Mount Carmel Missionary BC 1717 W. Meinecke Ave, Milw, 1717 W. Mienecke, Milwaukee, WI (2026)

09/04/2026

When God Says “Not Yet” (Genesis 16:1-12)🙏🏽❤️

Waiting for God’s “yes” grows our patience and anchors our trust in Him.

God answers prayer in one of three ways: “yes,” “no,” or “not yet.” This last reply is possibly the most dreaded—and for good reason. Waiting requires us to trust God’s plan when we can’t yet see it. However, patience is an important trait for the Christian, as Scripture repeatedly teaches us in stories, proverbs, psalms, and epistles.

Waiting on God to unlock a door is always wiser than attempting to open it ourselves. After God promised him descendants (Gen. 12:2), Abraham waited 25 years with an answer of “not yet.” That is a long time to hold on to a promise!

Abraham and Sarah were human, and eventually they came up with their own plan to get an heir. Sarah’s servant Hagar bore Ishmael. It’s easy to understand the impulse; the waiting must have felt unbearable. But the consequences were painful. Bitterness and blame touched every member of the family (Gen. 16:4-6; Gen. 21:9-10). When the divine “yes” finally came through Isaac, it arrived in God’s timing and on His terms—as it always does.

Our patience isn’t to give God more time—He doesn’t need it. But waiting deepens our trust and prepares us for what He has on the other side of that door (Isa. 40:31). His timing is always worth trusting in, especially when the waiting is hard.

~Stanley

09/04/2026

MATTHEW 24:12🙏🏽❤️
(12) “And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold.”

Not long ago, this nation saw the senseless massacre of twenty kindergarten children at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, plus six other adults. The shooter's motives were unclear, although it was reported that he was "troubled" and perhaps "autistic" and "weird." His grade school classmates and neighbors are not surprised at all that his life ended this way. He seems to have been a time-bomb just waiting to go off.

Obviously, his actions in killing so many people—and children especially—show no love at all. One would have to be "cold," without feeling, to do such a thing. It brings up another verse, II Timothy 3:2, where the apostle Paul prophesies that the last days would be dangerous because "men will be lovers of themselves," and in verse 3, "without self-control, brutal." It seems we are seeing this prophecy fulfilled in ever-greater frequency, as people seem to have less and less compunction about terrorizing and taking the lives of their fellow human beings. Under the grip of a merciless narcissism, many are losing their humanity.

Even so, Matthew 24:12 is not speaking about such people; it is not addressed to the people in the world at large but directly to Jesus' disciples and their spiritual descendants. How do we know this?

Jesus uses the word agape for the love that grows cold. Such spiritual love, godly love, is unattainable by those driven by the spirit of this world. This agape love—the love of God—is the kind that is "poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit [which] was given to us" (Romans 5:5).

Jesus, then, is warning His church that the wickedness of the world will increase to such an extent that it would sap the spiritual heat out of His own people, causing their love to grow cold.

This has two major ramifications: 1) People in God's church will love Him less, and 2) they will love each other less. These are the two recipients of godly love.

We will see the effects of this drop in the temperature of our love in reduced time and respect for God and in deteriorating relationships between brethren. We will ease off in our prayer and study, relax our formality before God, and behave carelessly ("sin in haste and repent at leisure"), assuming that He will forgive us our every trespass.

Yet, we will gossip about our church friends, take advantage of their kindness and forgiveness, betray them when convenient, and judge them mercilessly even for their most minor faults. None of these things express godly love; they all portray love growing cold.

Late in his life, the apostle John wrote almost exclusively about agape love. Most of his audience probably thought it was an obsession with him, and they likely turned a deaf ear to him, complaining that the old man was ranting about his pet subject again. But perhaps John remembered hearing these words from Jesus' lips decades before and realized that love was what the church needed to be reminded about.

"This is the message that you heard from the beginning, that we should love one another" (I John 3:11). "If someone says, 'I love God,' and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen?" (I John 4:20).

Clearly, he saw the practice of godly love in the church as critical to those living in his day. How much more critical is it to those of us who live so much nearer to the horrors of the end time and the return of Jesus Christ? The horror of the murders in Newtown, Connecticut, should remind us that we need to stoke the fires of God's love as we see the Day swiftly approaching.
~Richard T. Ritenbaugh, THE BREAN
Amen🙏🏽😇❤️

09/03/2026

WAITING FOR THE RIGHT DOOR TO OPEN (Acts 16:5-12)🙏🏽❤️

When God closes a door, it’s an open to invitation to walk with Him down the path He has for us.

It’s natural to feel disappointed when a door of opportunity closes. But our heavenly Father will often prevent us from going forward when He wants to redirect our steps toward a wiser path. What shapes our journey is our reaction: Will we beat against the barred door or look for a new opening?

Paul’s second missionary journey included a series of divine “no admittance” signs. He set out to visit the churches he’d started across Asia, but the Holy Spirit led him away from city after city. Considering the apostle’s sense of urgency for the gospel, each closed door must have been deeply disorienting.

But Paul kept traveling in search of a place to plant a new church, and at last the Lord revealed an open door to Macedonia. The new route led into key cities with great promise. Philippi, Corinth, and Ephesus were major commerce centers teeming with dignitaries and traders who could carry the gospel farther and faster than the apostle ever could alone.

The Bible tells us to trust in the Lord instead of our own understanding (Prov. 3:5). When we learn to follow the Spirit’s prompting—even past doors we hoped would open—He directs our steps through the right ones.
~Stanley
Amen.🙏🏽😇❤️

08/21/2026

MATTHEW 13:47-50🙏🏽❤️

“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a net, that was cast into the sea, and gathered of every kind: Which, when it was full, they drew to shore, and sat down, and gathered the good into vessels, but cast the bad away. So shall it be at the end of the world: the angels shall come forth, and sever the wicked from among the just, And shall cast them into the furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.”

In the fourth pair of the parables of Matthew 13, Jesus continues to instruct His disciples apart from the general multitude to which He had spoken earlier. The seventh parable in the chapter, the Parable of the Dragnet (verse 47) teaches that in the professing church, the good and evil who intermingle on earth will be completely separated "at the end of the age."

This set time of separation will be, for the good, a time of rejoicing in a bright, eternal future, but for the evil, it will be a time of mourning before eternal oblivion.

In Matthew 4:18-20, Jesus says to Peter and Andrew, "Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men," providing a partial interpretation of this parable. When Jesus Christ later made the twelve disciples fishers of men, they went out and brought in "catches" of converts. Thus, the church, composed of the "called," are caught in God's net, which His servants draw in.

Peter, Andrew, James, and John had been fishermen prior to their calling, so to them, the idea of the dragnet was a familiar and vivid picture. Their work entailed using a net - a dragnet - of great length, weighted by lead and designed to sweep the bottom of the sea, gathering fish in masses.

Two boats would drag this net between them, sweeping a section of the Sea of Galilee, after which the sailors would haul the net to shore. There, the fishermen would go through the entire net, keeping the good fish but burning the substandard ones to avoid catching them again later.

The symbol of "the sea" is similar to that seen in the beasts rising out of the sea and out of the earth (Revelation 13:1, 11). It designates origination, representing the realm of the earth. Christ's origin is the realm of heaven, but the beasts, part of a corrupt system, come from the sea and the earth. The sea, a body of water, symbolizes "peoples, multitudes, nations, and tongues" (Revelation 17:15).

In the parable, when the fish are caught in a net thrown in the sea, Jesus signifies that members of His church are "the called" out of the world (Romans 1:5-6; 8:28). The dragnet gathers some of every kind; God's net catches fish without partiality to age, s*x, race, ethnicity, class, wealth, intelligence, language, beauty, and so forth. His interest is in developing our character and whether He can work with us (Romans 2:11; 5:8; 9:18, 21).

~Martin G. Collins

Amen!🙏🏽❤️😇

08/20/2026

Humility and Greatness (Matthew 20:20-28)🙏🏽❤️

In a culture that idolizes success, we are called to something greater—using our gifts to serve Him.

What do you want Christ to do for you? That’s the question Jesus asked the mother of James and John when she requested that her sons be given places of prominence and authority in His kingdom (Matt. 20:20-21). It’s worth examining our own requests to Jesus—what are we asking Him for?

We live in a culture that equates greatness with power, visibility, and moving up the ladder of success. But Jesus taught something radically different: “Whoever wishes to become great among you shall be your servant” (v. 26). In God’s kingdom, greatness is measured by humble service to others, not earthly accomplishments or recognition.

True greatness, from heaven’s perspective, is measured not on earth but in eternity. When we stand before the judgment seat of Christ, He’ll be looking at how we served others in His name, not at our impressive résumés.

Humble people understand who they are—and who the Lord is. Their assignment while on earth is to use whatever He has entrusted to them in ways that glorify Him and benefit others. This is the pathway Jesus modeled for us—not grasping for position but serving with whatever gifts we’ve been given.

~Stanley

Address

1717 W. Mienecke
Milwaukee, WI
53206

Telephone

(414) 264-8001

Website

https://www.mountcarmelmissionarybaptistchurch.net/

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