Week Twenty-Nine, 2025
After a long flight across the ocean, in the early morning hours, we checked into our hotel and took a much-needed nap. It was our first overseas trip and when we woke up, we were ready to hit the streets in our first European country. I placed our weighty key on the hotel desk and hailed a cab, telling the driver which museum we wanted to go to. We got out and went inside.
As we strolled the corridors I suddenly had an intense thought, turned to my wife and asked if she remembered the name of the hotel where we were staying, and she said no. I had thoughts of a long stay in that museum! (PS This was our first trip overseas, and we were in our 20s. BG)
Finding someone who spoke English was no easy task, but finally I found someone who asked what it looked like. Once I told him, he gave the name of the hotel, and it clicked.
As we drove back to the hotel, I thought of what would have happened if we couldn’t find the hotel and then I thought of a spiritual parallel. We are never lost from God!
God knew us before we were born, and He has been with us ever since. He is never far away; though we may drift, He is omnipresent, and never loses track of us. God intended that they would seek Him and perhaps reach out for Him and find Him, though He is not far from every one of us; for in Him we live and move and have our being, as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are also His offspring.’ (Acts 17:27-28)
The God who made the world and everything in it, this Master of sky and land, doesn’t live in custom-made shrines or need the human race to run errands for him, as if he couldn’t take care of himself. He makes the creatures; the creatures don’t make Him. Starting from scratch, He made the entire human race and made the earth hospitable, with plenty of time and space for living so we could seek after God, and not just grope around in the dark but actually find him. He doesn’t play hide-and-seek with us. He’s not remote; he’s near. We live and move in Him, can’t get away from Him! One of your poets said it well: ‘We’re the God-created.’ Well, if we are God-created, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to think we could hire a sculptor to chisel a god out of stone for us, does it?
Where is God in your life?
Sometimes True Stories
Every day 158,000 people die. Nearly half have never heard of Christ.
Picture two brains: one buzzing with activity, connections firing across regions in a synchronized neural ballet. The other shows only scattered flickers of engagement—isolated islands of electrical activation.
Both belong to university students sitting in the same lecture trying to capture the same ideas. The difference between them isn’t intelligence, attention span, or interest in the subject—but the tools in their hands.
One holds a trusty pen poised over lined paper, while the other’s fingers hover over a laptop keyboard.
This neural contrast, shown in a study in Frontiers in Psychology, is just one piece of mounting evidence suggesting that our rush toward digital convenience may be coupled with significant cognitive costs. From neuroscience labs to classrooms, research comparing traditional and digital learning tools finds that pens are not quite yet old school.
Law of the Theater & Football Stadium:
At any sports event, the people whose seats are farthest from the aisle always arrive last. They are the ones who will leave their seats several times to go for food, beer, or the toilet, and who leave early before the end of the performance or the game is over. The folks in the aisle seats come early, never move once, have long gangly legs or big bellies and stay to the bitter end of the performance. The aisle people also are very surly folk.
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Have you ever stared at a small body of water and imagined what it would be like to walk across? Now imagine a scenario where the body of water is next to a rock quarry, you pick up a stone and toss it in, the stone sinks, the ripples cease, but then you throw another stone, and another, and another, and another. If you keep throwing the stones eventually the stones will begin rising to the surface as you build a bridge beneath the water. Eventually you can walk across the stones.
Prayer can often seem much like the stones tossed into the water, they may seem to disappear into the Heavens with no evidence of results, but just like the stones, prayers accumulate. And when we look back we realize that God was listening all along. The bridge being built leads to eternity. The Lord hears the prayers of the righteous. Tony Ferguson
Quotes You Can Use
No one is perfect, even when one pledges his total allegiance to God, he falters. Stephen Bernard
Pray for God to send out more gospel workers, knowing that He may send you. Edgar Aponte
Be careful not to be a thief by talking too much or staying too long; that is someone’s time you are taking to. Dwight Short
We simply cannot live a Christian life without God’s help. Tony Ferguson
When you need to get your life in perspective, there’s no better place to go than into the house of God. Dan Shock
What does it mean to fear the Lord? It’s a reverential trust, a sense of respect, awe, and a submission to a higher power. We begin to be wise when we revere God and put our faith and trust in Him. Tony Ferguson
There are only two options regarding commitment: you’re either in or you’re out. There’s no such thing as life in-between. Pat Riley
There is more refreshment and stimulation in a nap, even of the briefest!
It will be a sad day for the church and the world when there is no distinction between the children of God and those of the world. Charles Spurgeon
Hell will be filled with people who don’t drink, don’t cuss and may have been baptized. Why? Because none of those things make you a Christian.
The funny thing about growing old is that your eyesight grows weaker, but your ability to see through people gets better.
Children who are not taught accountability for their actions grow up to think that nothing is wrong.
The only man who never makes mistakes is the man who never does anything. Theodore Roosevelt
If we have nothing left to give our children, they have enough if they have God. Charles Spurgeon
The mark of a successful church is not how many go there, but how many live differently as a result of having been there.
Sometimes faith will make you look stupid until it rains. Noah
We are not building God’s kingdom. He is, and we are praying to be a part of it. Francis Schaffer.
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