This morning, as I engaging in my personal Bible study,  it brought me to Deuteronomy 15. This section of Deuteronomy is filled with rules and regulations. Everything from what not to eat, to whom to loan money, to how to treat slaves is addressed.  It can seem dry and somewhat unapplicable.  I wonder how often we just skip these kinds of passages?

Resisting the urge to skip ahead, I trudged through the laws and regulations and found something very needed for my life.  In the midst of instructions about releasing debts every seventh year, verse four says, “But there shall be no poor among you..”  Later, in verse seven, Moses continues, “If among you, one of your brothers should become poor… You shall not harden your heart or shut your hand against your poor brother.”  

These words rebuked me.

I have always honored hard work and industry.  Passages that speak to a man who won’t work not eating or how it makes a man worse than an infidel to not provide for his family were well known to me.  Those principles are indeed biblical and true.  This message from Deuteronomy did not changed or amend God’s instruction regarding hard work.

The text spoke to my attitude!  It is not addressing the poor man or the reasons why he is poor.  The words instruct me as to how I am to treat him, which is the easy part, and how I am to feel about him, which is the hard part!   Listen once more to the commandment:

“You shall not harden your heart or shut your hand against your poor brother.”

I am going to work to soften my heart and open my hands!

“Through Christ’s death and resurrection the Father found a way to both satisfy His justice and show mercy toward those whom He loved.

What a terrible price!  In order to pay for man’s sin, God had to offer up His own perfect son as a substitute.  In essence, God traded His beloved son for us.

To those of us with children, this thought is almost unimaginable!  We might give our own life for a noble cause or to save the life of a friend, but there is nothing on earth that could motivate us to sacrifice the life of a child.  There is no cause great enough, no person good enough, and no reason worthy enough for the lives of our children!

The confusion is compounded further when we consider who God gave up His Son to save.  Mankind was certainly not worthy of such a sacrifice.  In fact, many people never even appreciate the enormity of God’s love that He would give His only Son.

“For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”  Romans 5:6-8

The greatest of gifts was sent to a world which would reject it, to save a people who didn’t want or appreciate it, into the hands of a generation who would attempt to destroy it!  Isn’t it amazing?  Could love ever be so great as that of God for mankind?”

This excerpt was taken from my short book, “I Want to Draw Closer to God, But I Don’t Know Where to Begin.”  It can be downloaded and read on any Kindle app for $.99 cents at

I once had a small fishing boat powered by an old, and very unreliable, Mercury outboard.  In addition to standard fisherman’s equipment, my tackle box always contained a wrench and an aerosol bottle of starter fluid.  I had learned the hard way that drifting with the wind in the middle of a lake is a miserable way to spend a cold evening.

Besides the wasted time, drifting is a frustrating, directionless activity.  You have absolutely no control over where you are going.  One minute the wind might push you north, and the next it may change and send you southeast.  Having a destination in mind is pointless, because you are completely at the mercy of the wind.

Spiritually speaking, we are surrounded by “drifting” people.  They really have no idea where their life is going, and even if they do have some destination in mind, they have no idea of how to propel their lives toward it.  This doubt about their lives and the inability to commit to a specific course causes people to drift aimlessly from place to place, from pleasure to pleasure- hoping by chance they will find some meaning along the way.  James describes these spiritually directionless as “double-minded,” and says in James 1:6-8, “for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind.  For let not that man suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.” (NKJV)

Directionless living eventually brings despair.  After drifting from place to place on the lake of worldly living, experiencing every pleasure and accomplishment along the way, Solomon penned Ecclesiastes.  His assessment of drifting through life… meaninglessness!  Throughout the book he systematically examines every place the winds of the world will take man: wine, women, wealth, and fame- and every time he calls the experience “meaningless.”  “Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities!  All is vanity.” (Eccl. 1:2, NKLV).

In the end Solomon discovered the way whereby man can point his life in a meaningful direction.  As he concluded Ecclesiastes, he said, “Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is man’s all” (12:13).  After being blown in every direction imaginable, Solomon knew that God’s will was the only propulsion which could point his life toward purpose and real satisfaction.  In the New Testament Paul tells us the same thing as he writes, “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:16-17).

We indeed live in a world filled with drifting people- lost and directionless.  Praise be to God that He offers direction to the drifting.

Last night I sat in a major college football stadium and watched my son play his first big-time high school game in front of thousands of fans.  As any proud father would be, I was bursting with pride and excitement.  I looked around at the setting, the crowd, and the excitement in the air and I felt so very much. I was filled with the expected emotions of the moment- pride and love- but I also felt other, less anticipated feelings.  I felt blessed.  I felt alive. I felt nostalgic.

My wife and I had arrived in different cars, so after the game I found myself driving home alone.  I plugged in my iphone and set it to shuffle.  The second song that came up was “100 years to live,” by Five for Fighting.  The words struck me.  They were what I was feeling so intently.  I’m only forty-something for a moment.  My boy is only 15 for a moment.  He is only home for a moment.  It all seems so precious, so very sublime, when you’ve “only got 100 years to live!”

The experience of last night was awesome, but it is over.  I hope I truly soaked it in.  It makes me realize that I don’t soak the moments in enough.  I stress about too many fleeting things.  The good stuff only lasts for a moment!!!

Lord, help me to soak it all in for the moments I have left!

Here is a short poem from my book of spiritual poems entitled, “Reflections on What Matters.”  I hope you enjoy it.

Like Today Was My Last

What will I do tomorrow?

Where will my journey lead?

I worry, I plan, I wring my hands,

And rush through my days with great speed.

I take for granted the rising sun,

I assume the calendar will advance.

“It always has,” I say to myself,

“I’ve put nothing to chance.”

But how certain is my tomorrow?

What guarantee have I of another day?

How many thought they’d see another sunrise?

To only have it taken away?

The truth is I do not know,

What the next moment has in store.

I could live another eighty years,

Or die as I walk through my front door.

It all brings the scripture into perspective,

“Your life is a vapor that vanishes away.”

How fragile is each breath that I take?

Could this be my life’s final day?

Therefore I must change the way that I live,

Priorities different than in the past.

Help me Jesus as I schedule my life,

To live like today was my last!

For this week’s blog I have taken an excerpt from my book “A War to Be Won: A Study in Spiritual Warfare” concerning the nature of Satan and what the world has tried to make him into:

Hollywood has tried to pacify the Devil with cartoon images and ridiculous Halloween costumes.  They make him out to be a tiny, red dwarf perched upon our shoulder who tempts us in opposition to his angelic counterpart speaking into our other ear.  If only he were that benign, we would simply flick him off and march on in bliss to eternity. But the Bible describes Satan in far more menacing terms.  Never in scripture is the Devil portrayed as someone to be mocked or trifled with.  In fact, even the angels are cautious when it comes to him.

Yet Michael the archangel, in contending with the devil, when he disputed about the body of Moses, dared not bring against him a reviling accusation, but said, “The Lord rebuke you!”

Who is he?  Why does he do the things he does?  Why does he hate us so?  These questions are often left unanswered.  The prince of evil is generally shrouded in mystery, so that we envision him as an impersonal “evil force,” rather than an individual being.  Like in Star Wars, we think of him as “the dark side of the force,” being the opposite manifestation of God’s supreme goodness.  This perspective inadvertently makes him the equal-opposite of God, putting him on the same place as the creator.

However, the Bible paints a very different portrait of Satan.  It seems to strongly hint at who and what he is, which helps us to better understand what he does and why…

The book just came out on Kindle.  It can be found on Amazon.com at:

– Kerry