Grace Baptist Church, Nokomis, IL.

In his book Up From Slavery, Booker T. Washington tells of his experience meeting an ex-slave from Virginia who bought his own freedom. Apparently, the slave had made a contract with his master so that the he was to be permitted to buy himself, by paying so much per year, and while he was paying for himself, he was permitted to work where and for whom he pleased. So, finding that he could get better wages in Ohio, he went there. But while he was working in Ohio to earn enough money to…continue reading →

Father, help us this morning to trust Your promise rather than in the promises of sin. Help us to trust in Jesus. In Jesus’s name, Amen. I’m going to pick on all you coffee drinkers for a bit. Who here likes coffee? Why do you like it? Maybe you like the taste, or maybe you like the way it gives you energy for the day. Or maybe you like its positive benefits, such as antioxidants, or even its laxative effect. Now, I don’t like coffee, so I don’t have this problem, but have…continue reading →

I read a real-life pay-it-forward story the other day on the Huffington Post, and wanted to share it with you this morning. It was written by Mark Redmond, who runs a homeless ministry in Burlington, Vermont. One day, Mark took a much needed day off, but he still wanted to stop by his office in order to pick up his mail. He went in the back door, just wanting to slip in and slip out after checking his mail. And his plan went flawlessly until, as he walked towards the mailroom, he glanced…continue reading →

There’s a story about a janitor at St. Peter's Church in London. One day, the new, young, naive pastor of the church discovered that the janitor was illiterate and fired him, citing something about not sorting the mail correctly. Jobless, the man invested his meager savings into opening a tiny shop, where he prospered, bought another, expanded, and ended up with a chain of stores worth several hundred thousand dollars. One day, he realizes that he really should put all this money into the bank, so he goes to open an account. The…continue reading →

I trust that you all got enough sleep last night since we all got an extra hour of time. This is like the one day of the year that nobody has to hit snooze because we all get an extra hour to either lay in bed or just get a slower, easier start of the day. It’s great! I don’t know about you, but I planned to sleep in this morning, but just couldn’t. So, starting at 6 am, I was able to get up, fix a computer, schedule a return on Amazon,…continue reading →

I’m going to make you a promise this morning. It’s a pretty big promise, are you ready for it? I promise you that I’m never gonna give you up, I’m never gonna let you down, I’m never gonna run around and desert you. And I promise you that I’m never gonna make you cry, never gonna say goodbye, never gonna tell a lie and hurt you. And I promise you all these things IF you can make the same promise to me, and IF you can get Rick Astley to come and sing…continue reading →

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Is anyone here from the South, like Georgia or South Carolina? That area? Any of you have family that live in the South? So, those of you who know, what does “bless your heart” mean? Yeah, it kind of means you’re an idiot, right? I read about a foreign exchange student from Korea who stayed with a family in the South for 2 years while in high school. It was challenging for him to learn English, but Southern idioms were the hardest. A day or two before he returned home to Korea after…continue reading →

Maybe I’m weird, but there’s a small part of me that kind of misses being a kid and going to school and getting grades. Anybody else like that? At school, you could always expect to get a grade based on your performance. And even though that led to a lot of anxiety, and I’m definitely glad I don’t have to do that anymore, there was a certain kind of security in knowing what you could expect. Whether you got good grades or bad grades, it was, in a way, comforting to know that…continue reading →

I want to begin by telling a story about promises. All names, characters, and incidents portrayed in this production are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual events, to persons living or dead, is entirely not coincidental, but completely arbitrary. Imagine with me that there’s a man named Donald and a woman named Nancy who, when they first got married, made certain strange promises to one another. Nancy asked her new husband, “Will you promise to never lie to me about liking my cooking?” Donald thought about it for a second, and said, “Yes.…continue reading →