KneEmail - a devotional by Mike Benson associated with Forthright Magazine
Kneemail - Church
IN HER BOOK The Key to a Loving Heart, Karen Mains has parable entitled "The Brawling Bride..." The parable describes a climatic moment in a wedding ceremony. Both families have been seated. The grooms and his attendants are in...
IN OUR SOCIETY, being a member of an elite, exclusive group is anathema... It supposedly evidences a snobby attitude where we disdain everyone else who does not attain our lofty standards. In a postmodern age, when feelings matter more...
SOME HANDS ARE used to play piano, some to mold clay, others to sign for those who cannot hear... Some hands are used to cook for others. Look at your hands. What do you see? I see veins popping...
FAITH IS INDISPENSIBLE in the lives of individual Christians (Hebrews 11:6)... Faith is also the vital ingredient for church growth. The words "faith" and "belief" are used almost 500 times in the New Testament. No individual or congregation can ever...
FAITH IS INDISPENSIBLE in the lives of individual Christians (Hebrews 11:6)... Faith is also the vital ingredient for church growth. The words "faith" and "belief" are used almost 500 times in the New Testament. No individual or congregation can ever...
FAITH IS INDISPENSIBLE in the lives of individual Christians (Hebrews 11:6)... Faith is also the vital ingredient for church growth. The words "faith" and "belief" are used almost 500 times in the New Testament. No individual or congregation can ever...
CHURCH MEMBERS NEED to be close to church members... Anytime a Christian creates distance between himself and the church, he is under a great threat of falling away from the faith. Some folks prefer to not be too involved with...
MAY I KINDLY ask a few questions for your personal study and reflection...? How many churches did Jesus promise to build? Matthew 16:18 Did He say, "I will build a church?" Did He say, "I will build My churches?" Since...
"IT IS MOST likely that in the Apostolic age when there was but 'one Lord, one faith, and one baptism,' and no differing denominations existed, that baptism of a convert by that very act constituted him a member of the...
"IT IS MOST likely that in the Apostolic age when there was but 'one Lord, one faith, and one baptism,' and no differing denominations existed, that baptism of a convert by that very act constituted him a member of the...
GENERAL GEORGE PATTON argued, "Success is measured by how high you bounce when you've hit bottom..." Simon Peter is a perfect illustration of this truth. He forsook his Lord and Friend in the garden. He even denied that he knew...
YEARS AGO AN experiment was conducted to measure people's capacity to endure pain... How long could a bare-footed person stand in a bucket of ice water? It was discovered that when there was someone else present offering encouragment and support,...
FOR THE FIRST time in her life, Western Oregon University's Sara Tucholsky not only hit a home run in a game against Central Washington University, but she hit it over the fence... She had passed first base and was on...
WHEN I WAS a little kid, I got a pretty nasty burn on my leg... The doctor applied a bandage designed to adhere to the burned skin. The bandage was made of a material that had a healing ointment in...
IN THE ACADEMY award-nominated film Traffic, Michael Douglas plays the federal government's newly appointed drug czar, charged with leading the country's war on drugs... In a sad irony, he is so caught up in his rising political career that he...
FEW GREAT LEADERS are accomplished without obstacles or opposition... Nehemiah encountered both. The officials in Jerusalem ridiculed and opposed Nehemiah's efforts to rebuilt the wall. Tobiah the Ammonite chortled, "What they are building--if even a fox climbed up on it,...
VIRTUALLY EVERY RELIGION is learned... New Testament Christianity is no exception to this rule. When the apostle Paul wrote to Timothy, after warning him of evil men he said, "But as for you, continue in the things which you have...
"...THE BEST WAY to manage conflict is to treat it as something normal and bring it out into the open where it can be handled fairly and constructively... Fighting openly keeps conflict from festering in insidious ways and gives those...
IN SEVERAL BUSINESS meetings, I have listened to varied suggestions on how the worship should be shortened -- "use more trays", "omit a song", "cut the sermon"... In all of this thinking, there seems to be the underlying premise that...
TIS THE SEASON to receive catalogs in the mail.... Every trip to the mailbox ends with an armload of slick holiday catalogs. Each one claims to offer me something I need--immediately. "Don't wait!" "Limited offer!" "Order now!" The lure works....
YOU CAN LOSE an eye or ear, a hand or a leg, and still live... But you cannot lose your heart or liver or brain and live. Those organs are more hidden than the others, but also more vital. You...
JESUS PRAYED THAT all who believe on him may be one... This prayer is a cutting rebuke to a plurality of churches. We know that Jesus did not pray for oneness and turn around and establish many churches to create...
THE STORY IS told of a young man who came to the door of a monastery with a large duck in his arms... His uncle, who happened to be one of the monks, answered the knock. "Here, uncle, this is...
LIKE THE EARLY first-century church, congregations today can drift into a maintenance posture... Here are some indicators of a maintenance-minded congregation: 1) When elders' meetings focus on institutional concerns (budgets and buildings) rather than on mission concerns (reaching new people,...
LAODICEA EXHIBITED ALL the outward signs of success -- wealth, comfort and respect... The members must have rationalized that the Lord was blessing them because of the visible signs, but the hidden life of the congregation was wretched, miserable and...
AT OUR CONGREGATION, Robin takes the photographs... For years, she has documented every event from church dinners to wedding receptions and everything in between. If there's an "event" going on, she's there, quietly snapping away. But when you look through...
I WAS TOLD last week by an acquaintance that we needed to study the "church growth principles" of the mega churches in certain cities that he specified... The "old" (whatever that means) church of Christ "will never grow," he warned,...
THE BLOOD... The blood that cost Him His life means life for me. The blood that brought Him pain in shedding it brings me eternal peace. The blood that, when He shed so much of it, surely caused Him sickness...
IF MORE PEOPLE today appreciated the fact that the church is of Divine origin, they likely would have a more respectful attitude toward it... Imagine if someone paid millions of dollars to buy a masterpiece painting by Rembrandt, then took...
KNOWING THAT THE church is built (Matt. 16:18) upon the foundation of Jesus Christ, and thus that it will stand forever (Dan. 2:44), will cause Christians to appreciate the fact that time and culture cannot alter the makeup of the...
WHY DO BRETHREN fall away...? In some cases, they were so drawn to wantonness and worldliness that they raced headfirst back to their former lifestyles. Many others, however, are drowned in grief, sorrow, discouragement, loneliness, doubt, confusion and external pressures....
FRIENDSHIP IS BASED on common likes and dislikes... Many equate "bar fellowship" with "Bible fellowship." Wrong! Bar fellowship dispenses liquor -- not grace, escape -- not reality. It is permissive, accepting, inclusive. Don't expect the bar to show up at...
IS IT POSSIBLE to simply be a Christian today, in the 21st century...? Can we avoid being entangled in and weighed down by all the trappings and innovations of man which have found their way into religion over the past...
THE ETHIOPIAN EUNUCH was also a religious man (Acts 8:26-40)... He had been to Jerusalem "to worship" and on his way home was reading his Old Testament book of Isaiah. Not only did he read it, he wanted to understand...
STUDY PAUL'S CONVERSION (Acts 9:22, 26)... In the name of religion, he did many "things contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth" (Acts 26:9). But his religion did not render him pleasing to the Lord. In fact, in a...
THE NEW TESTAMENT frequently introduces us to people who were devoutly religious but not pleasing to the Lord because of their teachings, their concepts, their worship, yea, their religion... Consider those who were converted and added to the Lord's church...
THE LATE G.K. Wallace had been a gospel preacher for many decades... In his last years of life, he suffered a total loss of hearing. But despite his handicap, brother Wallace continued to regularly attend the worship assemblies of the...
JAMES 5:19-20, TELLS US that when we restore one who has wandered from the truth, we save him from death and we cover a multitude of sins... What more motivation could we possibly need to become active in the restoration...
THE SEED OF the kingdom will produce the kingdom; it will not produce anything different from the kingdom... It has never been known to produce anything other than the kingdom of God, the church of the Lord. The Word of...
WE HAVE ALWAYS tended to revere the airplane pilot who did it alone and the country doctor who never left the bedside... Such a spirit of independence served us well and caused us all to grow tall. But we'd never...
THE JOB OF the church is not to impact the church, but to impact the world... It's like a huddle at a college football game. 109,000 people don't pay $25.00+ a ticket to watch a team huddle. What if you...