A New Creature. . . an Apostolic Pentecostal blog

A little about my background. I was an atheist for the first 45 years of my life. In 2000 many different, seemingly unrelated chains of events came together in my life, and my eyes were opened. . . I saw what a fool I had been for my disbelief. I clearly remember how negatively I used to view Christianity and Christians. I saw nothing positive at all, no redeeming value in Christianity. 15 years after coming to Christ, obviously today my view is completely different. I was so wrong on every aspect of my distaste for Christianity. 1. It looked so boring to me to be a Christian. So many of my ‘fun’ things to do, were centered around sin. I greatly enjoyed smoking, drinking, and gambling, and I could not imagine having fun without these as integral components of my fun. Drinking especially was important to me. A night out playing pool or playing cards or a cookout, a camping trip, a gathering of friends or going out to eat all involved drinking for enjoyment. . . . Yes,...

Matthew 23:25-27 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess. (26) Thou blind Pharisee, cleanse first that which is within the cup and platter, that the outside of them may be clean also. (27) Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness. Both from personal experience, and in my ministry I have experienced first, and second hand the frustration, and fruitlessness of attempting to apply goodness, and righteousness from the outside and expecting it to ever migrate all the way through. I chuckle at the similarity. . . this morning I am preparing to make pulled pork on the smoker. Last night I created a strong brine solution of a cup of salt per gallon of water, and I soaked the pork loins in this for about 12 h...

Years ago Jackie and I were camping down at the Salamonie State River Forest campground with Connie Smith my mother-in-law and Jack Smith my father-in-law. Across the road from our campsite was a rough woodsy area, traversed by a tiny rill. This small bit of water bubbled up from alongside the road and with a twisted course of tiny flows, dribbling falls, and shallow pools, ran a crooked course a hundred yards or so from hillside spring to where it joined the Salamonie River. My father-in-law is a man of many varied romantic talents. . . underwater demolition, and construction expert. Among other fascinating adventures, he had traveled the country cutting up and salvaging underwater train wrecks. . . he dove for mother of pearl shells in the Mississippi River, performed construction and welding various metal works in the waterfront of Lake Michigan. . . and had for a time panned for gold out west. That had always intrigued me and on that hot summer day, I asked him to show me ...

What is a Christian? The ‘ian’ suffix attached to a word means that it is related to, or like, or belonging to. So a Christian would denote being related to, or like, or belonging to Christ. In my meditations considering this, there seem to me to be three dimensions of being a Christian. The first dimension: 1.Do you call yourself a Christian? The first level of being a Christian is whether you believe yourself to be one. It is hard to imagine the circumstance of being a Christian without first considering yourself one. A recent ABCNEWS beliefnet poll conducted in the summer of 2015 reported that: Eighty-three percent of Americans identify themselves as Christians. Most of the rest, 13 percent, have no religion. That leaves just 4 percent as adherents of all non-Christian religions combined — Jews, Muslims, Buddhists and a smattering of individual mentions. For the past 14 years, I have ministered in a local jail and I speak with easily hundreds of people each y...

I believe everyone has at one time or another, been driving in the wee hours of the morning, and have been totally alone on the road. It’s as if the whole world is asleep, and you are the only one awake. . . and you happen to come to a stop light, which is red in your direction. As far as the eye can see ahead of you, and behind you. . . to your left, and to your right there are no car lights even in the far distance to be seen. How long do you wait? How long before the little voice in your head says to you, “Just go on through. . . It is senseless to stop for no one. . .no one will see. . . no one will know. . . it will make no difference” Have you given in to this urge? I know that I have. . . knowing that I am breaking the law, but deciding that for that place and time, the law is senseless, and is not important to keep. It takes a very disciplined person, never to have run a red light when there is no possibility of anyone else seeing it. It’s about as much of a victi...

The past few weeks Jackie and I have been watching the series ‘Breaking Bad’ on Netflix. The scenario is of a high school chemistry teacher, who is diagnosed with lung cancer, and to help pay for his treatment, he turns to manufacturing meth as a way to make money. I find a peek into this world, fascinating for the fact that I am in regular contact with the after effects of meth addiction in my personal life. . . my best friend Matthew Yeater was blinded by an explosion that occurred while cooking meth himself, and in my ministry. . . many many of the people we minister to in the jail a there via their use or manufacture of meth. I don’t know how realistic the show is, in its portrayal of meth addiction, and the cooking of it, etc., but one thing I do find realistic, from my outside looking in perspective, is how this man thought somehow that he could just stick his toe into this world of meth, and so very quickly he was immersed up to his neck. This jives pretty closely with...

Years ago Jackie and I were driving in the mountains of West Virginia looking for a camp site. We finally found one at the top of a mountain in the Bear Heaven recreation area. The road to the mountain, was just a one lane trail, more than a proper road. There was no way that two cars could pass on this very narrow twisting dirt path around the mountain. As a flatlander, I distinctly remember white-knuckling the steering wheel, as we navigated the switchbacks up the side of this mountain. I told Jackie, that if we met someone coming the other way, that I was going to get out of the car and throw my keys over the side of the mountain, so that I could not be forced to back my way down the mountain. It was a new experience. It was very scary. . . very uncomfortable to me. I imagine that the locals, people who navigated roads like that regularly, found no big discomfort in that situation at all, but to me it raised my heart rate, and blood pressure, about the same as if I wa...