KneEmail - a devotional by Mike Benson associated with Forthright Magazine
Kneemail - Devotion
LET'S CONSIDER THAT prized trophy or treasured car... Would you consider leaving it outside in the open, exposed to the elements of nature, animals, dirty-fingered kids, and inconsiderate neighbors? Probably not. More likely you would shield it from these...
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...
A MAN IN his sixties was walking down the street of a modern subdivision... In his hand was a scrap of paper from a doctor's office with a name and address scribbled in pencil. As the man approached the house,...
BOOKSTORE SHELVES ARE full of books on marriage, many of them describing the reasons marriages fail... Such books are usually written by therapists, who spend their time working with clients whose marriages are experiencing meltdown. A great deal can obviously...
MY DEAR FRIENDS..., You know around here we are experiencing hardships, but we thank the Lord He is comforting us and caring for us in every way. When we experience misfortune, adversity, distress and hardship, only then do we see...
JESUS DOESN'T FORCE us to be His disciples... Never does He coerce anyone into His service. His invitation is free, His offer of eternal life is free, the opportunity to serve Him is free. He freely took the initiative in...
...I HAVE NO alternative but to bluntly call it a war... The prize is the inner spirit of my children, and the stakes are high. Arrayed against me are those who wish to extract money, loyalty, and the strong creative...
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...
WILLIAM TYNDALE WAS born in A.D. 1494, near the middle of the Dark Ages... The times were dark because the Scriptures had long been kept from the people by the Roman Catholic church. Church leaders believed that only members of...
HOW DO YOU build a "sanctuary" in your busy life; a place where you can meet with God...? Build a "closet." Isaac's closet was in a field (Genesis 24:63). Peter's closet was on a housetop (Acts 10:9). You must fashion...
ARISTOTLE SAID, "WE are what we repeatedly do... Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit." We are creatures of habit. Habits--overeating, thumb-sucking, breath-holding, nail-biting, smoking, and the like--run the gambit from unpleasant to unhealthy. Other habits, like reading,...
IN 1995, OUTSIDE THE Bulgarian Embassy in Washington, D.C., the son of a former embassy employee lost his life... Walking with his friends, he was confronted by muggers. Apparently, however, his murder could have been avoided. The thieves only wanted...
THE SALMON NEARLY leaped onto to their hooks... That was a far cry from the day before when the four anglers couldn't even seem to catch an old boot. Disappointed but not discouraged, they had climbed aboard their small seaplane...
A MAN WAS discussing how empty his life was, and he knew that something had to be changed... This might appear strange, because he had all of the outward signs of success -- at least those the world prized highly....
THIS PAST WEEK, the eyes of the nation were fixed on Washington, D.C. and the historic inauguration of Barak Hussein Obama, the 44th president of the United States and the first black to be elected to the nation's highest office......
WHENEVER YOU FIND yourself going through times of testing, there is always a reason...a very good reason... In fact, there are several reasons. Testing times are to: UNCOVER something: When God allows pressures and trials, it is so that you...
IN ANGOLA, WOMEN had an opportunity to enter a very different kind of beauty pageant... Contestants had to have been injured by land mines. In that African country, 80,000 people are amputees because of land mines, so it wasn't a...
A 7-YEAR-OLD GIRL named Jessica was playing outside of her house one day when a pit bulldog came up in her yard... She went over to pet him and he attacked her--knocking her down and immediately clamping down on her...
WHEN AN ARMY goes into battle, it must make advances against the enemy if it expects to defeat the foe... Advancing against an enemy is not easy; it takes work. An army cannot sit in the trenches and look across...
. People are unreasonable, illogical and self-centered. Love them anyway. . If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives. Do good anyway. . If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies. Succeed...
I ONCE READ a parable about two armies... One was 20,000 members strong, while the other was only half that size. The commander of the larger army sent an ambassador to his counterpart asking for surrender. The commander of the...
SEVERAL YEARS AGO, Flip Wilson had a routine in which a friend asked him about his religious preference... "I am a Jehovah's Bystander," Flip answered. The friend asked, "Don't you mean Jehovah's Witness?" Flip Wilson gave one of his coy...
SOMETIMES QUESTIONS ARE best answered with questions... Questions with obvious answers are sometimes answered with the rhetorical question, "Is the Pope Catholic?" Maybe it's time we give that answer a second thought. The headlines read, "Pope Hailed for Praying Toward...
IT WAS DURING the war... His wages were low. He and mother wore old clothes, and tried to provide as best they could for our family. We were very poor; but frankly, I didn't know it then. Yet, while it...
PERHAPS YOU HAVE had the experience of studying a section of the Bible and wondered how it could benefit your life... To be sure, it is not because you doubt that the Bible is inspired of God, but it just...