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...

Let's take a look at an old favorite story. The story of Jonah and the big, mondo, Horkin-big fish. We can learn a lot about God from the story of Jonah. We can also learn a lot about us from this story. Very often we are just like Jonah. God tells us to do something hard, we say "No way God." God takes us through lessons (sometimes very hard lessons) to teach us who He is and what He wants from us. God wants us to look at Him and not at the thing that He has asked us to do. Sometimes when...

From the Intro of the studyImagine yourself on an archeological expedition to Mexico. You are to go to those ancient Aztec temple ruins and find the mummy of an Aztec king named "Hooba-hooba-snarfblat-foo-foo head" or "Hooba" for short, buried deep within the ruins of the Aztec temple named "No enter this-ol' temple unless you want a gazillion fire-breathing ants crawling into your nostrils and eating your brain" or "Oog" for short.King Hooba had a slight problem naming thin...

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.

It was the beginning of another day. The stars disappeared as night gave way to day. The horizon looked like as if it was on fire with brilliant colors of gold, yellows, and deep shades of blue.You had spent the night out under the stars on a hill a short distance away from the town you grew up in. It was a sleepy, little town nestled in a lush, green valley. The grass on the hill was glistening with dew as if there were diamonds on the tips of each blade of grass.As you we...

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'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...

Exerpt from story in Part 3You grabbed the two stone tablets (see "Cheesy Picture") with the pictures etched into them and ran out of the room to see if they fit someplace on the stone pillars. You thought it was kinda strange that there would be a picture of a cartoon bear in this ancient place, but this is Ron's story and I guess he can do whatever his twisted mind can think of.You ran over to the next pillar and set one of the pictures on top. You waited . . . And waited...

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...

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 ...

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...

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, ...