When you think about God do you think about Him as a power or a person? And when you think about Him do you think about Him being distant or do you think about Him being close? Well, the way you and I view Him is the way we're going respond to [...]

There are three questions that everyone needs to be able to answer correctly. The first one is this. Who is the one true God? Secondly, what is He like? And thirdly, is it possible to have a personal relationship with Him and if so, how? That is the [...]

One of the most familiar verses in all the Bible is found in First John, the little epistle toward the back of the Bible. And one of the reasons it is so familiar is because it is something we have to deal with every day. It goes like this: If we [...]

When is the last time you stopped and just meditated about your life and just thanked God for saving you? Or have you taken that for granted all these years? And let me ask you a question. Were you saved because you first approached God and told Him [...]

If God were to offer to give you the three strongest desires of your heart, what would they be? Would it be something that has to do with your physical being, maybe how you look or your health? Would it be something that has to do with something, [...]

Does our prayer influence God? If I pray long enough and strongly enough and intensely enough, could I possibly change God's mind to get Him to do something that I really want Him to do? And in fact, if God knows everything, has all power, and [...]

If God is in control and He is a good God, then why would he allow sin and pain and evil to enter the universe. Well, that question has been asked since the very beginning of time and people have had all kinds of answers. There have been hundreds [...]

In one of the most painful and difficult seasons of my life, when often times I was a little discouraged and fearful and feeling threatened and feeling all alone, my friend would say to me, "But remember God is in control". Often times he [...]

When you find yourself facing conflict and criticism, how do you feel? Do you feel insecure? Do you feel sad? Do you feel angry? Do you feel hurt down inside? Or do you feel guilty? What are your real feelings when all of a sudden you find yourself [...]

One of the most commonly asked questions is, "Why is it that God allows His children to go through such difficult, trying, painful times in life"? It's very obvious that He does, so it can't be denied. And since He's all [...]

When you face temptation, what is your first response? Is it immediately to rationalize what you know you're about to do and that is you're about to yield? Or is it to resist in the power of the Holy Spirit? When you think about the things [...]

How do you view your physical body? Well, you may say, "Well, that's really none of your business". I do understand that. If you had the power to change anything about it, would you change it? What would you change? If you could [...]

Our Heavenly Father desires that all of us have peace. In fact, He desires that we have a three-fold peace: peace with Him, which is the result of having the gift of eternal life and knowing it; peace with others, which is the capacity to have a [...]

Would you consider the environment in which you live, in which you work a peaceful environment? Or would you have to say, "No, it is an environment of conflict, there's contention. There is a sense of resentment that I feel. There's [...]

When is the last time that you could ever remember experiencing absolute peace in your heart? How long did it last? Why did you lose it? Is that kind of peace something that just comes once in a while in your life, or is it something that is there [...]

Is the God whom you worship big enough to handle all the challenges you bring to Him in life? All of us bring Him all different kinds and they come from all different avenues and often times they come suddenly. Sometimes we can see them coming a [...]

Did you ever have anybody steal something from you? Well, how did you respond? Were you angry because of the person or at the person who wronged you, or did you blame yourself because you felt like maybe you were just a little bit careless, and it [...]

Why is it some people come to church on Sunday morning or go to church and they walk away uplifted and feeling confident and comforted and assured and excited about life and looking forward to the coming week and just find out what God's gonna [...]

How could God expect me to have peace in my heart or expect you to have peace in your heart when everywhere we turn there is greed, political corruption, anger, hostility, war, bloodshed, disease, sickness, doubt, domestic violence, the whole idea [...]

A few weeks ago, one of our staff members and myself were seated in a restaurant on the West Coast and the young lady who was waiting on us was doing a great job and she looked like she was in her twenties or somewhere thereabouts. And so the second [...]

What do you worry about most in life? Is it your health, your marriage, your children? Maybe you worry most about what other people think about you. Maybe it's because you're worried because you don't know what God thinks about you [...]

To obey God is always the right thing to do, the wisest thing to do, but not always the easiest thing to do. And when you think about your life and what God requires of us, we all have to admit that sometime it's not the easiest. Sometimes we [...]

Would the people who know you best consider you courageous or cowardly? When they've watched you make decisions that were difficult, did they watch you run away from difficult situations? Or did they watch you courageously face them? When you [...]

Jesus is the pattern in the life of every single believer for every aspect of life. In relationship to God the Father? Obedience. In relationship to others? Love. In relationship to things; He always used those to the glory of the heavenly Father. [...]

Every command that God gives us in His Word has a divine purpose behind it. He doesn't just give commands just to be for giving them. He gives them for a specific reason. It is always for our good. When you and I understand those commands, [...]

Have you ever suddenly found yourself confronted with a strong, enticing, very inviting, seemingly irresistible temptation? What did you do? Did you just suddenly walk away, or did you find yourself debating with yourself and trying to decide what [...]

If you were a general in the army and you were going to war against another nation, one thing you would do very carefully: You would study the life of the opposing general. You would learn everything you possibly could about him. You'd know all [...]

Why are so many people so unhappy, anxious, disturbed, unsettled, and full of discontentment? No matter what they have, who they have, what their position, what their prominence, what their status is in life, they're still discontent. Now, a [...]

Have you ever thought about what kind of reward you're gonna receive when you get to Heaven? Well, you say, "Well, like what kind of rewards"? Well, have you ever just thought about what kind of rewards you gonna receive? And have you [...]

Who is a successful parent? Well, you say, "Well, what does it take to be a successful parent? Isn't that just somebody's personal opinion"? Not really. The Bible's very clear about what it takes to be a successful parent. [...]

Some of the most profound scriptures and some of the most profound principles in the Bible are often times rather easily understood. And then there are those principles or those texts that are not quite so easily understood, in fact, sometimes very [...]

When you think about God how do you visualize Him? I mean, do you see Him as a young man? Do you see Him as middle aged or do you see Him as an old man with white hair sitting on a throne somewhere? When you talk to Him what do you talk about? What [...]

I want to ask you a real tough question. Is God in everything? Is God in everything in your life? It's a tough question and one sometimes, we would like to avoid but one that every one of us need to have a very clear answer about in our life. [...]

Do you realize that God has a very specific plan for your life that He has not just left you here to flounder through life and wander around trying to figure out what you're going to do or how you're going to spend your life? You see most [...]

Our text for this message is probably the most familiar passage in all the Bible. In fact, I can remember when I was a school kid that everybody had to memorize this passage. And usually, you will hear this passage of scripture read at almost every [...]

If someone should say to you, "How much faith do you have"? how would you answer that? Well, the Bible talks about little faith, great faith, and perfect faith. Little faith is: "I know He can but I'm not sure He will". [...]

One day, I was sitting in my study, and I was thinking, "Well, we need to give this thing a name besides just the First Baptist Church". I looked over to my left, and there was a Living Bible translation. They had titled this Bible [...]

God issues three calls to every single person. First of all is the call to salvation. That is a call to confess our sins, to repent of our sins, and place our faith in Jesus Christ as our Savior and our Master and our Lord. The second call is the [...]

At the end of one of our In Touch rallies, I was shaking hands with some people, and a lady walked up to me and she handed me a piece of paper that was a part of a sheet of a stenographer's pad. And so, I put it in my pocket, and later on, I [...]

Do you enjoy waiting in line at the checkout counter, big grocery chain, when there are about four or five people in front of you with baskets just loaded with groceries? Do you enjoy that? Enjoy that kind of wait? Do you enjoy waiting at that [...]

All of us experience, at times in our life, fatigue and weariness and being a little bit worn out. But, when that fatigue or that weariness develops into a spirit of being discouraged because you can't ever seem to get over it, having the [...]

Sometimes without warning, you and I find ourselves stepping into a valley we didn't ask for and we can't do anything about. And oftentimes the instant response within us is frustration, something we cannot control, something we cannot [...]

What are the desires of your heart? If God were to say to you, "Ask Me anything you want, no matter what it is, ask Me for one desire, I'll give you the desire of your heart," somebody would say, "Well, that would be [...]

When you do something wrong and you know it's wrong, how do you feel? Well, you feel guilty. But let me ask you this, have you ever had the same feelings when you didn't do anything wrong? Oftentimes we do. Guilt is something all of us [...]

The title of this message is the title of the oldest game in all of humanity. It is a game all of us have played, probably many times, in our life. And one in which just two people can play it. Or, I might say about it also that, it's not a [...]

One of the greatest barriers in our life to achievements, to relationships, good relationships or to real, genuine contentment in life is what we feel about ourselves. And those feelings can either be very helpful or they can be absolutely [...]

How do you respond when you have feelings of anger? What causes you to be stirred up with anger the most? Is it somebody, some people, or is it some circumstances? Do you think that all of your anger is sin and is it possible to be angry and not [...]

Three times the night before the Lord Jesus Christ was crucified, He said this to His disciples. He said, "Love one another. Love one another. Love one another". And then, throughout the epistles, we find the writers of the epistles saying [...]

What do you fear most in life? Is it loss of financial security? Is it the loss of your health? Maybe a loss of your job, your vocation, the area in which you have worked all these years. Maybe it's a relationship or maybe somebody in your [...]

Fear and anxiety have plagued the human race from the very beginning of time. Think about this, the first recorded conversation between God and the first man was like this: man, in that conversation said, "I was afraid". And all down [...]