Jesus had lots of disciples, but there were 12 that he chose to be especially close to him. We read their names in Matthew 10:2-4, “…Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother; James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother; Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; James the son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus; Simon the Zealot,…

Back in 2006, my wife’s youngest brother signed up to be a part of a harvesting crew that that farmers would contract to help harvest crops out west. They started down in Texas and would work their way north to Montana, harvesting wheat, corn, soybeans, and whatever you could harvest with a big John Deere combine. Those farmers depended on these contracted…

Albert Einstein famously said, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Would you like to reach the next generation for Christ? Then we can’t just keep doing things the same way over and over. If we want to do a new thing like reaching the next generation for Christ, we have to do it in…

What is your greatest need? If you had asked the paralyzed man in Matthew 9, he would likely have said being able to walk again was his greatest need. Being lame had undoubtedly made his life incredibly difficult. So, he and his friends worked a plan to get him to Jesus for healing. But upon arrival, instead of focusing on his paralysis,…

One of the wildest stories in the Bible was when Jesus was walking through the Gentile region of the Gadarenes. All of a sudden, two demon-possessed men jumped out, and those demons through the mouths of those men began to beg Jesus not to destroy them. They begged Jesus to instead cast them out into the herd of pigs that was nearby.…

Following Jesus isn’t always easy. One time this guy came up to Jesus in Matthew 8 and emphatically declared, “Jesus, I will follow you wherever you go.” Jesus responded in a way that said, that’s not always going to be easy. He said, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay…

Jesus said at the end of Matthew 7 that we have two choices to build our life upon. One is the shifting sand of what this world calls truth. The world’s “truth” is like shifting sand because it’s constantly changing from generation to generation and even from person to person within a generation. Many people say today, “That may be your truth,…

Have you ever had somebody come up to you and talk to you like they know you, but you have no idea in the world who they are? That’s an awkward situation. Jesus tells us in Matthew 7 that that’s going to happen a lot to him. There are going to be a lot of people who will come up to him…

Don’t you like to be treated nice? Boy, I sure do. I love being treated with dignity, respect, fairness, graciousness, and kindness. I bet you do too. Everybody does. Well, with that in mind, Jesus’ words in Matthew 7:12 would revolutionize this community. Jesus said there this one simple godly principle for life, Do unto others as you would have them do…

It really doesn’t take much of something to get in our eye and cause a lot of pain. The smallest speck can hurt so badly, leaving us begging somebody to help get it out quickly. But Jesus says while we should definitely help others out with their eye, we should be way more concerned about what’s in our own eye than in…