Siblings Love/Hate

Noah is being so sweet to Lannom right at this moment. He gave Lannom the toy he was playing with, without being asked for it. Lannom walked over to some books and Noah asked him, "Do you want to read?" Picked-up the book and started "reading" it to his brother. It was touching. It was sweet. There was an ambiance of the purity of love.

However, I know this will end. It won't be more than five minutes and it will turn into a screaming, toy-pulling, crying, whining mess that will require parental oversight. Siblings are funny that way. Love to hate in eight seconds flat.

Nobody can love you quite like family can. Nobody can hurt you quite like family can. The indelible truth is though, no matter what...you are still family.

I have a friend who is struggling with a decision to leave his church and associate himself with another congregation. As he has spoken to me, I have had no words of wisdom for him; for I too have walked his path of pain.

After watching my own two tonight, I feel a deep stirring of thought that in the family of God, brothers and sisters can go from Love to Hate in eight second flat. Nobody can love you quite like your family of God can. Nobody can hurt you quite like your family of God can. But, the indelible truth is though, no matter what...you are still family.

Ten Commandments

This was a really fun series to do. The first challenge, of course, is determining which commandments are the 10 commandments. The lists which are commonly known as the Ten Commandments are given in passages in two books of the Bible: Exodus 20:2-17 and Deuteronomy 5:6-21 (compare side-by-side at BibleGateway.com).

If you count each "imperative statement," then you will quickly see that there are more than 10 commands. A little research shows that different religious backgrounds have parsed the commandments in different ways. I struggled with whether to follow the Jewish tradition or the Evangelical tradition. In the end, I went with the evangelical.

Commandment 1

Commandment 2

Commandment 3
I was stumped on how to illustrate this one for several weeks. I finally had a brainstorm and was able to find this picture.

Commandment 4

Commandment 5
This is one of my favorite designs. I played with a few things to get this to work.

Commandment 6

Commandment 7
Handling lust in a tasteful way is always difficult.

Commandment 8

Commandment 9
I actually wanted a picture of person taking an oath. But I couldn't find a good high quality (free) graphic to do that.

Commandment 10

Covenants of God

The "religious tradition" of the church I attend is one that promotes the taking of the communion each week. Our church used to have one of the men share a short devotional thought and then pray over the emblems. I enjoy this practice because it gives me a chance to publicly speak/teach in a manner that I don't often get to because I am no longer in full-time ministry. However, a year or so ago, the leadership began requesting that men only pray over the communion and not share a devotional.

Being passive-aggressive I have come up with a round-about way to still share a message. When it is my turn I use my announcement slides and my prayer to share an insight. So, for this one, I wanted to talk about how God's covenants and how communion is a symbol of the covenant relationship we have with God. Each of these slides bring remembrance of God's faithfulness to the people He has made covenants with in the past.

As I prayed, I mentioned each covenant and the fulfillment of that covenant as a testimony to God's faithfulness.

Genesis 3:15

Genesis 9:11

Genesis 12:2

Genesis 22:15-18

Exodus 19:4-6

Psalm 89:3-4

Matthew 26:26-28
I didn't actually use this Matthew 26 one. After I made the slide, I found this one and thought it was much better, both execution and with my theme.

Pre-Election Scriptures

These are series of scripture slides that I did right before the election. All of these scriptures remind us that God is ultimately in control of the affairs of government, not us.

Romans 13:4

Daniel 2:21

Proverbs 21:1

John 19:11

Colossians 2:9,10

I Peter 2:13,14

Scripture Slides Catch Up

Its been awhile since I have uploaded scripture slides. So, we are going to play "catch up" over the next few posts. First, I will put some "miscellaneous" slides here. Then, I will do some other posts for a few series I have completed.

As always, click on the picture to access a larger resolution version. FWIW, I downloaded the Google Photo Screensaver and changed the settings to point to my directory of scripture slides. Now, when my screensaver kicks in, it loops through the scripture slides.

John 1:3,4

Ecclesiastes 7:16-18.jpg
This was from a series that Don did entitled a Balanced Christian Life.

Proverbs 30:8
Another slide dealing with living a life of moderation.

Genesis 1:2
This verse talks about NOT being moderate or balanced, but living your life to an extreme. A nice contrast to the other two.