Calvary Baptist Church - Northern Kentucky

Who is wise among us?  That is where we are this Sunday at Calvary.  I love the notion of wisdom coming from that grand Old Testament word for wisdom.  It means skill in living.  The knack we seem to have lost in our day is a knack for living.  Where is the wisdom?  James will help us dig it out in his great epistle. 

Death and life are in the power of the tongue (Proverbs 18:21).  The Apostle James is going to continue his consecutive Sunday shakedowns this week with the passage before us in James 3.   Nothing marks out authenticity quite like our tongues submitted to the Lordship of Christ.  How our tongues fail us and reveal our true heart (Matthew 15:18)!  Sunday will get a little uncomfortable; especially for the preacher, who uses more words than anyone in worship (3:1).  That word stricter in the text constricts the preacher’s conscience, as the whole passage will constrict ours. 

But there is hope and we can bless others with our tongues and use our speech patterns to be such wonderful blessings.  Let’s reach for that together this week.  The tongue is just a wee part of our bodies, and yet the tongue is so determinative.  Wow!  We fail with our speech.  But God wants to meet us with His grace and enable us forward to that life of integrity.   Life is in the power of the tongue too, not simply destructive poison.  So let’s have a pro-life Sunday and work together at habits of blessing others with our speech and being an encouraging lot.  That is an authentic church, and what God is calling us to this week. 

If you are prepared to repent and seek our Lord, you are going to love this Sunday.  Let’s reach for grace together and raise the bar on using our tongues to build up this church.

The age-old struggle for the people of God is in letting our surroundings swallow up our resolve to follow the Lord.  The world constantly seduces us to change and adopt its party-line about everything.  We live in that world and God has called us to live boldly for him.  But where can we find models to help?  Daniel 1 is our template.  He will show us the way forward.  He knew first hand how hard it is to live in Babylon and be faithful.  We have our own Babylonian surroundings and Sunday will give us strategies to adopt to thrive as parents and Christ-followers.   Daniel 1 is before us on this special Sunday that we recognize our school.  Dr. Bill Dickens, headmaster, and Mrs. Tonya Burns, elementary principal, will have our school faculty and staff here to dedicate themselves to a year of nurture and education.  But the challenge to live daring to be Daniel-like is for all of us.  This Sunday will ask, “Are we up for it?”