Countryside Church of the Nazarene

06/05/2026

Proverbs 11:12 (KJV) - He that is void of wisdom despiseth his neighbour: but a man of understanding holdeth his peace.
You always will need your neighbor at some point; to pull you out of a ditch; to lend a hand when your two hands aren’t enough; to give you a heads up of bad weather coming, the list goes on and on. Neighbors are resources – seems cold to put it that way but it is true. Neighbors are also part of your happiness – celebrations are more fun when more people are involved, and sometimes you just need a friend. God knows this, so God holds us accountable when it comes to interacting with our neighbors. The understanding and wisdom that leads us to love and care for our neighbors is God’s wisdom, as all love-based wisdom is. Peace in our lives comes from embracing God’s wisdom and embracing love.
People will let you down. You neighbor will really annoy you. Hold your peace and you will know peace. Yes, they let you down – they are human. Like you are. For every time you bit your tongue and did not say the harsh words you were holding back, they may have done the same for you. We need each other and any wisdom that does not highlight that fact is not wisdom, but arrogance. Pride goes before the fall. So, curb your pride, hold your tongue, and don’t despise anyone. Then your heart will not be corrupted by hatred and arrogance. Humility is the best vaccination for heart disease there is and your heart will be happier the truer it is towards each other. Blessings upon you.

05/29/2026

Ecclesiastes 7:14 (KJV) - All things have I seen in the days of my vanity: there is a just man that perisheth in his righteousness, and there is a wicked man that prolongeth his life in his wickedness.
The author of Ecclesiastes pursued every sort “success” the world craves and found it all vanity. Everything done that is not pursuant of the Lord’s will is meaningless and ultimately empty. And then on top of that you have to face an unfair world where it seems the good die young and the wicked seem to persist. Except they don’t, persist that is. I have the benefit of living a long life and I have seen the powerful cast down, again and again. When I was younger it seemed like they hung around power forever, but I did not have the perspective to see that their time was numbered. For when you do evil, you have to have evil people around you, supporting you in your pursuits. Their evil will not stop at you – that is, if they have given themselves over to evil, then their evil will eventually turn its gaze upon you, and you will fall.
It’s all meaningless UNLESS you keep God in mind always. Yes, it seems like people sometimes get away with murder, but when you know God and God’s hatred for injustice, well, you pray for the evildoers, that they will meet justice in this earth, and repent and change, before God has to administer final justice. It’s all meaningless, vanity, unless you have faith that the author of all good can make things right. And that you also have grace for those who have fallen for God loves them as he loves you, and wants, desperately, for brothers and sisters to love each other. The ONLY thing making our lives worthwhile, making them mean something, is love, as God loves. It sets the wrong right and makes the meaningless existence mean something, eternally. Blessings upon you.

05/27/2026

Proverbs 11:11 (KJV) - By the blessing of the upright the city is exalted: but it is overthrown by the mouth of the wicked.
If you are a student of history, an unsettling truth settles over you – every civilization falls at some point. You might think that your civilization is immune, but history tells a far different story. Cities, civilizations, rise with good leadership but are eventually taken over by the charlatans, the con artists, the self-promoters. They focus upon self-promotion to the detriment of all true proving them wrong, and will enforce their “truth” upon everyone else until all the foundations of civilization are eroded and destroyed, and so falls the city. Now, not every city founder is exemplary. All of them are human and subject to human error and sin. But the upright, though not as righteous as they might hope, have in their desire to follow God’s plan, the seeds to plant that grow and prosper a people.
The wicked just slash and burn and don’t care about governance other than to steal as much of the peoples’ treasure as they can before their inevitable end. The righteous build, the unrighteous tear down for they care not about God nor about love. Oh, they can parrot the words love, but they cannot live into them. By their fruit they are known. The upright admit when their fruit has gone bad, and will replant and rebuild in full site of others. The wicked will blame others, usually imaginary enemies, for the fruit going bad and never accept responsibility. They cannot build a civilization, trust, or love, for their love of power is the only love they allow in their lives. Power not given in sacrifice to help others is inevitably power that twists inward and destroys. So, watch your leaders. Do they speak words of love yet spread seeds of dissension or do they act in love in all things and let their actions speak for themselves. Blessings upon you.

05/26/2026

Ecclesiastes 7:14 (KJV) - In the day of prosperity be joyful, but in the day of adversity consider: God also hath set the one over against the other, to the end that man should find nothing after him.
I am often reminded of the passage where the Israelites enter into the promised land. Next to the valley they passed through lay two mountains. On one mountain, half of the tribes spoke of the blessings that came from following the Lord, and on the other, half spoke of the curses that came from not following the Lord. It is classically seen as a “carrot and stick” argument, follow the Lord and good will happen, don’t follow the Lord and bad will happen. They are not wrong, but it always seemed like there was more to it than that to me. In a fallen world, no blessing comes without a small curse, and no curse comes without a small blessing (“in every cloud there is a silver lining”).
I not sure God ordains this as much as it is a condition of an imperfect world, but I don’t think that God can do anything that is not good. Whereas we humans can do nothing that is perfectly good. When we find our imperfections, it is daunting, humiliating, shameful, often. But it is also an opportunity. In every flaw we can reconnect to God, for it’s in failure that we see the truth of our flaws and the beauty of God, along with God’s amazing mercy. We should be joyful in the good times fully receiving the gifts God has showered upon us, yes. But it’s in those times where good times and bad times seem to intersperse that we can really connect to God in our humility and God’s infinite grace. We can truly see God only where our experience falls short, where we fall short. May God bless you.

05/24/2026

05/19/2026

Proverbs 11:10 (KJV) - When it goeth well with the righteous, the city rejoiceth: and when the wicked perish, there is shouting.
You can learn a lot about people when you look at what, and who, they are celebrating. We are called to love everyone, but who we celebrate tells others where our hearts are, and possibly where our minds are. People can be fooled. There are people who have been celebrated in my lifetime who have done tremendous evil in this world. I still have to love them, because God loves them, but I don’t have to celebrate them. When I was younger, I had idols, intellectual idols who I admired greatly. Then, I read histories about their lives, and one by one I was crushed to find out that behind some truly beautiful spoken and written words by these towering intellects lay some truly awful human beings. It shattered my illusions. I no longer celebrate human beings because many of them have a public relations propaganda machine shouting their praises so loud and so long that if you are not paying attention, you will fall prey to believing and celebrating some truly awful lives.
There are people I love deeply but I truly only trust God, for all of us, including me, fall short of the glory of God. The righteous are those who walk so closely to God, follow God’s will so faithfully, that when you see them, you see the work of God in this world. You see God. So we need to celebrate the righteousness, celebrate God, for if the actions you are celebrating are truly righteous, the person who performs them will insist you glorify God, not them. The unrighteous will not do this. Their PR machine will keep churning away after death, at least until the money runs out. There are professional mourners – even in the Bible we see this – who shout and wail to convince people that a giant walked among us and we are lost without them. Nonsense. The righteous want quiet affirmation of love and laughter and devotion to God above all. They are not acclaimed but they are eternal and eternally loved. Blessings upon you.

05/08/2026

Ecclesiastes 7:13 (KJV) - Consider the work of God: for who can make that straight, which he hath made crooked?
When I was younger there was a phrase that was very common, “Don’t try to fight the tide.” It was just a lived wisdom that said some things are bigger than you and you just need to learn to live with them, because you are not going to change them. It seems like phrases like this have somewhat fallen out of favor. People propose more and more outlandish things that have no chance of succeeding. Billions of dollars are wasted chasing pipe dreams (another old phrase). People blame humanity for every evil on the planet but then demand that humans “fix” the problems. No matter that our history is full of misguided attempts to fix something only to make it worse. Sometimes I just want to yell, “STOP!”
But that is me just wanting to direct people like the people I am deriding want to direct people. So, take a breath. Really, relax, and watch for a while. God will move and correction will come if we just wait. For years I watched as the news breathlessly reported that the everglades were being taken over by Burmese Pythons, a species mistakenly placed there by accidents and ignorance. Everything humans attempted did not solve the problem of them multiplying and wiping out native species. Yet, some of those species survived, and learned. The pythons are starting to decline as of the date of this writing, not because of the efforts of man, but because the nature God create rebalances itself. Coyotes have learned to bite the heads off of snakes that are much larger than they are. Raccoons have evolved to avoid ambushes and to raid nests for eggs. Other native species have adapted, including native snakes, and the pythons are starting to decline. They may never be wiped out, but nature is coming back in balance. The more we try to change things, the more God moves to bring it back into balance. So, watch, and learn, from God. Blessings upon you.

05/05/2026

Proverbs 11:9 (KJV) - An hypocrite with his mouth destroyeth his neighbour: but through knowledge shall the just be delivered.
We have been given frightening power in our power of speech, of communication. The Bible warns us over and over about not using that power wisely or sparingly. Reputations are destroyed right and left by people who are careless with their words about others, but who would attack you violently should you mischaracterize their actions. Hypocrites can never stand the tests that they hold other people to and are blind to their own inconsistency. To live an abundant life, as God promised, requires us to apply ourselves consistently and persistently, with a self-awareness that leads us to repent when we err. The hypocrite cannot see their own foulness; cannot smell how rotten they are.
The Bible tells us to rebuke gently but be warned the unaware, the self-anointed, will try to kill you for telling the truth. For they fear the truth that unseats them from the center of their universe. It’s all right, in their minds, to “joke” and “tease” in ways that hurt and smear other people. For the hypocrite sees themselves as the central character of their universe and we all are just comic sidekicks that they can kick around “in fun.” Watch carefully what you say and watch even more carefully what others say. From what comes out of their mouths you see what is in their hearts. Careless words that destroy are not anointed words, healing words, loving words. Words blessed by God provide comfort, relief, correction, direction. All other words are suspect and you should be suspicious of them, particularly when you catch them coming out of your own mouth. Sometimes we cannot see the poison that lurks within us until we speak it. Then we need to fall before the Spirit and ask God to drive hypocrisy out of our own hearts before it destroys us. May God bless you with discernment in your speech.

05/01/2026

Ecclesiastes 7:12 (KJV) - For wisdom is a defence, and money is a defence: but the excellency of knowledge is, that wisdom giveth life to them that have it.
It is probably best to have BOTH wisdom and resources, but if you have to choose in life between the two, it’s best to invest in wisdom. Perhaps you have met someone in life who is a toady to the powerful. They will slavishly repeat whatever the boss says, no matter how inconsistent or wrong it is. They are the boss’s enforcer, blindly enforcing whatever rules that the powers lay down. In a way it is hard to blame them – their resources depend on the boss’s keeping them in their positions so they will do whatever the boss’s demand, no matter how short-sighted they are. They choose money. The problem is that life demands wisdom. Eventually the short-sightedness of the powers to be leads to their downfall and all their accomplices fall with them.
Life comes at us fast and uneven. The powerful always fall, though there are some powerful families and entities that have lasted generations, they inevitably lapse into worshiping money instead of wisdom. Wisdom is harder. Money is easy to count and keep score. The problem is that life will demand wisdom and if you do not invest in it, you are lost. No amount of money can save you. Which is why the wisdom of God, of eternal love, is the highest form of wisdom we must seek. Worldly wisdom is good. It can help you face the day-to-day challenges, but at some point, you will come up against something that requires wisdom beyond this world’s. Eternal life demands an eternal wisdom, and your life here allows you to invest in the wisdom of God, which confounds the wise of this world. Invest in knowing God and knowledge you never imagined will unlock for you and lead you into the next life a victor. Blessings upon you.