Author Archives: Rev. Dr. David Bissett

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About Rev. Dr. David Bissett

I pastor a church in upstate NY. I'm happily married and the father of seven kids. It's fun, really! Leave me some feedback...

The Wander & Wonder of Prayer!

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This week is Prayer Week at our church, with a daily gathering for prayer — weather permitting.

As I think more deeply about prayer this morning two timely points hit home from the prince of preachers, C.H. Spurgeon. This excerpt comes from the actual pulpit prayer of Spurgeon on April 21, 1878….

“We must sorrowfully also lament our hearts, how they wander. If Thou givest us a blessing we begin to idolize it. How often do we set our hearts upon children, upon some beloved object, or upon wealth or upon honor. Somehow or other, this spiritual adultery too often comes upon us, and the chastity of our hearts towards our God is violated. Be please to forgive us in this thing also. … Let the whole heart be Christ’s alone, and never stray again.”

“Yet we do bless Thee this morning that we can pray in this fashion, for there was a time when it never struck us that there was much amiss with us, when sin was no plague to us; when we lived even in outward sin with but slight accusation of conscience, and certainly without any pain at heart.”

Friends, Spurgeon is right on target here: our hearts can sadly wander in prayer, yet, what a wonder it is that God gives us this marvelous gift of prayer. Let us pray often — but be careful to use as directed.

pastor david

The shocking claims of Jesus

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In the book MERE CHRISTIANITY by C. S. Lewis, one of the most common mistakes about Jesus is wonderfully dealt with. Let me quote him, from Part 2, at the end of chapter 3…

“I am trying to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.’ That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God; or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”

So Lewis says Jesus is either: a lunatic, a liar or the Lord God. I know which one I pick, how about you?

Pastor David