The story of Samson can be found in Judges 13 and 14. Samson, like Gideon, lived during a time when judges ruled in Israel. This is long before Israel was ruled by kings like Saul, David and Solomon. During the time of the judges, Israel didn't have a king to rule over them so they had to rely on these judges to keep them in line. During this time, God would raise up men, and sometimes women, to challenge the Jews to come back to God and to help destroy their enemies. If you've read the Ol...

The following is taken from intro story.Imagine that you loved Mike and Ike's (the candy). You loved them so much that you would do anything to get them. In fact, you loved them so much that you would dream about them when you were at school. You couldn't wait until payday. That's when your mom would give you your monthly allowance. Each month, when she would give you your $12.29 allowance, you'd race to the closest grocery store, head directly towards the candy aisle and grab yours...

Sometimes we get caught up in talking and forget that God gave us two ears with which we can hear each other. God also gave us spiritual ears that He uses to communicate with us. God is a relational being. That means that He created us so that we can have a relationship with Him, our Creator. But sometimes we fill our lives up with so much noise that we drown God's voice out.In order to hear God, we need to be tuned to Him. If we don't practice this "tuning in" process, it can go w...

In our Old Testament Snapshot study we talked about the prophecies and how important they would be to those who were going to be around when Jesus was alive. The prophecies were so important that without them the people would have had a hugely, mondo difficult time, probably impossible, in recognizing the Messiah when He finally came. God knew that the people would need positive proof that Jesus was the Messiah. God just didn't provide one or two prophecies to show the people that Jesus wa...

There are people in the Bible who are well known, like Paul, and Peter, and John. We all know that they were a very important part of the early church. There are others who were just as important to the church but are not that well known. Barnabas is one of those people. But as we will find out, he had a very important role in the early church. Let's see who he is and why God included him in the Bible.

Imagine that you were headed to church early one Sunday morning. You had set out your "church clothes" the night before so that you would wear the right clothes. You picked out a white pair of pants and cool looking shirt. You wanted to look your best at church. There was this one girl that you wanted to impress. So you spent 2 hours in the morning to spiff yourself up. You put your clothes on and brushed your teeth. You weren't even going to eat breakfast because you wanted to take the ex...

Ever get the feeling that you and your parents don't live in the same world or maybe even the same planet as you do? Maybe God created parents out of moon dust instead of earth dust and that's why they seem to be really out of this world. Why do you suppose that God created parents in the first place? Did He create them just to make your lives miserable? Maybe He was on vacation when parents were created and He just left it up to His angelic assistants to do it.For the next couple ...

We live in a world that seems to be crumbling at the seams. We live in a world that is full of fear. People are in fear of the future. People live in fear of their lives. Your generation is growing up in a world of guns, terrorist attacks, and lots-o drugs. It seems that our country has taken all their morals and tossed them out the window. How can a person growing up in this world be assured of anything? Can a person really live at peace? Can a person live in this country, in this world, ...

No one can use the excuse that "I can't obey God because I don't know what the rules are". God has made it really clear that we, as followers of Christ, are to act a certain way. He doesn't want us to act the way the rest of the world around us acts. He wants us to be different. So God gave us rules to live by throughout the entire Bible.Not only did He give us rules to live by, He also gave us a huge example of how we are to live. He sent His son Jesus, dressed in a skin suit (God...

We've all heard the about WWJD (What Would Jesus Do). This series is called WDJD (What Did Jesus Do). Jesus came to earth so that He could understand what it was like to live in a fallen world, and to live in human bodies. Jesus also came to earth to give us a glimpse of what God is like. He came to earth to fulfill all of the thousands of prophecies about Him. Finally, He came to earth to give us a path to get to heaven. He died on the cross to save us from our sins. He rose again to kick...

(Story continued from Part 2 of the series)You had just completed finding the first two objects that were needed to open the rock door that has you trapped in the room.You couldn't help but wonder what the other objects were that you needed to find.You headed back to the ancient book to find out the next step. You sort of lost track of time. You had been so focused on getting out of this place that you couldn't remember how long you had been underground.Sitt...

During the next several weeks we are going to take a look at each one of the spiritual gifts mentioned in the Bible. We will take each one and see what it is, who has these gifts and how they are to be used in the church. The first two gifts we are going to look at are the gifts of Wisdom and Knowledge. There is a lot of stuff in the Bible about wisdom. Solomon devoted much of his life to teaching others about it. Of course, he was da man who had it all when it came to wisdom. God granted ...