If you are in our area on a Sunday morning, come and worship with us. If you are nowhere near Vinita, please say a prayer for us at 10:00 a.m., when our Sunday service begins.
One of Bernard Shaw's characters said, "It's easy to be respectable with nobody offering you a chance to be anything else."
Temptations visit all of us, and are the conflicting urges and drives that compel us to make choices between ideals and inclinations. The Devil is a symbol of our human tendency toward evil, and while I do not believe in the existence of a personal devil, I do believe all of us live in a state of tension between impulses for good and impulses for evil. God has endowed us with freedom of will. Therefore, we must make choices!
I suspect our culture and environment have as much to do with the way we handle temptation as does our character and temperament. For me, this means I must take care when I feel moved to be censorious about others. Not having experienced their temptations, I need to be more understanding of them as they struggle with their moral and ethical temptations.
With blessings and friendship,
Richard
A PEARL OF VALUE
"THE SIN OF THE WORLD EXISTS NOT BECAUSE OF A FEW PEOPLE ARE SPECTACULARLY SINFUL, BUT BECAUSE MOST OF US ARE AS GOOD AS WE ARE AND NO BETTER."
WILLIAM TEMPLE, ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY
DR. JEFF FRANCIS WILL FILL THE PULPIT SUNDAY, FEB. 28. SARAH BRUCE IS WORSHIP ASST. JOYCE DISHMAN, ORGANIST
