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The King of Glory - Psalm 24 October 28, 2007 AM By Pastor Lee Hemen Looking up a family’s history has become quite an obsession for many today. Whole web sites are devoted to it and there is even a myriad of software you can purchase for you to investigate your own family’s history. Why? I believe sometimes it is because we are so dissatisfied with our own lives that we look in other places to discover some meaning. Perhaps lost royalty, a past President, bandit, or Indian chieftain that we can cling to that would bring some kind of a sense of importance to our existence. Sadly what we find is just a whole lot of reality. Now before you get your historical buns in a snit, I am not saying it is necessarily a bad thing researching your ancestors, because knowing where you come from can help in knowing who you are. The Christian has a rich heritage indeed. We do not have to look very far afield to discover our royal roots. In fact, we soon find that we are all adopted and the lost childr...

The Sinner’s Song – Psalm 32 by Pastor Lee Hemen October 21, 2007 AM The music known as “the blues” they say was born out of struggle and pain. If that is true, then King David was the one who invented “the blues,” because we discover in his music the struggle he endured and the pain it caused. I believe that is why so many can relate to David’s songs as found in the book of Psalms. They are at their core “the blues.” The Blues emerged here in America with African-American communities from their spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and also the rhymed English and Scots-Irish narrative ballads. The use of “blue notes,” notes sung or played at a lower pitch than those of the major scale, and the prominence of call-and-response repetitive patterns in the music and lyrics are indicative of “the blues.” David, in this little Psalm of his, teaches us several important things about life’s “blues.” Let’s discover them for ourselves this morning as we read the sinner’s song...

When People Want to Harm You -- Psalm 43 By Pastor Lee Hemen October 14, 2007 AM The question of why do bad things happen to good people has been around since the garden of Eden. Austrian psychiatrist Viktor Frankl was imprisoned by the Nazis during the Holocaust. Once set free, he wrote Man's Search For Meaning, which became a perennial bestseller. In it, Frankl shared an all-important lesson he had learned from his suffering: “There is nothing in the world, I venture to say, that would so effectively help one to survive even the worst conditions as the knowledge that there is a meaning in one's life.” Here in this passage of Scripture we find the writer asking why bad things are happening to him. Was there meaning to his life, when there were those who sought to murder him if they could? Let find out what he discovered shall we? READ: Psalm 43 What do you do when others seek your destruction? Do you fuss and fume, begin to draw up alliances with those you count as “friends,” ...

Psalm 23 – When God Is Our Shepherd October 7, 2007 AM By Pastor Lee Hemen Many folks in our day and age say they “believe in God,” but what that actually means for their lives tells the tale of what they actually believe for their lives. We can say a lot of things but just because we say them, does not necessarily mean we actually believe them. It is kind of like when you ask someone, “How are you today?” Most people will respond with the innocuous platitude of, “I’m fine.” What they say may not be actually how they feel nor what they truly believe. Kind of like when you say, “Man, I am dog-tired!” Well, how tired is a dog? How tired can a dog get? Are you actually saying that you are a mutt of some sort? Of course we realize that these are simply phrases people use to express themselves, and this brings me back to my opening point: Many folks in our day and age say they “believe in God,” but what that actually means for their lives tells the tale of what they actually believe for the...