By Mike Peek

I had intended today to write about “The Gospel According to John” chapter 4:23-42, God willing I will do so at a later date. I guess I still am in away because that entire text is about sharing Jesus, and that is what has occupied my thoughts today. Do you ever sit in church and just think something is wrong, I mean really wrong. My pastor, I love him and by no means wish to degrade his work nor my church, but sometimes I hear a sermon and just think, that could only be preached here; in the richest country the world has ever known, in one of the safest most prosperous communities in our state. We sing songs in church and do you ever listen to the words of the songs we sing? One of the songs we sang in worship today was, “I surrender all to you”, and here are the Lyrics to that song: I'm giving you my heart, and all that is within I lay it all down for the sake of you my King I'm giving you my dreams, I'm laying down my rights I'm giving up my pride for the p...

Dear Friend, I am writing this letter to you because even though we may have never met I love and care about you. I hope you will bear with me and take the time to read this letter. The things I have to say are important; in fact nothing is more important. I don’t know your back ground but I surmise that at some point in time you have heard the word sin. What is sin? It is a term that many religious people use and many of them do not understand the term themselves. The bible gives us the definition of what sin is; “Sin is lawlessness” (1 John 3:4). Sin is living life as if there were no God, no one to whom you are accountable to, or as if He has no knowledge of, or cares what you do. All societies, all cultures, all governments have a set of laws that the citizens of that society are expected to live by. You break the laws of the land and you can expect to be imprisoned and or fined. What happens to a society when you take away government? You have anarchy, people living a...

The Lord, who is gracious and continues to give me more than I ever deserve or hope for, has given me something this week, and that which He has given me is wisdom. He has given to me an understanding of something that I have accepted as true when I began following Him and reading His word but never really understood. You know how your parents told you to do something as a child you didn’t understand it but, because they told you to do it you did it anyways; at least most of the time. The subject I would like to talk about today is; loving your enemy. We each have many enemies and make many more enemies every day. One moment a husband and wife can be the best of friends and the next become enemies. Friends divide over a multitude of issues all the time. Then there are those who for whatever reason just do not like you. We as believers are warned by Jesus that the world will hate us because it hated Him. (see John 15:18-26) And Paul tells us in his letter to Timothy; “Yes, and ...

As many of you may know, God has put it upon my heart to memorize the Gospel according to John and as I have been putting this book of the life of our Lord to memory, I will often times write about what I have learned. Today I will be talking about John chapter 4 the first 30 verses. At the beginning of Chapter 4 we find Jesus and His disciples in the land of Judea, Jesus is preaching and His disciples are baptizing new converts. Jesus’ disciples were growing, in fact He was making more disciples than John and John praised God for this. The Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making more disciples than John and Jesus knew this. It was not time yet for a confrontation between Jesus and the Pharisees. So He left Judea and departed to Galilee. The scriptures tell us “But He needed to go through Samaria”. Now, no Jew ever went from Judea to Galilee through Samaria, in fact they avoided going through Samaria and had nothing to do with Samaritans all together. Most Jews had a route t...

This week I have been reading from “The Gospel According to Matthew”, and as I have done so God has opened up this telling of Jesus Christ in a new and different way. The words came alive in a way I had never seen them before and in many ways it was as though I was hearing them for the first time. Of all that I read one verse in particular that I had read two days ago stood out and I kept referencing back to it as I read on. I guess I had not really noticed it before or was just more focused on the surrounding verses. The verse that I am referring to is Matthew 16:27, Jesus is talking with the twelve, He asks them who do men say that He is, then He asks them who do they say that He is. Peter says: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” The Lord proceeds to tell them how He was going to suffer at the hands of the elders, chief priest and scribes, that He would be killed and be raised from the dead the third day. Peter rebukes Him and the Lord says, “Get behind Me Satan!...

This morning God gave me a message through a short passage in the gospel of Luke and it is that message that I would like to impart to you today. There is an enmity that separates the people of this world from God and that enmity is God’s law. Enmity means a wall of separation. And this wall is a daunting and impossible wall to scale for no one can climb over it, no one can go around it because it is eternal, and it is impenetrable, you cannot break it down. Many try to scale the wall and die trying, many try and walk around the wall and never find its end, and many more try to go through the wall and are crushed by it. The good news is that there is a way through the wall, a very narrow gate by which you might enter and the pathway through the wall is difficult. Most refuse to enter through this narrow gate because they are proud, and many more stray off the path because it is difficult. To enter through this gate you must be; poor of spirit, mournful, meek, hunger and thirst f...

There are two things that I would like to talk about today; love and sacrifice. These two words are deep in their significance and meaning, they are a totality of scripture in a wonderful summary. They are so simple, yet so extremely difficult. These two words are both defined by the world and by the Bible, with the definitions in contrast. If you were to take all of scripture as incredibly vast as it is, it can be summarized in love and sacrifice. The first message is this. God loves you, so love God and other people. How is God’s love demonstrated to us? On the cross, “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). God does not love you because you are lovable, God does not love you because you are good, God does not love you because you are someone great, God does not love you because of your beauty, God does not love you because you are desirable. God loves you because He is love, “God is love” (1 John...