by Barry Creamer | Apr 20, 2022 | Devotionals
This part is fog: I am 12 or 13. The youth group at my church is holding a Valentine’s Day Banquet. I am attired in my best suit for the “formal” affair, and somehow I have a date I do not know and will not remember. We have collected our salads and are about to sit...
by Daisy Reynolds | Apr 20, 2022
Why is it that sometimes we bring about the very thing we are trying to avoid? Barry provides some all-too-true examples and encourages us to be the kind of people that keep the faith, sacrifice our own will, and love our enemies instead of clinging to the delusion...
by Barry Creamer | Apr 13, 2022 | Devotionals
The shortest distance between two points is a straight line, Mrs. Whatsit and Mrs. Who notwithstanding. The 10-year-old version of me that read something of A Wrinkle in Time only passed one portion down to my adult self: where Whatsit and Who explain how an ant could...
by Daisy Reynolds | Apr 13, 2022
Sometimes we can be dualistic in our thinking—especially when it comes to us and our competitor/adversary. However, Barry reminds us that there are often three options: we win, they win, and modus vivendi. Scriptures: James 4:11-12, 5:7-10; 1 Peter...
by Daisy Reynolds | Apr 6, 2022
Barry talks through Psalm 28 and leads us to the time-worn and yet sometimes surprising message that we are separated from those who face judgment only by the grace of God, without anything to earn it on our part. And then what naturally follows: If we can receive...
by Barry Creamer | Apr 6, 2022 | Devotionals
Country music songwriters, politicians, and marketers know the power of nostalgia. And better times past can be more than rose-tinged memories. Childhood should be safer with fewer cares than adulthood. So songs, campaigns, and ads invite us back to better times. When...
by Barry Creamer | Mar 30, 2022 | Devotionals
Sunshine illuminates blue skies, inviting bright demeanors, optimistic outlooks, an end to sorrow. Yet in the 19th Psalm the heat of sunshine stands in for the general revelation of God’s judgment, from which everyone wishes to hide. Rain falls from dreary or hostile...
by Daisy Reynolds | Mar 30, 2022
Barry finishes up a two-part series in response to a question from a listener: How do we get along with others whose Christian and non-Christian beliefs are in opposition to ours, both within Protestantism and across the lines? Part two covers our interactions with...
by Barry Creamer | Mar 23, 2022 | Devotionals
An alarm in the hospital room I am visiting obnoxiously and persistently signifies apparently nothing, but does make it equally impossible and inevitable to think of Kurt Vonnegut’s Harrison Bergeron. In that dystopian short fiction, the United States Handicapper...
by Daisy Reynolds | Mar 23, 2022
Barry talks with Andrew Hébert, author and lead pastor of Paramount Baptist Church in Amarillo, Texas about his new book. Shepherding Like Jesus challenges Christian leaders, pastors, and churches to highlight the right things in leadership—things like humility,...
