty-first birthday. I’ve made many trips around the sun on […]

The Making of a Great Leader

Are great leaders born or made? I think it is likely some of both. Great leaders are gifted with certain personality traits and develop important skills through failure and perseverance. People do not become great leaders by winning every game or closing every deal. Those who win most of their games and close most of the deals will likely tell you they have learned more about leadership by losing than by winning. Accepting loss and disappointment as a valuable teacher is indispensable to the wisdom they bring to their leadership […]

God’s Unsearchable Ways

Who can understand the mind of God? We know He is good. We also know He allows bad things to happen to good people. Scripture reminds us to trust that He is working in everything, good and bad, to accomplish His plan. The Lord, speaking through Isaiah 55:8-9, reminds us of the vast expanse between the way we think and act and the way God thinks and acts. “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so […]

God Works to Keep His Promise

Today, we come to the second chapter of Exodus to discover what God will do to keep His plan moving forward. Perhaps we should remind ourselves of what that plan is and some of the things that have brought us to where we are at the close of the first chapter of Exodus. It is beneficial to recall what God’s plan entails, as the entire Bible is somehow related to what God intended to do regarding mankind’s fall in the Garden of Eden. You can review the basic details of […]

Our Sovereign God

Our God is amazing! We have seen in the magnificent book of Genesis how He has worked in all kinds of human dilemmas and tangled messes to provide the Savior who was alluded to in the confrontation with Satan in the Garden of Eden. He chose Abraham to begin the Jewish nation through which Jesus would eventually come. The Old and New Testaments are a wonderful treasure, documenting God’s work and the future that awaits all who put their trust in Him. My research on these blogs about God’s promises […]

God’s Enduring Promise (Continued)

What guarantee do we have that God will keep His promises to us? We can trust God to keep His word because of who He is. His character is pure, without flaw or fault. He doesn’t make promises without a commitment to keep them. He never forgets. God’s promises endure even when the persons to whom He made them have passed from the scene. This has been demonstrated throughout the book of Genesis, and it continues through Exodus and the entire Bible. God’s promises endure; nothing can or will happen […]

God’s Enduring Promise

Today, we continue our trek through the Bible, examining God’s great promise to provide our Savior. In the book of Genesis, we see how God fulfilled His word to bolster faith and confidence in Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, enabling them to carry out His plan. In the closing chapters of Genesis, we see the passing of Jacob in Egypt at the age of 147, followed by Joseph at the age of 110. All seventy members of Jacob’s family who migrated to Egypt during the famine have died. This is […]

An Honorable Life

Today, we conclude this series of blogs on God’s promises in the book of Genesis. We began in the Garden of Eden on October 17, 2024, exactly nine months ago today, and we conclude in the land of Egypt, where a great biblical hero, Joseph, is about to pass away. More coverage is given to Joseph in Genesis than to any other person, and for good reason. In my opinion, he is the most honorable of all the personalities covered in the book. We have seen him mature in his […]

Jacob “Blesses” His Sons

After our brief interlude to celebrate Independence Day, we return to the story of Jacob in Genesis 49:1-20. As we pick up the story, he has come to Egypt with his large family to see Joseph before he dies. God has visited Jacob to reassure him that He will be with him in Egypt and keep His promise to bless the nations of the world through him. Jacob lived in Egypt for seventeen years, and at one hundred and forty-seven, told Joseph to return his remains and bury him in […]