Welcome and Announcements The Doxology Praise God from Whom all blessings flow; Praise Him, all creatures here below; Praise Him above, ye heavenly host; Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen. Invocation and Lord’s Prayer Our Father, which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will…

What makes for a good ruler? Saul certainly looked the part – standing head and shoulders above everyone else (I Samuel 10:23). And he acted the part – threatening the people if they didn’t follow him (I Samuel 11:7), and setting up a monument to himself after a big victory…

Waiting is hard, as our current period of “social distancing” has made all too painfully clear. Whenever problems arise, we want to do something about them right away. And the more serious the problem, the greater our sense of restless urgency. Yes, we can understand why Saul forced the issue….

“If only we could get the right President in office, everything would be great!” That’s the only thing on which all the political parties in America can agree. And so every four years, we spend an incredible amount of time and money trying to decide who will be President. Mike…

Just knowing about God doesn’t mean you belong to God. The Philistines desperately wanted to get rid of the Ark of the Covenant which they had captured in battle (I Samuel 4:11) because every city to which it had been taken had been stricken with disease (I Samuel 5:6, 9,…

No, living the Christian life is not always easy. Yes, God calls us to respond to His grace with faith and devotion, entrusting ourselves completely to Him, and considering that everything we are and everything we have belongs to him. It certainly wasn’t easy, for example, for Hannah to give…

When things don’t go the way we think they should, it’s easy to blame God, isn’t it? That’s certainly what Naomi did at the end of chapter 1. She went so far as to change her name. Naomi means pleasant, and that certainly didn’t match the way she felt. Instead,…

So far, for most parts of America, Judges 17 and 18 still tell a cautionary tale. As we see in our current crisis, many of us are still following Biblical precepts as we care for one another and try our best to protect the weakest among us. As a whole,…

“If only we had a strong leader during this time of crisis! Then we wouldn’t have any reason to fear.” Maybe that thought has crossed your mind lately, or maybe you’ve heard someone else express such sentiments. Well, the Ancient Israelites had problems that are just as big as ours…

Jephthah certainly wasn’t the sort of hero you find in the storybooks. After all, he came from a dysfunctional family – the son of a prostitute whose father’s legitimate sons disinherited him (Judges 11:2). But his qualities of leadership could not be denied, so his countrymen turned to him in…