Author Archives: Joe

When God’s people do not live in the word, many things happen. All of them bad.

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“But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in that law doth he meditate day and night” (Psalm 1:2).

The Lord never intended for His Word to collect dust on a table in your back bedroom.

People paid for your right to own a Bible in your own language with their very lives.

What are you doing about that?

Christians who own numerous Bibles which they rarely open are thumbing their noses at the saints of old who paid the ultimate price.

This hard-won treasure lies buried under the dust and detritus of your life.

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So, how would you write your obituary?

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My son Neil and I had a few days to work on Margaret’s obituary.  Understandably, he could not bring himself to think about it while she lingered in the hospital on life support.  It was hard, but I worked on the essentials.

Margaret and I used to talk about these things. But not seriously. Somehow, you think this could never happen to you.

Margaret’s sister, widowed perhaps four years ago, told how someone praised her husband Jim with a good line which she later used as an opener in his memorial.  So, we began thinking about that.

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Please write in your Bible

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“This shall be written for the generation to come; and the people who shall be created shall praise the Lord” (Psalm 102:18).

Please go to the front of your Bible and write in it.

Start by putting your own name.

Often, when I pick up the Bibles of friends to see what they have written in them, I’m chagrined to see they don’t even have their names.

Write in your Bible, friend. Please.

At Christmas 1973, my aunt Eren gave to her mother, my wonderful grandmother Bessie Lowery McKeever, a Bible.  Grandma died in 1982, but not before marking up that Bible.
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What my 90-year-old father taught me about life

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“Never unprepared.”

The McKeever crest actually claims that as our family motto, going back to somewhere, Ireland or Scotland or both.

I used to laugh at the irony of that.  I mean, what were our people, a bunch of boy scouts?

I’m not laughing any more. My dad taught me how it works.

Carl J. McKeever, the 6th generation descendant of Cornelius “Neil” McKeever who arrived from the old country on the east coast around 1803, was definitely an original. The first-born of an even dozen children, Dad started working inside the coal mines in 1926 when he was 14.  His formal education ended with the seventh grade, but he never stopped growing and learning and being curious.

At the time this happened, I thought this was hilarious.

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Is this the 39th best Christian blog? I seriously doubt it.

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One of our colleagues in the ministry has collated a list of the 100 best Christian blogs.  Here is his announcement:

The 100 Top Christian Blogs

Last year, ours did not make his list. This year, we showed up at 39.

Okay, it’s nice, and we’re flattered. But who really knows? And does it really matter?

Personally, I dislike lists of the 100 biggest, 100 greatest, 100 most.  The upside is that such a list might alert readers to some good blogs they had missed. The downside is the pride. “Let me add that to my resume.’  His blog was voted among the most popular!”

Sheesh.

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Your weakness is no problem

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“He helps us in our weakness….” (Romans 8:26)

I can hear him now: “O Lord, I am so weak.  I am so pitiful, Lord.  How you can ever use a nothing like me is beyond me, Lord. I’m so ignorant, so fearful, such a sinner.”

I was soon tired of his praying and all I was doing was listening.  I wondered how the Lord felt about it.

I think I know.

He takes it in stride.  He knew from the beginning who we were. Nothing about us surprises Him.

God’s word says, “It is not in man who walks to direct his own steps” (Jeremiah 10:23).

We keep getting surprised on discovering it.

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Nothing for me, thanks

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At the end of a long day of touring the big city, the country boy is said to have knelt by his bed and prayed, “Lord, we saw a lot of things today. But I thank you I didn’t see a thing I want.”

“The ruler of this world is coming, and He has nothing in Me” (John 14:30).

Toward the end of His earthly ministry when our Lord was preparing the disciples for the difficult days ahead, throughout this Upper Room Discourse (John chapters 13-16), Jesus assured them He would not be leaving them as orphans. The Holy Spirit would be arriving in full force to supply everything they would be needing.

They should expect difficult days, He said. And make no mistake, He says, the devil is coming, too.  (Perhaps He spotted that fallen angel peeping up from a garbage can somewhere.)

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Sermon killers

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My friend Dave, who pastors a church in my neighborhood, reminded me of a story that used to show up in sermons from time to time.

After the war, a soldier who was severely wounded was returning home. As soon as he entered the states, he phoned his parents to say he was bringing with him a buddy who had lost (fill in the blank–an eye, a leg, both legs, etc) and was confined to a wheel chair.  He wanted the guy to live with the family and promised that he would take care of him. The mother said, “Now, honey, we appreciate your compassion and your dedication to your friend. But this would be too heavy a burden on your family. This is not a good idea.”  A few days later, the family got word that their son, the one just home from the war,  had ended his own life in a hotel in a distant city.  When the remains were shipped home, the family discovered he had one eye, one leg (or no legs), etc.  He had been telling his parents about himself.

Dave and I agreed that such a story, whether true or untrue–it’s impossible to know–is a show-stopper. A sermon killer.

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What the newlyweds must not do

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The newlywed couple can easily be overwhelmed with their new circumstances.  They are adjusting to each other–the delightful as well as the mysterious, the obvious as well as the surprising.  They are finding out how to plan their days and nights now that dating and courting have suddenly been removed from their agenda. And, they are finding out about mortgages and rents, taxes, and neighbors in ways they only imagined earlier.

It’s called life. It happens to all of us.

It would be natural for the newly married couple to postpone some things. And true enough, some things can be put on the back burner.  Let them delay going into debt for “big ticket items.”  Debt can be a killer for young families. Let them delay having children until they have solidified some matters in their own new relationship and established their home.

However, some mighty important matters should be dealt with head-on and faced immediately.

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The Lord loves to ask the impossible from us

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“He said to the man with the withered hand, ‘Stretch out your hand'” (Mark 3:5).

The very thing the man could not do Jesus asked of him.

“And he stretched it out, and his hand was restored as whole as the other.”

To the young virgin of Nazareth, the angel of the Lord said, “For with God, nothing shall be impossible” (Luke 1:37).

He seems to love doing the impossible.

The impossible. Such a novel concept.  As though anything were beyond the scope of the Creator of the galaxies.

I’m recalling that a college class in the late 1940s once expressed the doubt that God understood radar.  Radar?  Well, it was all the rage back then, a scientific thing that had given us a great advantage during the Second War, and people were just getting their minds around it.

These days, ninth graders understand radar.

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