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Honeybee Tales. . .

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Years ago a friend at work gave me my first bee hives.  I had always been interested in beekeeping, and when I found out that he, Milt Fair, had bee hives I was so intrigued.  I asked him so many questions, and began reading everything I could find about them. Sometime later he offered to give me a couple of beehives.  I lived in a residential neighborhood, north of Mishawaka.  We had a large 1¼ acre lot.  I chose a spot toward the back of the lot in a little grove of wild cherry trees in which to put the hives. My next door neighbor at the time,  was an older man, probably my age now.  He had an above ground swimming pool behind his house.  One day he came over and complained to me that my bees were landing on the swimming pool ladder, and his grandkids were getting stung. I told him that I thought that was unlikely, as I had a large oval shaped galvanized tub, filled with water right outside my hives, with bark floating on top for my bees to get...
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Building Our Spiritual House

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  We are so careful. . . so thoughtful when we buy a house.  We look at the neighborhood.  We consider the schools our children will attend.  In our minds eye we rehearse the daily drive to our job.  We have the house inspected for mold, termites, the soundness of the roof, electrical system, plumbing, heating and cooling system.  We look at the cost of the taxes, utilities, insurance.  Can we afford the payments? How well will the house age?  What will the neighborhood be like in 10 years.   All this for our physical abode. . .  What thought do we give to our spiritual abode?  How much planning and consideration do we give to it?  Preparing for our weekly Bible study.  This week we're studying Matthew chapter 7.  I ran across this passage: Jesus speaking: Matthew 7:24-27 NKJV  "Therefore whoever hears these sayings of Mine, and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock: ...
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613 Commandments of the Law of Moses

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  Yesterday in our Wednesday morning Bible study, we were going through Matthew chapter 5. Jesus was addressing commandments written in the Law of Moses. I mentioned that there were 613 commandments in the Law, and someone in the group asked if I had a list of those 613 commandments. This is something that I had thought of doing previously, but had never gotten around to. This morning my computer is tied up running a large engineering problem, so I spent a few minutes looking this up. There are many websites which list the commandment in differing ways of sorting them. I took the following list from Wikipedia. The order is by when they first appear in the Bible. A person could try to follow all these 613 rules, and still not be living a life pleasing to God, if they, like the Pharisee's forgot about the foundation of these rules. Jesus said: Matthew 22:34-40 NKJV But when the Pharisees heard that He had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. 35 Then one of them, a ...
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How do I do a Bible Study?

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Someone recently asked me how to do a Bible study on their own. The beginning place for me is my e-Sword Bible software. I've used this software for more than 20 years. It was free when I started using it, and it's still free. No ads, no hidden fees, simply free. That being said there is a charge for some of the Bible translations, charged by the publisher. I have downloaded: 31 commentaries, 28 Bible translations, 21 dictionaries, of those 28 Bible translations I paid for NLT, NIV, NKJV, and the Amplified set of 3. Other features, dozens of books in the reference library, graphics, devotionals. I love to do word studies, and e-Sword has a wonderful search tool. I can search all the Bible, or any portion of it. I can search for Strong's numbers, partial matches, synonyms, exclude words, match case. Most often I will do a search on an English word, and then I will look at what Strong's dictionary numbers are used for that word, and then do a search for the Hebrew...
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The Hand of God. . .

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Today I met a couple of men in a garage at a men's halfway house in Butler, Indiana.  My friend wanted to introduce me to the manager of the facility.   They were sitting in the garage, talking on folding chairs, I know not about what. But surrounded by tools, and parts, and a car with a disassembled front end, upon learning that I was a chaplain mentoring one of their newly arrived residents, they said that if a vehicle of mine ever needed repair that they would be glad to do it for me. It took me back. . .probably 20 years ago, to a similar happening.  I was ministering to a fellow who had recently been released from jail, and needed a vehicle to get back and forth to work.  I had an old Chevy S10 pickup truck that I was going to let him use, but it had a failing fuel pump. Maple City chapel church in Goshen, Indiana was located in a former Kmart I believe.  It had several car service bays where tire changes were done in its former life, where on Wednesda...
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Baptism - What does the Word of God Say?

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Photo from my day of baptism, right before I went under the water - July 16, 2000   Baptism Baptism is very important.  My opinions are very unimportant.  Don’t depend on ancient traditions, which may have strayed from the written Word of God. What does the Word of God say about baptism? Colossians 2:8 NKJV  Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ. 2 Timothy 3:1-5 NKJV  But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come:  2  For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy,  3  unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good,  4  traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God,  5  having a form of godliness but denying its power. And fro...
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