A New Creature. . . an Apostolic Pentecostal blog

If we had some power to perform miracles at our command and could take away alcohol and illicit drugs from our society our jails would have hugely excessive capacity.  It would be close to the truth to say that we could immediately close 3 out of every 4 prisons.  I've seen figures showing that alcohol alone accounts for close to half of all incarcerations in penal institutions.  It is not only drinking while driving that puts people in jail, but it is the things that people do while intoxicated that end them up in prison.  Domestic violence, sexual crimes of all kinds, robberies, assaults, financial troubles, failed businesses, failed marriages, child support arrearages and on and on all have their roots in many cases in the abuse of alcohol.  For many years, I was a suicide hotline worker.  It was huge the percentage of our calls that had as a foundational component, the abuse of alcohol.  It was not often that the one who had the...

It seems like a long lifetime ago, the days before I believed in God. . . in many ways it was a lifetime ago. . . . There was a time when I looked upon the Bible as a collection of writings of questionable authenticity thrown together by men. . . little different from any other collection of ancient writings. How foolish I was. I now love studying the Bible. It is an amazing work. There are some 40 different authors, writing over some 17 centuries between the covers of the Holy Bible. There are no contradictions. It all fits and flows together far beyond any ability of a single man sitting in a single room to construct with such seamlessness , let alone all the writers from hugely different periods of time and greatly differing walks of life. The deeper I look into this mind boggling God breathed book the more amazed I become. Again before I knew God, I questioned the relevance of the Bible to the issues of today. Recently I was called to speak at a man's memorial service...