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According to Baptist Press, “On average, Americans gave 2.1 percent of their income to the church in 2017, a smaller share even than the 3.2 percent given during the Great Depression.” https://www.baptistpress.com/resource-library/news/ten-percent-drives-increase-in-giving-at-california-church/ Matthew…

For years a priceless vase sat in a French family’s attic, hidden in a shoebox. The family had received the heirloom as part of an inheritance, but stashed the boxes in the attic planning to deal with them later. When the owner opened the box, they were stunned by the shades of green, blue, yellow, and…

A driver in South Yorkshire picked up his new Ferrari 430 Scuderia from the dealer and started home. On a wet road, he lost control of the $258,000 auto sending it airborne, and burst into flames. After owning it for one hour, the high-performance supercar was reduced to a flaming twisted wreck. That…

An investor who put $10,000 in Amazon’s initial public offering in 1997 would have nearly $5 million today. Amazon’s valuation of $464 billion is now twice that of Wal-Mart. Putting some perspective on Amazon’s dominance, just 12 percent of the companies on the 1955 Fortune 500 list are still on the…

In 2016, 108-year-old Hazel Nilson watched the Cubs win the World Series for the second time in her lifetime. Since her birth in 1908, there have been two world wars, the conflicts in Korea, Vietnam and Iraq. She has been around long enough to see the first T.V. and now, she could have watched the Cubs…

In “Serving the Right Master,” C. Les Wesley writes, “In that moment, it was clear I had the two things of real value with me: my wife and my unborn daughter. Hurricane Katrina would not destroy anything that could not later be rebuilt. Oh, I would miss our possessions and the pictures that would be…

Flight attendants often find items that air passengers have left behind. A recent survey turned up “a live parrot, a box of dried fish, a toupee, handcuffs, and a glass eye.” --Jim L. Wilson and Rodger Russell. The Week, September 6, 2013 p. 4 Matthew 6:19 (ESV) (19) “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures…

Graham Greene, British writer said, “A treasure is to be valued for its own sake and not for what it will buy.” This is what Jesus had in mind when he told us to store up treasures in heaven. You won’t buy stuff with your treasure in heaven, you will value it for its own sake.--Jim L. Wilson and Rodger…

When Paul McCartney took the stage (twice) at the 2012 Grammy Awards, Twitter exploded not with praise but confusion. “Who is Paul McCartney?” became a trending topic on the micro-blogging site. --Time, February 27, 2012, p. 50 Illustration by Jim L. Wilson and Rodger Russell Paul McCartney, one of the…

Archaeologists discovered 42-foot tall statue of the grandfather of Tutankhamun, Amenhotep III, in Egypt on Tuesday April 26 2011. Amenhotep ruled Egypt’s New Kingdom in the 14th Century. His empire went from Syria in the north, to Nubia in the south, it was a vast and wealthy nation; the most powerful…

The parking garage at police headquarters in Ofunato, Japan has no room for cars. Instead, the garage is filled with hundreds of dented mental safes. Authorities believe most of them contain someone’s life saving which were swept out to sea by the recent tsunami. Officials say safes are still washing…

VALUE Authorities in India say they are considering charges of negligence against bank officials after termites destroyed millions of rupees. 10 million rupees ($222,000 US) in currency notes were stored in a steel chest at a bank in northern India. When a manager opened the reinforced room in an old…

By the way, that destruction isn’t just theoretical either. It’s real! Fear will kill you! During the Gulf War of 1991, Iraq launched a series of Scud missile attacks against Israel. Many Israeli citizens died as a result of these attacks. After the war was over, Israeli scientists analyzed the official…

Just a few weeks ago this scene flickered onto our laptops and flat screens. The people who witnessed it said it felt like an earthquake. It left this smoldering building in ruins. You remember what happened: Joseph Stack, in some kind of dispute with the IRS over his taxes took matters into his own…

By the way, did you know that it is your perspective that often leads you to be afraid? In the middle of summer, a woman was sitting in her car in a parking lot in Arkansas when she heard a loud bang and felt a sharp pain in the back of her head. She was sitting holding her hands behind her head when…

Kim Peek is the man who inspired the 1988 film Rain Man about an autistic savant with astounding mathematical skills. Peek is what doctors call a mega-savant. A savant possesses remarkable expertise in 1 to 3 subjects. Peek is an expert in at least 15, including history, sports, space, music, and geography.…

STEWARDSHIP We often hear it said, “You can’t take it with you.” Some folks, while they cannot take their wealth with them, continue to produce them for those left behind. This year the top earners among the already departed were fashion designer Yves Saint-Laurent, songwriters, Rodgers and Hammerstein,…

COLUMBUS, Ohio — A woman being driven around in a rented limousine pulled up at a coat store and announced she'd won the lottery and would pay for everyone's purchases, police said, but she ended up causing a riot when customers realized it was a hoax. Angry customers threw merchandise around and looted,…

TREASURE An Israeli woman, who has a fear of banks, claims she accidentally threw nearly one million dollars into the trash. The woman told reporters that she bought her elderly mother a new mattress as a surprise present. After she replaced the old one, she remembered that her life savings, nearly one…

TREASURE A jobless man from Argentina who found $50,000 buried in trash is being sued by the woman who claims she lost the fortune. Recent economic problems in the country have forced thousands of Argentines to earn their living by collecting and selling street garbage such as cardboard. 46-year-old…

(Monday A.M.) Just read your mother's email. I assume she wrote you, too; if not I'll fill you in. This is day 18 of the 20 days of Medicare paying the bill. She says the supplement insurance has kicked in now. PTL! Praying that our LORD will go against the giants tomorrow and give us in His mercy the…

A pioneer in scuba diving, he became fascinated by buried treasure in the ocean. After spending several years discovering treasure from a Spanish treasure fleet that sunk in 1715, he became fascinated with the much richer promise of a Spanish treasure fleet that sank in 1622 in the Florida Keys. So in…

A survey of 1000 American women found that most valued their favorite clothes more than sex, and would gladly abstain for 15 months in exchange for an entirely new wardrobe. Source: The Week, February 16, 2007

Culling the Army of God Purpose: To equip saints to be effective soldiers in the Lord's Army. Judges 7:2 And the Lord said to Gideon, “The people who are with you are too many for Me to give the Midianites into their hands, lest Israel claim glory for itself against Me, saying, ‘My own hand has saved…

Sometimes we can be so earthly minded that we are no heavenly good. There is an old legend of a swan and a crane. A beautiful swan alighted by the banks of the water in which a crane was wading about seeking snails. For a few moments the crane viewed the swan in stupid wonder and then inquired: “Where…