The spiritual hunger, for Jesus Christ, only comes, after you have decided to accept Jesus Christ, into your life. Then God gives you, this deep hunger, to know Jesus, and about Him.

The hunger, to read the Bible, only comes from God. You can read the Bible intellectually, but you will never be able to understand it spiritually, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, with your head and brain only.

You must have Faith, from the heart.

There are too many mysteries, in Christianity, to be able to understand it all, by intellectual thinking alone.

We must go on Faith, and believe, and accept Jesus, for who He said He was, and is today!

So as a lay speaker, in church or a Pastor, Priest, Bishop or even the Pope, we can tell you, that you need to read the Bible, you need to pray, you need to fast, you need to serve the poor, feed the hungry, and all the other things, Christians, are suppose to do.

But if you have not accepted Jesus, in your life, and had a conversion experience, all that bible reading, praying, and fasting, doesn’t have the same meaning, if you are not grafted in to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

One of the things, I left off that list of things, to do as a Christian, was evangelization.

I think the lack of evangelization, in all churches today, in every denomination, is part of the problem, of why some people, have stopped going to church.

At church, we now hear pleas for money. We hear of all kind of projects, we should be involved in. We hear we should just love everyone. We hear political talk. We hear about, Sunday school classes, and Bible studies we should get in.

We don’t hear conversion stories, of lay people. We don’t hear, how God, has performed a miracle in someone’s life. We don’t hear, the words repent.

Where, is the Good News proclaimed? Where, is the call to conversion? Where, is the talk of Saints, of the past, and of how they became converted, and how many of them died, spreading the Gospel story.

So if you have not, had a conversion experience, it is easy, to check out of church, and not go back. There are many, other things to do, on Sunday morning.

What was, Jesus last words, before rising into the heavens?

Acts 1:8 But you, shall receive power, when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you, shall be my witnesses, in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”

Do you feel, as though you have the Power, of The Holy Spirit, in your life right now?

In my experience, the Power of The Holy Spirit, comes at that conversion experience, when you decide, “I am going, to believe, in Jesus the Christ!”

That scripture, also says, “And you, will be my witnesses, to the end of the earth!”

Are you a witness, for Jesus Christ?

One of our daughters, was going to be in a wedding. She asked us to come help, watch her two kids, with her husband, during the wedding festivities. Both children, were young, and one was still pretty much a baby.

So we go to the wedding. After the wedding, we are waiting on supper, to be served.

Our table, is right next to the table, of the Pastor, who did the wedding. His wife and kids, were with him.

He was holding a baby, and so was I. We were standing next to each other, so we started a conversation.

I said, “Are you from here, or from out of town?”

The Pastor said, “I pastor a church, here in town, but originally, I am from out of town.”

I said, “Where you from,” and he told me. So I said, “Did you play football in high school?” He said, “Yes, and my football coach, is who lead me, to a conversion experience, to know Jesus Christ.”

I said, the football coach’s name, and the Pastor asked, if I knew the coach?

I said,”I started the Kansas Pregame Magazine and the website Kansasprepfootball.com and it was my job, to talk to all head football coaches, in every high school, in the state of Kansas, to get their team information, for the magazine. So yes, I talked to your football coach, several times.”

I told the Pastor, “That after the third year of owning the magazine, I sold my share of the magazine, to my partner. He did not want the website.”

I told the Pastor, “That God, impressed on me, to write stories about Faith, Family and Football and put them on the website.”

“And hopefully, it would be a Christian witness, to coaches and players, in the state of Kansas, and draw men, to conversion to Christ.”

The Pastor’s eyes, were wide open, and he said, “You, may be one of the reasons, my Coach, lead me to Christ?” And he said, “I have a shiver, running up and down my spine, right now!”

I said, “So do I.”

I told the Pastor, that several years ago, I was thinking about stopping, the website, because it cost 600.00 or 700.00 dollars, every so many years, to keep it online.

One night, after thinking about stopping the website, God gave me a dream. I had died, and was going through the Pearly Gates of Heaven, and all these young men were standing there, telling me, “I am here, because of you. I am here, because of you.”

I said, “What do you mean, ‘I am here, because of you?’”

Several said, “You convinced, my football coach, to witness, to our football team, and I am here, because of you.”

I told that Pastor, “You, are a confirmation, of that dream!”

If you have not, opened the door, a crack, for Jesus, to come into your life, let me encourage you, to do so. The following scriptures, should lead you, into opening a door, for Jesus, to come, into your life.

Jeremiah 29:13 You will seek me, and find me; when you seek me, with all your heart.

James 4:8 Draw near to God, and he will draw, near to you.

There are many conversion prayers, but I happen to like this one the best:

Jesus, I don’t believe in you, but if you are real, come and let me know, some how, some way, that you are real. I am a sinful person, but want to change. Help me.

A long obedience to God, begins, with a single step, towards Jesus.

Genesis 1:26 then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish, the birds, the livestock and all creatures that move along the ground.”

God said, “Let us make,” that ‘Let us’ is plural, which means more than one. As a young person in church, no one explained to me that, ‘Let us’ was the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. I always wondered who else was with God at the creation.

Second of all, God said, “So that they may rule.” They also is plural and means more than one. So now you know that one community, Father, Son and Holy Spirit started another community, man and woman and told them to be fruitful, which means to continue to grow the community.

We were meant to be in a community or fellowship with other like minded people as we inhabit the earth.

The spirit of this age is driving us apart and trying to isolate all of us. Technology or shall we say ‘screens’ are one thing that is pulling us from ‘community’ and separating us from each other.

‘The Anxious Generation’ by Jonathan Haidt argues that the transition from a play-based childhood to a phone-based childhood has been a disaster. A play-based childhood is a community or neighborhood of children playing together without direct adult supervision and no screens.

Let me encourage you to rejoin a community. Come to church on Sunday mornings. Pick one, of the many churches, in your community and go to church this Sunday. Lay down your technology and do something new.

We are in the season of Lent right now until Easter. A time of fasting, prayer, Bible reading, worship, transformation and giving, of our time and our money to others.

Start something new in your lives this Sunday morning. Shut off your screens, come join a community and save your own life and your children.

May the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be always acceptable in thy sight, O LORD, my rock, and my redeemer. Amen

Today, Mildred Schindler Janzen lives in Ellsworth, Kansas. This book is her story. It is a great read. Below is a video of her talking about her life in small bits. If you are a history teacher this is history that needs shared with your students. People forget history so we repeat it.

As we get ready to start a new year, we make New Years Eve resolutions. We have Hope to do it better in the New Year.

I wrote this talk just after Thanksgiving. Two weeks later a young guy was at our home doing some work for us.

We did not talk about the weather, football, sports or his faith, we only talked about the work he would be doing. I can still see his face as he walked by me for the final time, on the way to his vehicle. It was 4:30 in the afternoon and by the time he got to town, it would be time to quit working for the day. A week later he was gone, he committed suicide.

We men, when someone asks us how we are, we usually answer, “Good.” We don’t want to get into the specifics of how we really are. We keep that inside of us.

In reality, we are unhappy at what is happening in the world around us. We are unhappy about some of our relationships. We sometimes feel as though we have failed. We feel like church is for little kids and women. We don’t want to go. We would rather cuss, drink, talk to pretty women and watch fist fights.

But the greatest fight, we will have, will be against satan. He wants us dead and with him in Hell.

The following table shows deaths in Kansas only. Unintentional deaths were vehicle wrecks, falls, drowning, etc. Drugs were heroin, cocaine and opioids. These stats came from a Kansas website. These numbers have slowly increased over the last twenty years.

Year                    Unintentional           Suicide              Homicide           Drugs

The table below, from Gallup polls, tells us what Americans over the entire country believe in and how often they go to church. The less you go to church the less you believe in the almighty Father in Heaven and the Devil and Hell also.

Attendance         Belief in God             in Heaven       in Hell              In Devil

I believe people are losing hope. The meaning of hope is ambition, expectation, desire, wishing, dreaming, longing and anticipation. Where does hope come from?

Viktor Frankel was an Austrian psychiatrist who was put in a concentration camp during WW II. He survived and wrote a book shortly after the war called, ‘Mans Search for Meaning.’ While he was in the concentration camp he studied the other prisoners. Why did some survive and some did not? Below are some of his most famous quotes.

“Ever more people today have the means to live, but no meaning to live for.”

“Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by a lack of meaning and purpose.”

The men that survived had a meaning and purpose. Some wanted revenge on the guards and Nazis. Some wanted to see family after the war was over. Those who could see no purpose or meaning to life died in the camps. And these were men who had been selected to work in the camps, not those who on arrival were sent to the gas chambers immediately.

The Bible says hope comes from the Lord.

Psalm 62:5-6 Yes, my soul finds rest in God; my hope comes from him. Truly he is my rock and my salvation; he is my fortress, I will not be shaken.

Job 8:13 So are the paths of all who forget God; and the hope of the godless will perish.

The Westminster Catechism was written for the Presbyterian Church in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1648. What follows is number one on the list of 196 questions.

What is the chief and highest end of man?

Man’s chief and highest end is to glorify God, and fully to enjoy him forever.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church in #27 puts it this way:

The desire for God is written in the human heart, because man is created by God and for God; and God never ceases to draw man to himself. Only in God will he find the truth and happiness he never stops searching for.

Over the years, if I have gotten into a conversation with someone who I think is struggling with life. I tell them, when they reach the bottom of the pit and they feel they are about to lose hope. I tell them to call out in Jesus name and say, “Jesus I don’t believe in you, but if you are real help me somehow right now.”

Mark 9:23-24 Jesus said to him, “If you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes.” Immediately the father of the child cried out and said with tears, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!”

We come to church each Sunday to be filled again with the Holy Spirit and we take it out into the world. The world sucks it out of us and we need to be refilled, regenerated, and redeemed over and over again.

I don’t believe in the ‘once saved, always saved’ and now I never have to go back to church again nonsense.

We should live our lives in such a fashion as people wonder what we have? Why are they so filled with hope?

Our hope is in Jesus; to save us from this life of sin we are born into.

So live your life each day with hope and be ready to share that hope with all you meet each day of the week. Because as the tables above show, people are losing the battle, they are losing their hope.

John 3:16 For God so loved the world, that he gave His only begotten Son, so that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.

There is the real hope to life. Memorize that verse if you have not.

Merry Christmas to each of you.

December 24, 2023 Gospel Reading and Reflection

During my 8^th grade year of school in P.E. class, we sat on benches in the locker room in alphabetical order, after we had dressed in our gym clothes. To my left was Mike and to my right was Pat. Both Mike and Pat were two of our best athletes in school and were involved in football, basketball and track.

Everyday I would say, “How you doing Mike?” He would always answer, “Good and you?” I would turn towards Pat and he would say something like, “Screw you McGonagle.” Once in awhile, I would answer like this, “Did you get up on the wrong side of the bed?” I liked both guys, they just had different personalities.

Several years later, I was having an adult beverage in a local establishment; Pat comes in the door and sits by some guy at the other end of the building. About three minutes later they were throwing punches at each other. As the owner was throwing Pat out of the building, he was saying, “Why me?”

Pat died at the age of 45. Mike died during our 8^th grade year of school. Both of those guys at some point in their lives probably said, “Why me?” I know I have said that to myself many times. Why did Mike die so young? Why did Pat die so early? Why has God kept me around and those two had to go so early?

1 Peter 1:6-8 In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer in grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. Though you have not seen him, you love him and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy.

If you are or have been suffering in grief or any other kind of trials, know that you are not alone. Years ago I saw a sign on the back of the football stadium that said, “It isn’t the life that matters, it is the courage you bring to it.”

Courage and the meaning of fatherhood. One of the best minute and a half speeches of all time. From the 1960 movie The Magnificent Seven

One of my freshman English classes at college was taught by a Marine Corp officer, combat veteran of Vietnam. The only text book I remember from that class was the book The Exorcist by William Blatty. The Exorcist is a book about demonic possession and the attempted exorcism of the young girl who was possessed. It is a novel based on a true story.

The book was read aloud in class and we were to read at home also. We discussed the book endlessly through out the semester. The movie came out that year and it was an assignment. The teacher took a roll call outside the theatre and we sat together. The movie, the book, the whole thing gave me the creeps. I couldn’t tell you what we were supposed to have learned, but I never forgot the class.

Among Americans, 50% believe that Satan is a living fallen being created by God. About 50% believe Satan is just a symbol of evil. Those percentages depend on which survey you want to read. If we are to believe Jesus was who he says he was and then he talks to Satan in the Bible in several situations, don’t you think we should believe in Satan?

Several years ago I was watching a sermon online from a well known pastor from a mega church in the Midwest. He said, “We have surveyed our membership and a third of you believe in Satan, a third of you don’t and a third of you don’t know what to think and I am not sure either.”

The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis was a conversation between two demons. Screwtape tells Wormwood that the most effective thing he can do to bring souls to hell is to convince people that Satan does not exist.

Job 1: 6-7 There was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord and Satan also came. The Lord said to Satan, “Where have you come from?” Satan answered, “From going to and fro on the earth.”

1 John 5:19 We know that we are from God and the world lies in the power of the evil one.

1 Peter 5:8 Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.

My friend Ellina Lesnik lives in Ukraine. We hosted Ellina and her husband and three girls this past summer at our home for a 4th of July party. Ellina and her husband have since gone back to Ukraine and are helping to feed hungry people working with Samaritans Purse. Both of them are Christians working to bring the bread of life and bread of heaven to people all over the unoccupied areas of the Ukraine. Reading her emails and facebook posts the struggle and suffering they go through are unimaginable.

She told me this past summer she had written a book titled ‘My Imperfect Marriage’. She opens up her own marriage and the marriage of her own mother and father and shares the abuse, neglect, struggle they have had. Then each chapter of the book tells about a particular marriage in the Bible, of which there are 22, and relates it to her and her parents marriage.

The following is a portion of the introduction:

I promise you that this book is free of sugary perfection, empty romance, and superficial advice. We will talk about difficult family issues, hopeless situations, dead ends, wounded destinies and really bad marriages.

My purpose is to show you, dear reader, that God does not work in perfect marriages, but in ordinary ones. Sometimes even the worst ones. And there is always a lot of hope in His action!

This book has been written to live out in the real world, in real marriages, to give you hope, to encourage you, and to strengthen you as a couple.

If you do nothing but read the introduction to the book and the first chapter you will be encouraged in your own marriage.

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