Posted by Ray Pritchard on 7.31.09 in Devotional
I talked with a young man whose life has radically changed in the last year. His story goes something like this. He was raised in a Christian home where he was taught the Bible from an early age. When he was a teenager, he attended Sunday School and youth group every week. He memorized Bible verses and attended a Christian camp where he was challen…
Posted by Ray Pritchard on 7.30.09 in Devotional
My mind has repeatedly gone back to a song I heard during our week at the youth camp in Florida. One night just before I spoke a young woman sang a song that had been written by one of the worship leaders. I don’t remember much about it except that she had a good voice, she sang in a bluesy style, and the last line of each verse ended with an…
Posted by Ray Pritchard on 7.14.09 in Devotional
Michael Hyatt has written a blog entry on the one question you should ask when something negative happens. Instead of asking, “Why did this happen?” you should ask, “What does this make possible?”Do you see the subtle shift? Suddenly, your attention moves from the past—which you can’t do a thing about—to th…
Posted by Ray Pritchard on 7.7.09 in Devotional
A few days ago a friend told me about a Bible teacher in the 1800s who had an unusual way of dealing with people who came to him with various spiritual problems. After listening to them, he would pray for their faith to be healed. “Lord, Margaret is struggling right now with many questions and many doubts. She feels overwhelmed by all that sh…
Posted by Ray Pritchard on 6.26.09 in Current Events, Devotional
Here’s a story from Perth, Australia sent along by my friend Pat Sullivan. Seems that someone stole a python from a wildlife center in Perth. The thieves no doubt thought they had made a clean job of it, but the snake did not cooperate. The six-foot long python swallowed a woylie, which this article describes as an endangered marsupial. Turns…
Posted by Ray Pritchard on 6.25.09 in Devotional
A friend asked for my thoughts on living with no regrets. To me it’s all about direction. A few years ago the Lord gave me a set of sayings that I call the First Law of Spiritual Progress:I can’t go back.I can’t stay here.I must go forward.In truth, there is no such thing as a life lived with no regrets in the literal …
Posted by Ray Pritchard on 6.23.09 in Devotional, Pastors
Fred Sanders reminds us that yesterday was the anniversary of the day in 1750 when Jonathan Edwards was voted out as pastor of the church in Northampton, Massachusetts.The vote was 230 to dismiss him, 23 to keep him as pastor.That’s 10-1 against him.That’s after being the pastor at Northampton for 23 years.I should add one point….
Posted by Ray Pritchard on 6.21.09 in Devotional, Marriage and the Family, Personal
A man never knows when his job is done partly because he never really knows what his job is. He gets one message from watching TV, another message by hanging out with his friends, a third message from his job, he hears something else when he goes to church, and he tries to make it all work when he goes home. In my case I’ve tried to mak…
Posted by Ray Pritchard on 6.16.09 in Bible Bus, Devotional
During our Caribbean cruise last week I finished reading through the Bible. When we left San Juan, I had some reading left to do in Romans and Matthew. By the end I had finished them both, thus reaching my goal of reading through the Bible in 2009. I have since started reading it through again, this time beginning with Ezekiel, a book I found both …
Posted by Ray Pritchard on 6.14.09 in Devotional
An old man and an old woman, childless for decades, are promised by God that someday they would have a baby. Abraham responds with total honesty. He laughs out loud at the Almighty. When Sarah hears the news,she laughs, too. How could such a thing happen? Twenty-five long years pass while they wait for God to keep his promise. Now he is 99 and she …
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