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Finding family
“… You belong to God’s family” (Ephesians 2:19 NCV). “And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal…
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Is your hope alive?
“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (1 Peter 1:3-5 NIV). “I…
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After the storm
“Without warning, a furious storm came up” (Matthew 8:24). We’ve been living in Wilson, North Carolina since 1987. Since then, we’ve seen our fair share of storms. But last Saturday’s F2 tornado was a new experience. Moving from the hills of Virginia,…
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Two weeks to remember
“They took palm branches and went out to meet him, shouting, “Hosanna!” “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord” (John 12:13)! This coming Sunday we begin our remembrance of Passion Week with what Christians call Palm…
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Staying on when God opens doors
“I will stay on at Ephesus until Pentecost, because a great door for effective work has opened to me” (1 Corinthians 16:8-9). We have been praying for over 19 years that God would open a door for us to reach the…
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Why do “bridge” events?
“Though I am free and belong to no man, I make myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible. To the Jews I became like a Jew…To those not having the law I became like one not having…
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Don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone
“The women said to Naomi: ‘Praise be to the LORD, who this day has not left you without a kinsman-redeemer’” (Ruth 4:14). Have you ever noticed that you really don’t appreciate something until it’s gone? We have this terrible tendency…
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Down to the threshing floor
“So she went down to the threshing floor and did everything her mother-in-law told her to do” (Ruth 3:6). “His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but…
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Finding favor
“Why have I found such favor in your eyes” (Ruth 2:10 NIV)? Have you ever been someone’s favorite? Favorite son, employee, player, student… have you ever been the “apple” of someone’s eye? I recently read about an experiment with underperforming…
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Out of Moab
“In the days when the judges ruled, there was a famine in the land, and a man from Bethlehem in Judah, together with his wife and two sons, went to live for a while in the country of Moab” (Ruth…