“Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path.” (Psalms 119:105) My wife and I stumbled into an art gallery serveral yesrs ago unlike any we’ve ever seen. If you haven’t taken a trip to one of Thomas Kinkade’s galleries, it’s a must. Every picture hanging on the wall literally glows. For example, neighborhood scenes show light-filled houses that look as if the light is inside is real. The truth is the light is real, at least according to Kinkade, who recently wrote […]

“Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.” (Proverbs 22:6 The date was June 24, 1962. I was nine years-old and had just walked down the aisle of First Baptist Church in Rocky Mount, North Carolina to profess my faith in Christ. After Sunday dinner that afternoon, a friend of my family gave me a Bible with an inscription that read, “To my little friend, Mike Ruffin: Today, June 24, 1962, you have opened your […]

“Do not answer a fool according to his folly, lest you also be like him.” (Proverbs 26:4) The Book of Proverbs is all about how to distinguish the wise from the foolish. We’ve all been foolish from time to time, but there is a difference between a fool and foolishness. In fact, the Bible is full of stories about man and his folly, but very few of those whose foolishness is portrayed in God’s Word are fools. In most cases, they are folks just like you and me, […]

“Let us acknowledge the Lord; let us press on to acknowledge him. As surely as the sun rises, he will appear; he will come to us like the winter rains, like the spring rains that water the earth.” (Hosea 6:3) The one Christian promise that I don’t particularly like is the fact that Christian living will bring more than its share of suffering. But that’s exactly what Jesus promised us when He said, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross […]