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Everyone knows what a snail looks like, but here is something you might not have known about a snail. They are made with teeth on their tongues! A well-known scientist examined a snail’s tongue under a microscope and counted 30,000 teeth. Usually the snail keeps his tongue rolled up like a ribbon. But when needed, it sticks it out and the teeth do their damage.

Sometimes people have teeth on their tongues, too, that can snap, bite, and inflict damage. Colossians 4:6 tells us to “let your speech always be with grace, seasoned with salt, that you may know how you ought to answer each one.” Our speech must always be with grace. Not sometimes, but always!

And we shouldn’t be boring. The phrase “seasoned with salt” specifically refers to salt’s power, not as a preservative, but as a seasoning. Salt keeps food from tasting bland or insipid. It makes a dish flavorful and enjoyable.

That’s the way our talk should be. Don’t be biting or boring in your conversations today. Be edifying and interesting, knowing how to answer each one.

May God take control of our tongues. Guard your lips from telling lies. Speak the truth in love!

Here is your copy of firstIMPRESSIONS, Volume 8.28. Live for God, on purpose, letting every word you say be edifying, uplifting and encouraging to those you meet.

Walking in the Blessing of God

It doesn’t matter where you are – even in the company of a crowd of unknown people – if you happen to sneeze, at least one person, if not many, will be sure to say to you, “God bless you!” I understand that doing this comes from an old superstition that when you sneezed, you were very near death, and that someone would say “God bless you” in order to “keep the devil away from you,” thus ensuring your safety.

While the superstitions of yesteryear may have passed, the “God bless you’s” still remain to this day. Everyone wants to be blessed, and especially they want to be blessed by the Lord. People who don’t even claim to “be religious” nonetheless want God to bless them! And, as believers in Christ, we not only desire to be blessed by God – we often believe that it is our right to be blessed!

The truth of the matter, though, is that in order to walk in the blessings of the Lord, you must live in obedience to the Lord! You can’t conduct your way of life in disregard to the will of the Lord and still expect that His blessing will rest upon you.

Deuteronomy 28:2 tells us that “all these blessings will come upon you and accompany you if you obey the LORD your God.” This Sunday I want to share three key ingredients for you life if you desire to be blessed by God. Be sure to join us this Lord’s day for our message “God Bless You!”

Taking God Seriously

by Rick Ezell

“But godliness with contentment is great gain. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs. But you, man of God, flee from all this, and pursue righteousness, godliness...” (1 Timothy 6:6, 10-11 NIV).

During the Exodus, the ancient Hebrews had escaped the slavery and punishment of Egyptian rule. On their journey home to Israel they witnessed the miracle of God parting the water at the Red Sea that brought doom to their Egyptian pursuers. These people had everything. God guided them with a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. God’s leader, Moses, was out in front of them. God provided nourishment with manna from heaven and water from the rock. They were surrounded by unparalleled privileges. God’s presence was constant. His workings were evident. In fact, one would think that these people would be the epitome of godliness, if for no other reason than out of gratitude for what God had done for them. But they were not. The apostle Paul wrote of these people, “Nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of them; their bodies were scattered over the desert” (1 Cor. 10:5 NIV). As they journeyed from Egypt they played games with their lives and with their God.

That is dangerous business.

What happened to these potential saints? What caused their demise? Paul, again, surmises their tragedy and demise, “The people sat down to eat and drink, and stood up to play” (1 Cor. 10:7 NASB), or, “indulge in pagan revelry” (1 Cor. 10:7 NIV). It sounded like a fraternity party. The supernatural became commonplace. God-talk abounded. But they lacked a reverence and awe for God. They became callused to the divine. They became nonchalant in their values. They forgot their heritage. Apathy ran rampant. They did not mean business with God. The relationship with him became a farce.

Sound familiar? Never in the history of the world has one country been so blessed. We are inundated with churches, Christian radio and television, Christian magazines and books, Christian schools, Christian conferences and seminars. Never has the potential for religious instruction been so paramount. Our churches should be overflowing with godly men and women. Are they? All too often, we walk down the same paths of carnality as these ancient Hebrews. We make light of what we should honor. We wink at what we should weep about. We play with what we should take quite seriously.

The children of Israel serve as a warning to every believer. Heed the warning. Take God seriously.

as seen in Rick Ezell’s “One Minute Uplift” weekly email devotional of July 3, 2008. Dr. Ezell is pastor of First Baptist Church in Greer, South Carolina.

From Facebook to Faithbook

by Dan Johnson

“Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, ‘Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ?’ They came out of the town and made their way toward him.” – John 4:28-30

Do you have a Facebook page? It’s a well-known website that allows people to upload photos, biography and contact information to network with other people. Mark Zuckerberg founded this social utility site while attending Harvard in 2004. Website membership was initially limited to Harvard students, but continued to expand to other colleges. Now students and non-students around the world connect to each other daily. Facebook had over 70 million visits to its site in April of 2008.

I couldn’t help but notice how friendships are rekindled and created on social networking sites and wondered if Christ followers might not learn something from this. Technology relies on the same old human behaviors to succeed. But having faith requires divine intervention for us to understand our need for God, and being faithful isn’t always easy in the offline world. Our faith spreads the old-fashioned way, one person reaching out to one person at a time.

There are similarities between our online lives and our “real” ones. To make friends online, we have to reach out. It’s as simple as clicking a button and requesting that someone be our “friend.” When we make new friends online, we get exposed to their ideas about life, their likes and dislikes; we get to know them. What’s really amazing is that we get to view their other friends who are listed there.

The real question is who is on our “Friends” list? Does it include all kinds of people or just folks who look, act and talk like us? I’ve been wondering lately what Jesus’ Facebook page would look like. We read about how He talked to women in a culture where open social contact with the opposite sex wasn’t allowed. He hung out with leaders who became His followers. He called common people to greatness. There was diversity in His crowd of followers and then unity in mission.

Today is a great day to look down the street and reconnect with some local friends and neighbors. It may also be the time to search out a forgotten friend. There’s a whole world out there waiting to be invited as a friend.

as seen in “Today’s HomeWord,” a daily devotional with Jim Burns. Visit them online at www.homeword.com

Don’t Settle for Second Best

by Alan Smith

The story is told of a professor who stood before his class of 20 senior organic biology students, about to hand out the final exam.

“I want to say that it’s been a pleasure teaching you this semester. I know you’ve all worked extremely hard and many of you are off to medical school after summer. So that no one gets their GPA messed up because they might have been celebrating a bit too much this week, anyone who would like to opt out of the final exam today will receive a “B” for the course.”

There was much rejoicing amongst the class as students got up, passed by the professor to thank him and sign out on his offer. As the last taker left the room, the professor looked out over the handful of remaining students and asked, “Anyone else? This is your last chance.” One final student rose up and took the offer.

The professor closed the door and took attendance of those students remaining. “I’m glad to see you believe in yourself.” he said. “You all have “A’s.”

Too often, we’re content to settle for second best. A lot of students would be thrilled to settle for a “B” ("That’s better than I usually get.” “That’s doing better than most of the others I know."). And most students, I think, would rather get a “B” with little time spent studying, than to make the effort it takes to get an “A”.

A lot of us are content to settle for second best in our spiritual lives as well. We’re close to God (at least closer than many people we know), but we aren’t willing to take the time and the effort to have the kind of relationship we know God wants us to have.

The biggest problem with settling for second best is that we miss out on that which is best.

“As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, ‘Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!’ ’martha, Martha,’ the Lord answered, ‘you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.’ ” (Luke 10:42)

What Martha was doing was good (second best, even), but “Mary has chosen what is better.” May we always seek out and choose “what is better” in our relationship with God!

This article by Alan Smith, Senior Pastor of the Helen Street Church of Christ in Fayetteville, North Carolina. You can visit his site at http://www.TFTD-online.com

The Lesson of the Hummingbirds

Leonard Sweet writes of being with environmentalist/gardener Marie Aull one day as they stood at her window watching what “appeared to be the beginnings of hummingbird wards. One hummer in particular was spending so much time and energy keeping other hummers away from the feeder Marie had set up, he had little time to feed himself. I was appalled! But Marie made me look closer. The hummers that were being driven away were much smaller and wobblier than the one I thought was ‘protecting’ his territory; in fact, they were babies in the midst of a very important lesson. In front of that window was not a hummingbird version of ‘king-of-the-hill,’ but a parent who was buzzing its newborns away from the plastic feeder and toward real flowers. Here was a father who did not want any of his children to become dependent on any artificial feeder, no matter how pretty.

“Isn’t that what’s happened to our society? We’ve come so used to being ‘fed on demand’ through quick fixes ... that we’ve forgotten it’s the hard knocks in life, those character-building moments, that help us make it through with inner peace and joy intact.

Children’s Bible in a Nutshell

A child was told to write a book report on the entire Bible.

In the beginning, which occurred near the start, there was nothing but God, darkness, and some gas. The Bible says, “The Lord thy God is one,” but I think He must be a lot older than that. Anyway, God said, “Give me a light!” and someone did. Then God made the world. He split the Adam and made Eve. Adam and Eve were naked, but they weren’t embarrassed because mirrors hadn’t been invented yet. Adam and Eve disobeyed God by eating one bad apple, so they were driven from the Garden of Eden. Not sure what they were driven in though, because they didn’t have cars.

Adam and Eve had a son, Cain, who hated his brother as long as he was Abel. Pretty soon all of the early people died off, except for Methuselah, who lived to be like a million or something. One of the next important people was Noah, who was a good guy, but one of his kids was kind of a Ham. Noah built a large boat and put his family and some animals on it. He asked some other people to join him, but they said they would have to take a rain check. After Noah came Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Jacob was more famous than his brother, Esau, because Esau sold Jacob his birthmark in exchange for some pot roast. Jacob had a son named Joseph who wore a really loud sports coat.

Another important Bible guy is Moses, whose real name was Charlton Heston. Moses led the Israel Lights out of Egypt and away from the evil Pharaoh after God sent ten plagues on Pharaoh’s people. These plagues included frogs, mice, lice, bowels, and no cable. God fed the Israel Lights every day with manicotti. Then he gave them His Top Ten Commandments. These include don’t lie, cheat, smoke, dance, or covet your neighbor’s stuff. Oh, yeah, I just thought of one more: Humor thy father and thy mother.

One of Moses’ best helpers was Joshua who was the first Bible guy to use spies. Joshua fought the battle of Geritol and the fence fell over on the town. After Joshua came David. He got to be king by killing a giant with a slingshot. He had a son named Solomon who had about 300 wives and 500 porcupines. My teacher says he was wise, but that doesn’t sound very wise to me.

After Solomon there were a bunch of major league prophets. One of these was Jonah, who was swallowed by a big whale and then barfed upon the shore. There were also some minor league prophets, but I guess we don’t have to worry about them.

After the Old Testament came the New Testament. Jesus is the star of The New Testament. He was born in Bethlehem in a barn. (I wish I had been born in a barn, too, because my mom is always saying to me, “Close the door! Were you born in a barn?” It would be nice to say, “As a matter of fact, I was.'') During His life, Jesus had many arguments with sinners like the Pharisees and the Republicans. Jesus also had twelve opossums. The worst one was Judas Asparagus. Judas was so evil that they named a terrible vegetable after him.

Jesus was a great man. He healed many leopards and even preached to some Germans on the Mount. But the Republicans and all those guys put Jesus on trial before Pontius the Pilot. Pilot didn’t stick up for Jesus. He just washed his hands instead. Anyways, Jesus died for our sins, then came back to life again. He went up to Heaven but will be back at the end of the Aluminum. His return is foretold in the book of Revolution.

The Last Impression

A priest and a pastor from two local churches were standing by the side of the road, pounding a sign into the ground that read:

    “The End is Near!
      Turn Yourself Around Now
       Before It’s Too Late!”

As a car sped past them, the driver yelled, “Leave us alone, you religious nuts!”

From the curve they heard screeching tires and a big splash.

The priest turns to the pastor and asks, “Do you think maybe the sign should just say ‘Bridge Out’?”

What a beautiful summer we are having here in Delaware! The weather has been delightful, but more importantly, the Lord has been doing great things in our services here at WFA! We would love to have you join with us and worship together this week! If you are in the north Delaware area, come see what the Lord will do in your life this Sunday as we lift up Jesus’ name here at WFA!