Church
Easter Isn’t Over
Posted on April 6th, 2010
I hope you had a wonderful Easter, and I hope you attended the church of your choice. Easter is a wonderful reminder to us that God is in the “raising from the dead” business. God does things all the time which we think are impossible. Even those who were closest to Jesus and had devoted years of their lives following Him did not expect to see Him alive again after they saw Him die on the cross. (more…)
Be determined. Be confident. Do not lose courage.
Posted on March 23rd, 2010
By Mike Salch Pastor
First Baptist Church
There are times in the life of all of us who are Christians when we know in our heart there is something God wants us to do. We know it is our duty to obey our Lord, but we have a difficult time moving forward and completing the task. We wonder how things will work out when we take that step of faith. We wonder what the future holds, and we have an amazing capacity to imagine all the worse things that could happen and few, or none, of the great things that could happen as a result of our obedience.
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Seek and ye shall find
Posted on January 14th, 2010
A Pastor’s Perspective
By Mike Salch, Pastor
First Baptist Church, Orchard
The Bible says, “Seek and you will find.” There is such a depth of meaning in those five words. God tells us we are to seek Him. “Seek” means different things to different people. Seek may mean to search for; to ask for; to desire; or to be in pursuit of. The meaning for each person comes from where they are in their spiritual life.
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“For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory”
Posted on November 12th, 2009
We come to the end of The Lord’s Prayer with the phrase, “Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen.” Some Bibles will have this phrase included in the text. Some Bibles do not have this phrase included. And, some Bibles do not have the phrase shown in the text, but they have it as a footnote at the bottom of the page. (more…)
God commands us to forgive our debtors.
Posted on October 23rd, 2009
There is a phrase in The Lord’s Prayer that we may wonder if we really want to pray. “Forgive our debts as we forgive our debtors”. The word “debt” is a good synonym for sin because it reminds us that each time we sin we incur a moral debt to God and that our sin debt is so great we could never repay it. (more…)
“Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.”
Posted on October 19th, 2009
There is more than one kind of debt we can owe. We are all familiar with the normal kind of debt which we can satisfy by paying the amount of money we owe. Also, the person we owe could forgive the debt we owe, take it off his books and clear our name. But there are also moral debts, which carry a much higher price. If we steal something that costs $10, simply paying the $10 will not satisfy our moral debt. It may cost us a large fine or time in jail.
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The Lord’s Prayer tells us how often to pray
Posted on October 11th, 2009
The Lord’s Prayer gives us a clue as to how often God wants us to pray. Jesus did not tell us to pray for our yearly bread, or our monthly bread, or even our weekly bread. The phrase, “Give us this day our daily bread” helps us understand that He wants us to pray at least once a day. Jesus doesn’t instruct us to pray once a day to strengthen His self esteem. He does not want us to pray once a day because he needs to hear from us, and would feel slighted if we did not pray. He tells us to pray once a day because he knows that is what is best for us.
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“Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
Posted on October 4th, 2009
When Jesus was teaching his followers the way in which they should pray, this was one of the phrases he taught that they should pray. This phrase really strikes at the heart of the Christian’s life. To be a follower of Jesus Christ means to be a person who tries their best to be an imitator of Jesus Christ. We are supposed to do our best to have the same attitudes and loves and behaviors and desires as Jesus did when he walked the earth. (more…)
What does it mean to pray “Thy kingdom come?”
Posted on September 22nd, 2009
When we come to the phrase in The Lord’s Prayer, “Thy kingdom come,” what is it we are praying for? Remember, Jesus told us not to be like a babbler who simply repeats some words he has memorized without knowing what those words mean. So when we pray “Thy kingdom come” what do we mean?
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The Lord’s Prayer addresses God as “Our Father”
Posted on September 16th, 2009
A Pastor’s Perspective
By Mike Salch, Pastor First Baptist Church
In Matthew 6 we have Jesus teaching how we should pray. He gave us a prayer to use as a model for our prayers. This model prayer is known as The Lord’s Prayer. Over the next weeks we will be looking at this model prayer so we can understand what it means and so we can better know how to pray. Today we will look at the first phrase.
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