​     Do you remember the show “Let's Make a Deal” hosted by Monty Hall? The people dressed up like pickles and dolls and other crazy things in hopes to make a deal. The host would come along and probably because of a person’s wacky outfit or someone’s personality he’d pick a contestant and then the dealing would begin. The show played into our tendency toward materialism and our desire to deal our way to something better. All the contestants hoped to avoid making that terrible decision by which they’d lose out on the big deal.
     The show was entertaining, but if we take the thought process behind the Let’s Make A Deal show and bring it over into the church and act like God is some kind of Monty Hall Deal-Maker we are wrong! If you view God as throwing out offers and waiting for you to counter His offer you are way off base on whom God is. If you think something along these lines: God, I'll give you some of our Sunday mornings, but I'm expecting some tangible blessings pretty quick or I may quit worshipping, praying, and giving. That is wrong thinking! There is something ugly in the thought process that thinks God owes you anything at all, especially grace. However, what a blessing it is to know that God always gives us more than we deserve!

Clark Tatum

​     The grace of God is best expressed as getting God’s absolute best when we deserve the absolute worst. Before a person becomes a Christian, he lives in a spiritual graveyard (Romans 3:23). The coroner’s report from God declares all have fallen short of grace and in essence exists in a spiritual mortuary. Now there may be varying degrees of decay. Some are sick and dead, others poor and dead, some white and dead, some black and dead, but all are equally dead, meaning without the life of God in them. The Apostle Paul wrote by inspiration Ephesians 2:4-7, and the powerful words should leap off the page and grab our attention. God’s grace rescued us from the eternal and hideous consequences of sin, while we were yet ignorant of our impending tragedy. God made us alive with Christ when we were dead in sin.
     I like the story of an Indian who had become a Christian. Some of his brothers began to observe how different his lifestyle had become, they asked, “What has caused such a change?” He looked on the ground and found a worm; then he put it on some leaves and set them aflame. Just before the fire got to the worm, he reached down and rescued the worm out of the flames and held it before his friends and said, “Me, worm.” That is what God’s grace does for all who look to Him by faith in Christ (Galatians 3:26-27). 

Clark Tatum

​Jesus can bring a new dimension to your life. He can take you from a world of black and white to a world rich with living color. He can fill your life with a peace that defies description. He can fill your life with purpose and with satisfaction that comes from helping others. He can fill your life with the assurance that comes from knowing that you belong to Him for all eternity. The Bible says in Acts 8:12, But when they believed Philip as he preached the good news of the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women (NIV).
 
Vines Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words says this about the word believe, “…to be persuaded of, hence, to place confidence in, to trust, signifies, reliance upon, not mere credence.” Believing the good news is not just something that happens between our ears, it is something that happens in our heart. There are people who have been partially connected to religion, but never fully connected to Jesus. To believe in Jesus is to be moved in our heart to obey the Lord’s teaching and be united with Him in the waters of baptism (Romans 6:3-7, Galatians 3:26-27). Baptism into Christ is the way you enter the Body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12:13, Acts 2:47). Following Jesus is the greatest adventure in this life that leads to eternal life.

Clark Tatum

​     When my daughter was a very young it amazed me how she could know all of her many dolls on a first name basis. I will never forget sitting in the living room while she was playing with her dolls in the other room and I heard these words coming from her room, “God loves you, yes He does!”  My daughter was repeating the words over and over so I went in to check on her and see what she was doing. She had lined up about twenty of her dolls and she was going down the line in front of each of the dolls and after inserting their individual names and then she was saying, “God loves you, yes He does!”
     The Book of Ephesians reminds us how much God loves us. Ephesians 3:17-18, speaks of the love of Christ in these terms: 17 … And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18 may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ. The love of Christ is wide enough to cover all of us. His love for us is long enough to last for eternity. The love of Christ is high enough to lift us to glory land. His love for us is deep enough that we can be rooted and established in it today, tomorrow and forever.

Clark Tatum

​     One day some people who were following Jesus were arguing over money. So, He took the opportunity to tell a parable of a rich man. This particularly rich man stored up many things for himself but was not rich toward God and as a result Jesus called him “a fool”. (Luke 12:20) He was a fool because he left God out. Have you ever played the game of monopoly? The goal of monopoly is the same as the goal for any game – to win. And in monopoly to win means that you own all the best property and the most expensive property. You collect houses and hotels, and of course lots of cash. If you do really good in the game you have stacks of money, and railroads, and the bank is borrowing money from you, but when the game is over what happens? Every dollar, every red hotel, every green house, every piece of property including Park Place and Boardwalk goes back in the box when the game ends.
     The man in Jesus’ story of Luke 12 played the game of life pretty well. In the eyes of the world he would never have been called a fool. But he was a fool because he forgot what really matters – loving God and loving others is the identification of those called to be saints (Romans 1:7) and live holy lives (1 Corinthians 1:2, Hebrews 12:14, 1 Peter 2:9, 2 Peter 3:11). 

Clark Tatum