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Ramblings from Retirement – Meditating On God’s Word By Pastor (Retired) Lee Hemen April 1, 2022 I was thinking about a notion that I have heard my entire Christian life, namely that we are better believers if we hide God’s Work in our hearts by memorizing it perfectly. Mainly this teaching comes from the words of the Psalmist who wrote, “I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you (Psalms 119:11 NIV84).” Except this is total balderdash. Now do not get me wrong because if you want to memorize the Bible verse by verse, go ahead and do so. It might be good for you to do so but this isn’t what the Psalmist meant. In fact, nowhere in the pages of our Bibles did the original authors want you to be able to quote a specific passage at any given time in order to be a better Believer in God. Certainly they encourage us to know the words of the Lord but what did they really mean? First and foremost we often forget in our haste to impose certain spiritual concepts that we...

 Ramblings from Retirement: The most important time is now. By Lee Hemen (Retired Pastor) November 2, 2020 I went out to lunch the other day because I had been working at church trying to get our live video feed working properly. (It is still a work in progress.) I stopped by and got something and in the fast food place was a young man sitting there reading his Bible. Curious, I asked him which book he was reading from and he related it was Genesis. We had a short discussion about the Scriptures and I got my order and ate. This got me to thinking though about the words of Psalm 119:11 where the Psalmist tells God: “I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you. (Psalms 119:11 NIV)” These are good thoughts and I remembered how I was encouraged to do just that as a young Christian. In thinking about this however I realized that few looked at the words before this verse or those afterwards as well. So let’s take a quick look at what the Psalmist writes: “How can...

God’s church should be like Jesus! – Philippians 2:1-8 By Pastor Lee Hemen March 29, 2020 I can remember my mother sometimes telling one of us, “Why can’t you be like your brother?” Of course it depended upon which one of us was not in trouble at the time that she wanted the other to be like. Growing up we often have others we can desire to be like: Make believe heroes, historical figures, brave men or women, or family members we hold in high regard. During times like we are going through it might be easy to draw within oneself and hunker down. For the believer this is not what Jesus would do. He would encourage us as a church to reflect him immediately within our families, our neighborhoods, our communities, and our world. Paul would tell us in blunt terms that God’s church should be like Jesus! Let see what Paul wrote and why… READ: Philippians 2:1-8 Factions within Congress that only are interested in their own self-interests should gall all Americans right now while our Nation is ...