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The righteous person! – Psalm 1 By Pastor Lee Hemen June 21, 2026 Many base their entire lives on their feelings. Emotionalism will get people into trouble if it isn’t tempered by rationality. The one thing my dad taught me was to rationally think things through, whether it was fixing something, doing a job, or my school work. Sadly, much of the church today is influenced irrationality. Colleges, the media, and politicians have all sold their souls on the altar of selfish emotionalism in order to gain an audience. Morality today is often dictated by how it makes someone feel so personal sin is regarded in the same way. The Psalmist teaches us that the righteous person does not live their life this way. The Christian is to live their life by their faith in Jesus and his teachings not their feelings or how we think he might have felt. Feeling good or bad about something does not make it righteous. Believers are to live holy lives. Our foundation is not in people, feelings, or what makes ...

Who do you know? – Matthew 7:21-23 By Pastor Lee Hemen June 15, 2025 x There are those who think they are Christian because they were born in America; there are those who think they are Christian because they are nice people and do nice things; and there are those who think they are Christian because they have a relative who was a believer, a pastor, or a deacon in a church -- yet, none of these beliefs makes one a Christian! And like my father used to say, “It’s not who you think you know, it’s who you actually are that matters.” Jesus understood this as well. Jesus knew that there were those in the crowd that day and perhaps his own disciples who thought that those who expressed piety or those who regularly observed all the festivals, ate the right foods, and kept their selves pure were God’s people. Nothing could have been further from the truth. Jesus knew that even being part of the High Priest’s family did not guarantee your relationship with God! We discover here that the better...

Fatherly Advice - Proverbs 22:6  By Pastor Lee Hemen June 12, 2022 Father’s Day is coming up real soon and later in the year, on September 11, 2022, the first Sunday after Labor Day we will celebrate National Grandparents Day. Of course, we just celebrated Mother’s Day. When I was younger, like a lot of kids, I wondered out loud when there would be a national celebration for kids, my father replied that “It’s when schools begins in the fall.” Some would say, “Every day is Kid’s Day.” And perhaps it is. We live in a day and age where children have become almost idolatry for some families. Here’s what I mean: Far too much emphasis is placed on how to make children happy and little is spent on what truly makes a child self-sufficient. Children today are often used by “experts” as educational and political experiments for indoctrination. Yet the Bible speaks very plainly on what truly constitutes a well rounded child rearing. What most families lack today in raising godly kids is consi...

The Joy of a Father’s Heart By Pastor Lee Hemen December 12, 2021 I will enter His gates with thanksgiving in my heart; I will enter His courts with praise! I will say this is the day the Lord has made; I will rejoice for He has made me glad! The JOY of the Lord is my strength; it has to be especially now. This is both the happiest day and the saddest day of my life! But as you can see, I think I will focus on the happier part! Oh Lord, my Yahweh thank You for being the Lord You are. Thank You for my daughter, Miriam and of course Yoseph! A father knows this day will come but he never realizes just how fast it does come. Your daughter is one day playing with your beard, learning to walk, learning the Psalms and singing them sweetly around the house, and the next… she has growing into a fine young woman! Can it be that she is fourteen now? They grow up so fast! This last year she has learned to cook, sew, keep a household, and to manage affairs well like a good Jewish woman should. Just...

Ramblings from Retirement – How we handle hurt says a lot By Retired Pastor Lee Hemen August 5, 2021 I liked a TV series from PBS and the BBC that was called Downton Abby. In it one of the characters, Tom, tells another character Lady Mary that “being hurt is part of being alive.” He is correct and herein is a simple truth that many in our day and age have forgotten that life consists of a series of being hurt yet how we handle the hurt tells a lot about who we are as a person. Many try to escape being hurt at all and this is simply impossible. People get hurt. People die. People get sick. We are not guaranteed a perfect life, no one is and no one in all of history has enjoyed a perfect life except perhaps Jesus and he also suffered hurt in his life. The writer of Ecclesiastes wrote that “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven: a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to te...

 Ramblings from Retirement – Real Dads By Retired Pastor Lee Hemen June 21, 2021 My father was one of those quiet dads that didn’t say much but when he did you usually listened. My older siblings had a hard time with this which I could never figure out. However we all knew that if Dad said, “don’t” it was don’t, if he said, “yes” it was yes, and the same with his “no”. No was no and we didn’t dare go ask Mom. My father had advice he would offer up to us once in a while that I kind of tucked away. He would tell us that “Nothing in life is free.” Meaning that there is always a “catch” and we needed to be aware of this fact. Another was similar when he would remind us that the “Government never gives you something for nothing.” He would also remind us that “Freedoms are easily lost but hard to regain.” This last one I did not understand until later in life. He would offer up humorous ones as well, like “Do not be so open minded that you let your brains fall out of your head” and that ...

Ramblings from Retirement – Lost! By Retired Pastor Lee Hemen May 10, 2021 Have ever been lost or have you had a child get lost? I’ve had both happen to me. When I was little, about 3 years old, my family was visiting the downtown area of the small town we lived near. They met another family that they knew and began talking to them and as they did my father reached over and placed me on the hood of a nearby car. No one thought anything about this in that era because cars were made a lot sturdier and out of sheet metal. It was a sunny spring day, the car hood was warm and I fell asleep. Waking up a short time later I realized that my family was nowhere to be seen. About this time a policeman came walking by and asked me if I was lost and where my family was. We were taught to trust any policeman. Shortly my family came running around the corner; my father first, then my brother, sister and mom. Of course they asked me where I had wandered off to but then realized that they were the ones...

Ramblings from Retirement – Get Dressed! By Retired Pastor Lee Hemen April 9, 2021 Man it can be tough to try and get kids dressed, ready, and out the door on time. It can be especially if one of them is a preteenager (tweener) who moves at the pace of a snail or if one is so concerned about what she wears that it is impossible for her to make any decisions. Then there are the arguments about “why” “how come” and “where are we going”. I remember well when my father would come and tell us three kids to “Get dressed and ready to go. You’ve got five minutes!” My brother would grumble around bumping into things and looking for something clean to wear, my sister would gripe about that she didn’t have anything to wear, and I would just hop out of bed and get dressed and eat breakfast before the other two were dressed. I loved getting up and going places and you did not have to ask me twice. In Luke’s gospel he relates that Jesus told the crowds “Be dressed ready for service and keep your lam...

Christ’s church is to be unified! – Ephesians 4:1-6 By Pastor Lee Hemen March 15, 2020 As a family we had one another’s back so-to-speak. Even though my brother and I would often try to wrestle one another to the death, tease, and bug each other we still stood up for and protected one another above anyone else. It was a matter of family unity. Families protect one another. There is a false notion that church unity means that if you disagree with one another about something then you are not in the will of God, nothing could be further from the truth. As the body of Christ we are his family, brothers and sisters in the Lord trying our best to do his work and will in a sinful world. Unity does not mean we agree on everything but that we protect, defend, and encourage each other in the Lord! How then is Christ’s church to be unified? I’m glad you asked… READ: Ephesians 4:1-6 Jesus and his disciples did not agree on everything but they were unified in him, except one who later betrayed him...

Ask! - Matthew 7:7-11 By Pastor Lee Hemen May 19, 2019 Most parents want their children to have the best there is in life even if it means they sacrifice for themselves. Good parents do that, however, some parents can focus so much on getting their children everything that they fail their kids and make them into self-absorbed and selfish individuals. We live in a nation of abundance and even the poorest among us, including the homeless, live better than many in other nations. We have become a nation of receivers rather than givers. The problem is we have taught our children and society to ask for the wrong things in life. We ask so much that we have become so self-absorbed that even our faith has morphed into a “what’s in it for me” attitude instead of one of humility and service. Jesus addresses the notion of asking. There is nothing wrong with asking as long as we know what we are supposed to ask for and how we are supposed to ask. Let’s discover what Jesus taught his listeners...

Jesus the baptized – Matthew 3:13-17 By Pastor Lee Hemen January 27, 2019 Just because you feel empathy for someone doesn’t mean you have actually done anything for them and yet there are those today who actually think that feeling something for someone is just as valid as actually doing something. Nothing could be further from the truth. James would remind us by asking, “Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, ‘Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed,’ but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? (James 2:15-16 NIV)” He would say that such faith is “dead” if it is not accompanied by some kind of action. James was not arguing about good deeds saving someone but rather what demonstrated faith in a person’s life. Baptism did not “save” Jesus but demonstrated his faith to the world. Here in these verses we find the Messiah coming to the Jordan River to be baptized by John his cousin. There have been all kinds of speculat...

Father’s Day – Ephesians 6:4; Hebrews 12:7-12 By Pastor Lee Hemen June 17, 2018 Did you have a good father? I had a pretty good dad. He took us fishing, camping, and spent as much time with us as he could. He taught us to be moral, believe in God, and what marital devotion was all about. I still can remember him showing us boys how to cast a salmon egg just right in order to catch the bigger trout in the river. I also remember he was firm on his word and discipline. Sometimes children can think their parents are unfair or that they do not understand but what I have learned is that parents, especially fathers, do understand and that is why they often have to take the firm stand they do. Too many fathers in our day are AOL (absent without leave) either physically or emotionally or both. Proverbs reminds us that “Discipline your son, and he will give you peace; he will bring delight to your soul. Where there is no revelation, the people cast off restraint; but blessed is he who keeps the ...

Malachi 1:1-5 – Being responsive! By Pastor Lee Hemen March 11, 2018 My Mom used to play mind games with us kids when we did something bad. A lot of mothers do this. Here’s what I mean: Right in the middle of scolding us over our bad behavior, she would innocently ask, “Don’t you love your dear old mother?” Or she would declare, “I work and I slave and what thanks do I get?” It was a form of psychological warfare to get a response from us and to have us think about the consequences of our actions. It’s called guilt. Malachi is kind of like my mother. His message is for God’s wayward children. Didn’t they love God? Didn’t God love them? If that were true, then why were they acting the way they did? Had they gotten spiritually soft? God’s chosen people had gotten so lackadaisical about their faith that they forget what their relationship to God meant! Malachi’s message from the Lord is to illicit a response from his people. Malachi’s message applies to us as much as it did for the spirit...