Manchaca Bible Fellowship

02/14/2026

Imagine being 40 years down the road looking back at our lives retrospectively. What will we see? How will our lives look to those around us? What IS a life well lived? How is it defined?

Is the life spent pursuing happiness through self-indulgence, taking care of myself, living out the “you do you” approach, will that be seen as a life well lived?

What about the life spent helping others? What about being known as the boss who took care of their employees, or the spouse who loved deeply, sacrificing as characteristic of love? What about being the son or daughter who cared for aging parents, treating them with respect and dignity?

Will we be remembered with respect? Or with shrug? Or not remembered at all?

Each one of us spends our life one day at a time. How we choose to spend it is a direct reflection of our values. So what do YOU value? The answer is seen in how you spent your week this past week. What will 40 years worth of this past week look like when you get there?

The Bible offers us roadmap for how to walk through this life in such a way that is commendable and worthy of respect. Come join us this Sunday as we consider the role of wisdom in living a life that is truly well lived by the only measure that truly matters.

01/24/2026

Due to the weather forecast, Church services for Sunday 1/25 will be held online only. Please contact me directly if you would like access to our online platform.

01/02/2026

How often have you heard someone say "Don't judge me!" This phrase has become commonplace enough to be said seriously, or in humor and all sorts of settings in between. The phrase itself echoes a comment from the Bible that is also commonly used by Christians and non Christians alike: Judge not lest you be judged.

Unfortunately people quoting this phrase inevitably stop there. They use this as if it were a definitive statement that nobody has the right to say someone else is wrong. Ever. The implication is that there is no standard for a person except their own, so don't try to apply any sort of external standard. Ever.

Yet the purpose of Jesus' statement isn't to deny any sort of universal external standard, but rather to warn against hypocrisy: "Matthew 7:2 (NASB95) —2 “For in the way you judge, you will be judged; and by your standard of measure, it will be measured to you."

Jesus warns that if we use a harsh standard with others around us, God will also hold us to an equally harsh standard of perfection, but by HIS standards!

"Don't judge me" is an appeal for everybody else to just hold their peace because we don't want to be criticized, we don't want anything that might appear to be the slightest bit corrective.

Necessarily that implies that we don't need correction, we have everything figured out to the very best possible potential, at least within the scope of whatever we are demanding not to be judged. The next time you may find yourself inclined to say "Don't judge me" remember that YOU are now setting a standard of non-judgment. Are you living according to that same standard? Are you willing, are you ABLE to forego ever criticizing anyone else? If so, let me ask you about American politics.

12/23/2025

As Christians celebrate Christmas we sing songs about the Angels and their message to Shepherds watching their flocks by night. We sing songs about the Magi bringing gifts. Yet how often do we pause to consider the significance of both of these accounts when taken together?

The New Testament gives two accounts of Jesus' birth: the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke. The first gives the account of the Magi following the star, the second that of the Angels speaking to shepherds. The very fact that we have two different accounts is important, because the Mosaic Law required a minimum of two concurring testimonies as a minimum requirement to determine if something was truthful. Here is the truth confirmed by both: Jesus is descended from royal lineage, and was born to be King of Israel.

Yet we cannot lose sight of the "who" in each story. The Angels give their message to Jews, shepherds in the region of Bethlehem, in Judea. The Star was a sign in the east, identified by the Magi, non-Jews from a different country, as indication that the Messiah was born, King of the Jews. Whether we say Messiah (Hebrew for anointed) Jesus, or Jesus Christ (Greek for anointed) either way we are talking about the one upon whom God had placed His Spirit, to deliver His people Israel, and to become the Savior for all mankind.

In two different ways, God announced the birth of His Servant, to two different audiences, with the same message: God's Salvation has come! For both the Jews AND for the nations!

Christmas is meant to be a time for joy for everyone, regardless of our ethnicity, regardless of our heritage, a joy from knowing that God desires peace with all of us and has sent His Son to bring that peace to earth. Joy to the world!

Merry Christmas!

11/13/2025

"Shhhhh, You can't tell anyone"

One of the hardest moral conundrums people face is when not to say something and when to speak up. Almost invariably that difficulty factor is increased by someone pressuring for silence, whether by appeals that they would suffer harm as a result, or by threats of retaliation. But the real question is who benefits from a code of silence and who suffers.

How should you and I navigate this difficult conundrum should we encounter it? Even more importantly, how can we train the young men and young women in our lives, those who are even more likely to be put in this conundrum, the wisdom to navigate this challenging situation well? Join us this Sunday as we seek wisdom and understanding on this and other challenges to managing our relationships in a healthy and loving manner.

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10/18/2025

We live in an era of fake news & deep fakes. These concerns are real and both parties in our nation have expressed concern about them. But that very concern implicitly highlights the absolute importance of truth. The truth describes, conforms to and corresponds with reality.

Pick any headline from the last decade and you are almost certain to hear an opposing assertion from the other side. One side makes a claim, the other side calls them a liar, either explicitly, or implicitly by making an alternative mutually exclusive claim.

Fake news isnt new, a generation ago it was called propaganda. The important question is how you and I deal with it. Are we truth seekers? Are we devoted enough to the truth that we will put in the effort over time to dig until we find the truth? If we aren't we are accepting a life of being manipulated by anyone willing to lie, and tacitly promoting a culture and society in which such deception is tolerated and even accepted as normal. Is that really how we want to live?

Please come join us this Sunday as we consider what happens if we don't take up the responsibility of being truth seekers.

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10/10/2025

Here the United States sits in yet another government shut down. We are here because in our two party system neither side can sit with one another and hold reasoned conversations long enough to work out ways through or past our respective differences. At least from outside congress and the senate, it appears as if all that happens is each side asserts the rectitude of their respective positions, and verbally eviscerates the other. Perhaps that is an unwarranted perception that is skewed by an echo chamber reinforced by media and algorithmic technology.

Yet that great divide that seems to dominate our American government only seems to echo similar fractures all the way down to the grassroots of America. So perhaps the best way to begin repairing this divide is for us at the grassroots to re-learn how to not just talk with one another, but how to disagree well. Even the closest of us will not agree on every single thing. So how can we disagree in such a way that preserves respect for our family, friends, neighbors, co-workers? How can we do this without devolving down to angry name calling, generalizations that mischaracterize, and demeaning comments that end productive conversations before they ever have the chance to be formed?

A good starting point can be found in the ancient book of Proverbs. Come join us this Sunday as we consider how wise men of 3 thousand years thought about this very same problem.

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10/02/2025

How people talk and how we choose to express different opinions of course changes over time, its part of that super annoying evolution of language.
As defined by Merriam Webster, Rhetoric is the skill of the effective use of speech.

When I was growing up, the culture I was a part of strongly encouraged young men and women in grade school and middle school to embrace a tool of rhetoric. The Rhetorical Question isn’t asked to acquire information. Its used to either imply that there is an obvious answer that is left unspoken, or to prompt the listener to reflect on the implication of that obvious answer.

The tool that was ingrained into our speech pattern was the question: WHO CARES. Who cares that you didn’t like lunch today? Who cares that you don’t want to do what the rest of us are doing? This question both conveyed the implied obvious answer “I do not care” along with the implication, nobody else thinks that your statement or declaration is important. This rhetorical question was often preceded by an equally rhetorical “so what?”. Together they formed the nearly insurmountable argument “So what, who cares?”

But in addition to being used to dismiss things as unimportant or irrelevant, Wisdom tells us that this same question of who finds certain things important can reveal a tremendous amount about our own character. Come join us this Sunday as we consider the value and importance of how we think about those who cannot advocate for themselves.

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09/19/2025

In our politically charged environment we find an unsurprising diverse range of responses to the death of a man. One side mourns both his passing and the means of it, while the other side runs the spectrum from condemning the violence to celebrating his death to even blaming him for it.

The widely diverse difference in perspectives for many seem to revolve around assessing the nature of this man. Was he a good man wrongly murdered? Or was he an evil person who deserved what he got?

Yet perhaps the better questions to be asking right now is whether either (or neither) assessment is definitive? Is there a universal standard by which he is measured? If not, then neither side has a leg to stand on, whether to condemn him as evil or praise him as good. But if so, if there IS a fixed standard by which this man should be measured, who sets that standard? That question has to be settled before either side should be praising or condemning him.

Come join us this Sunday as we consider what Wisdom says about the standards by which people are measured and the impact that both good and bad people have upon the society around them.

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09/11/2025

If you have ever read the book of Ruth, you have seen the amazing love that young woman had for her mother-in-law Naomi. Despite having lost her own husband, Ruth honored her mother-in-law by taking on the role of provider, treating her like the family she had become.

Such loyalty, such love is admirable, its worthy of our respect, but it ought to also inspire us. For those who still have living parents, how do you care for them? Is there any tangible way in which your love is demonstrated? If not, why not?

We live in a world where marriage is being sidelined. Spouses have been exchanged for "partners". Yet without marriage there would be no Ruth for Naomi. Naomi would just be some poor woman, tragic, left to make her way in the world alone.

Marriage is more than two people committing to one another. It's even more than two people who are committed to one another for the lengths of their lives. It is the joining of two families, creating ties of honor and obligation, responsibility as well as affection.

Where will we be in a generation or two if we as a culture abandon the responsibility to care for aging parents and "family" only extends to birth parents (unless they have been rejected) and birth siblings (as long as we are actually still willing to talk them)? How many more people will spend their golden years living their lives empty of those who might otherwise have cared for them and comforted them?

Come join us this Sunday as we consider the wisdom of, and what it means to be FAMILY.

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08/29/2025

There is an age old quandary that has plagued philosophers and theologians for about as long as humanity has been writing: why do bad things happen to good people? Often for those who are religious there is a follow on question: how can a good God allow bad things to happen to good people? Indeed for some who lean towards atheism, this second question is deemed as rhetorical evidence that there must not be a God.

Yet the fact is that across our lives most people experience hard things at some point. Yes, some absolutely face much harder circumstances than others, some deeply tragic which we see recur far too frequently. But where many assume that God is (or should be) responsible for preventing such painful tragedy, they are imposing their own priorities upon God.

Come join us this Sunday as we consider the better way to understand how God interacts with us in the midst of hardship and tragedy.

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