frankod's blog

by Guest Blogger Tracy Holstein

I love the story of Hannah in the Bible. I love the story so much that my husband and I named our second daughter Hannah—partly for the story and partly for the meaning of the name—“God is Gracious”.     MORE

By guest blogger: Tracy Holstein

The members of the Children’s Ministry Team, including myself, have been waiting for this sermon series for years. You see, we know that we can put the best K-Five Worship together, using the most current curriculum on the market; rehearse every week so we know all of our lines; incorporate funny props into the large group lesson to get the kids attention; and deliver a message that is age-appropriate, relevant and practical. But if faith development is not going on at home to reiterate what we teach here—or to put it differently—if what WE are doing here is not reiterating the faith development that should be going on at home—then many children are not benefiting from our efforts. Many children are being entertained for an hour and a half every week and the core values and character development for which we are striving is being lost on a generation because the people who have the most spiritual influence on them—parents and family—are not holding up their end of the deal.    MORE

(by guest blogger: David Cady)

(Read 1 Corinthians 9:24-27)

Last week, I bought a six-pack at the grocery store. Now that I have your attention, let me clarify—it was a six-pack of yogurt! After bringing it home, I placed the yogurt containers inside the refrigerator. The next day, my wife, Amy, asked me why all six of the yogurt containers were opened—not eaten, just opened. Immediately, I thought of our six year-old son, Clay. No doubt he had been searching for a specific flavor and opened them all until he found the one he wanted. In my investigative questioning of my son he denied any wrong doing. I believed him.      MORE

(by guest blogger: Tracy Holstein)

Do you believe that God can take something ordinary and make it extraordinary? It was an ordinary inquiry—a natural question that my son asked me. I had asked it myself of different people I’d seen standing beside the road. You know the ones with a sign that reads, “Will work for food” or “Homeless”.     MORE   

(by guest blogger: David Cady)

There is a natural tendency to want the approval of others. Am I good enough? Do they like me? Does anyone notice what I am doing? In Galatians 1:10, the Apostle Paul called this “winning the approval of men.” He then contrasts that kind of living with desiring the approval of God. When we seek God’s approval in our lives we become acutely aware of the unrighteousness in and long to please God in thought, word, and deed.   MORE

(by guest blogger: Annette Pagura)

If I said, “Snow storm coming…”, I think there would be a collective groan. I thought about sharing an acronym for SNOW I came up with while my car was a sled on Interstate 270 last week—Sloppy Nasty Obstinate Weather. Then I remembered Pastor Dave Cady’s message at the February Emmaus gathering about “grumbling” and instead sat in my car—in the garage after I arrived safely home—and said a prayer of thanksgiving. MORE

Are you at the point where you have grown so dependent on technology—the speed of your personal computer, the response time of your cell phone, the capacity of your iPod digital music player or your DVR (digital video recorder), the shutter speed or storage card size of your digital camera, the detail of the graphics on your video gaming system, the availability of on-demand entertainment, etc., etc., etc.—that when these devices fail to operate as “normally” expected, you become frustrated or incapacitated to get your work accomplished?  MORE