Month: September 2021

Here is a new video message I made for our church. It deals with the gifts God has given us and how we can use them to serve others.

The other day when I was out on my prayer walk, I saw all these acorns laying on the road. I had just read Jesus’ Parable of the Sower and before I know it, this whole story came together on my mind. I came back, wrote it down and spent a couple of days worth of spare time illustrating it and animating it. This is a parable about the church and our part in it as believers. It’s a simple story to help explain something more complicated. I pray it blesses you.

Lately I have been thinking about my childhood quite a bit. I have marveled at how the things I dreamed of as a child have become my life’s work in a way I never would have predicted back then. You see, I’m a pastor and when I was a child that wasn’t even on the radar. As a matter of fact for most of my life, that was one of the last things I ever thought I would be. Growing up we weren’t church folks. A friend of mine growing up played the piano for her church on a regular basis. As a result she was at church every Sunday, which to my preadolescent mind seemed like cruel and unusual punishment.

My earliest memories of church were pretty disjointed. I have a vivid memory of creating a craft by pressing leaves between two sheets of wax paper with an iron (don’t worry, the teacher used the iron), and of a little boy who had a few odd bald spots on his head because he didn’t sit still while the barber was giving him a buzz cut. I remember going to vacation Bible school more because of making friends with people from other schools who didn’t know I was a bullying target than anything spiritual. More than anything, I remember the song. You know the one. The first one they teach you. The one even the most marginally churched kids (like me) learned.

Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so.
Little ones to Him belong, they are weak but He is strong.
Yes Jesus loves me, Yes Jesus loves me,
Yes Jesus loves me, the Bible tells me so.

It’s the first song you learn in Sunday school, I probably knew it by the time I was three and we didn’t even go to church regularly) and here I am, a pastor, life transformed by Jesus, Masters of Divinity Degree, working on my doctorate, and after all of that, I am struck by an inescapable conclusion.

The first thing I learned is the most important. More than anything else in the whole world, the most important thing you can learn is this song and the facts that inspired it. Jesus loves me, I know this because the God of the universe gave us a book that all points to that very fact. I was made by Him and I am His, and in this world I have nothing to fear if He is with me, because He is more powerful than all things. I can place my faith and trust in Him, and live forever and the Bible shows me the way. Jesus loves me. It’s the most important thing I can know.

And He loves you too!

God bless you,
Pastor Dave