Our culture tends to disregard the reality of spiritual warfare. Sometimes we view Satan as just a Halloween costume holding a pitchfork. The truth is that there is a battle going on in the spiritual realm that has an effect on our daily lives. God has promised His power and protection to Christians so that we can stand firm and continue to share the good news of the gospel!

I felt bad after church a few weeks ago. I was telling a story in the message about how unlikely it was that Klayton and these other freshman would play in the first varsity baseball game they suited up for. I said something like, “the earth would have to swallow up their teammates or Jesus would have to return before they would get in the game.” I felt bad because that tends to be the way we talk about Jesus’ return, as unlikely. Nothing could be further from the truth!

There is so much discussion and planning right now about what school will look like for kids this fall. There are disagreements about when it will start and who should go and how instruction will be delivered. It has all reminded me as a parent that I am primarily responsible for the education of my kids. The same is true of our “spiritual education” as well. We are responsible for guarding against false teachers and teachings and making sure we are staying close to Jesus.

A flower can be either annual or perennial. I’m not a gardener, but as I understand it an annual lives, blooms and dies all in the same season while a perennial comes back year after year. While we want our character to be perennial, to keep growing, mine tends to be more annual. There are some stops and starts to my character growth. God’s Word helps us to continue growing our character.

“To cultivate is to nurture and help grow. Farmers cultivate crops, fundraising professionals cultivate donors, and celebrities cultivate their images. When you cultivate something, you work to make it

better.” We’ve all spent time cultivating a garden or stock portfolio or even our kids, but sometimes we allow our character to be shaped by whatever and whoever we find around us.

There's no question that we live in a confusing season of life. It's easy to be distracted. Jeremiah 29 provides 3 steps that we can follow in order to keep our attention focused on God and living for Him.

When each of my kids started high school I gave them each the same advice; “get involved, you need to choose extracurricular activities and get involved.” It

doesn’t matter if it is sports, band, choir, the school paper, etc. but everyone needs a team to be a part. That truth doesn’t go away after high school. God designed us for relationships with Him and each other.

There are so many questions that seem to be unanswerable in our world. Not least among those questions is why suffering exists. I won’t pretend to be able to answer that unanswerable question in a way that will satisfy any of us. I only know that God’s Word promises that everyone will face suffering of one kind or another and that we can navigate this and any of life’s other difficult questions with His help.

God’s love is so big that scripture describes Him simply by saying, “God is love.” You can’t separate who God is from His love. He has loved us in extraordinary ways, most notably by extending His grace to us through His son Jesus. Is it possible for us to love others in a big way like God loves us? We’ll explore how we can love others like God loves us!

“He sees you when you’re sleeping, he sees you when you’re awake, he knows if you’ve been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake!” Besides being a little creepy, this lyric to a kids’ Christmas tune is

supposed to remind little boys and girls to be good. But what is it about being good? Why is it so important? Why is it so hard? Why should we worry about it at all? And who decides what is good anyway?