My wife and I served as evangelical, protestant missionaries in France for eleven and a half years, after which I became the pastor and director of a Christian school in a French-speaking evangelical church, L'Eglise Evangelique de Saint Jerome, in Quebec, Canada. After serving in Quebec for five years, we then moved to Greenville, South Carolina, where I became the pastor of the First Evangelical Church of Greenville. In 1995, we moved to Tallahassee, Florida, where I eventually assumed the management of the family business, and remained there until 2012, when our family moved to Meridian, Idaho. My wife and I have six children. These short devotionals are born out of the loss of one of these children in particular, with the hope and prayer that they will serve to encourage and inspire those who read them in their walk with Christ. God bless you all, and may we finish well the race set before us.
Dear Ones: Frederick Faber wrote in his hymn “My God, How Wonderful Thou Art” about God as the Father: “No earthly father loves like Thee, No mother e’er so mild Bears and forbears as Thou hast done With me, Thy sinful child.” One of the most wonderful of all the descriptions of God is as…
Dear Ones: “And there was a famine in the land…” (Genesis 26:1) In the will of God we will face trials. Here we read of Isaac during this time of famine. God instructed him to NOT go down to Egypt but to go to Gerar, and to live among the Philistines. Gerar would prove to…
Dear Ones: In A.L. Waring‘s great hymn, “In Heavenly Love Abiding,” she writes: “In heavenly love abiding, NO CHANGE my heart shall fear; For safe is such confiding, For nothing changes here.” It is a great day when we come to grips with the changeless Christ in the midst of ever changing circumstances. It is a wonderful…
Dear Ones: WE ARE WHAT WE CHOOSE TO BE. In Charles Wesley‘s great hymn, “Soldiers of Christ Arise,” we read: “Soldiers of Christ, arise, And put your armor on, Strong in the strength which God supplies, Through His eternal Son; Strong in the Lord of Hosts, And in His mighty power, Who in the strength…
(Read Part I) Dear Ones: I will try and give a definition of the sovereignty of God. God, The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, existing before all of creation or the beginning of time, is all powerful, all knowing, always purposeful, and always working all things towards His designed objective: the revelation of His glory,…
Dear Ones: Nearly one hundred and fifty years before Cyrus the Persian came on the scene, God revealed to Isaiah that Cyrus would come. (Isaiah 44:28; 45:1) It is as if God took His bow and shot His arrow across time and civilizations to declare that He is sovereign. He will do as He wills,…
Dear Ones: The life to which we are called is one from heaven, in Christ, by the Spirit. It does not have its origin, or essence, in anything of this earth. It was Hudson Taylor, founder of the China Inland Mission, who said, “Any fruit born while not abiding in Christ, is fruit of the…
Dear Ones: How shall the goodness of God be revealed in us? Whether in great works or in the common, ordinary acts of everyday life there is only one way and it is by faith. In Robert M. M’Cheyne‘s great hymn, “When This Passing World Is Done”, he writes:
Dear Ones: How can we know that God is near? David was conscious of God’s nearness. “For there is not a word in my tongue, but, lo, O Lord, thou knowest it altogether.” (Psalm 139:4) David was aware that God knew all of his thoughts and words. But on an even more intimate level David…
Dear Ones: “That I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection…” (Philippians 3:10) It is one thing to know ABOUT the power of His resurrection. It is quite another to KNOW that power in the life, where we live. We are apt to think that we do not need such power in the…