Pastor Brad’s Notebook

06 May

Posted at 10:37h in Fridays Are For Family
0 Likes
After about a year off, I’ve decided to once again start sharing some scriptural, spiritual, and I pray helpful advice on how to build into your life as a family.  The reason for this is because I believe that the family is the most important institution on the face of the planet.  If you’ll read the beginning pages of scripture, you’ll find that marriage and the family were created even before the church.  So, knowing how much Christ loves the church, that ought to give us just a little glimpse into how important your family is in the eyes of God.

05 May

Posted at 10:23h in Devotionals
0 Likes
"He who overcomes, I will make him a pillar in the temple of My God, and he shall go out no more..." Revelation 3:12 That seems like a rather odd reward for overcoming - captivity? Is there no longer any liberty for those who overcome? Is that to be the penalty for my victory? Imprisonment within the very gate that my conquest has opened? Absolutely not. In that day I will be able to go wherever I wish, for the entire world will be mine.  "So why," you ask "does Jesus say that the one who overcomes will go out no more?"  The answer is simply this -

02 May

Posted at 12:58h in Devotionals
0 Likes
"Put them in fear, O Lord, That the nations may know themselves to be but men. Selah." Psalm 9:20 That's really an unexpected prayer, "Put them in fear..."  In fact, that's not at all the kind of prayer that you would expect to find in a divinely-inspired book.  Think about it. Is it a humane thing to pray that your enemies would be put in fear?  It is if the result would be them becoming more humane.  That's what the Psalmist is praying, that the Lord would teach his enemies that they were just men.  The point is for them to learn to have pity for others by showing them their own need for it.

24 Apr

Posted at 10:49h in Devotionals
0 Likes
"In Him was life, and the life was the light of men."  John 1:4 The life of the Lord Jesus Christ has illuminated the entire world.  That truth can not be denied on this Easter morning.  But the Lord's light that has illumined this world comes not just from what He did, but also from who He was.  "His life was the light of men."

19 Apr

Posted at 10:26h in Devotionals
0 Likes
"Therefore My Father loves Me, because I lay down My life that I may take it up again." John 10:17 "That I may take it up again..." As we look toward Good Friday and think about the last week of the earthly life of Jesus, we must be reminded that the real beauty of the Savior's sacrifice is not found in its despair. Despair is a sight that the Father never longs to see.  Why would He?  An artist doesn't want to see his work despised, and that's what life is - it is God's work and He says its beautiful.

16 Apr

Posted at 17:19h in Devotionals
0 Likes
"But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, for the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor, that He, by the grace of God, might taste death for everyone." Hebrews 2:9 What a beautiful provision for what would appear to be so terrible and wasteful of an end - a life that was crowned for death. If you knew that the flowers that you planted and tended in the early spring would die before they ever gave forth their first summer bloom, would you have handled them with as much care? If you knew that the plane would drop from the sky in mid flight would you have placed on it your greatest and most precious possessions? The answer most likely is "no." But, you see, this isn't a plant or a plane, this is a human soul.