In ancient Rome, sculpting was a popular profession. The market was flooded with sculptors, so quality was sometimes lacking. Less qualified craftsmen would cover their flaws and errors in wax, and frequently the customer could not see the cover-up. To compensate for this practice, authentic sculptors would mark their statutes with the words “sine cere”, which means, “without wax”. Today, we frequently use the same term to close our letters: “sincerely”.
          It is so easy in our “fast-food” world to be tempted to take shortcuts. It is hard to wait. The Apostle Paul wrote to the Christians at Ephesus, “Don’t be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is. Don’t get drunk on wine which leads to wild living, instead, be filled (the word literally means to “keep on being filled”) with the Spirit.”
Our work will not earn us one moment of eternity—that was bought with the blood of Jesus. However, once you become a Christian you are called to the long obedience of following Jesus. But it is not work as we often think of it. It is nurturing the life of Christ inside us. That is not as easy as it sounds. It is so much easier to fill our lives with the appearance of being like Him, rather than going deep to truly become like Him. In fact, to really be like Him, we must die to ourselves.
What we die to is our inauthentic parts—like the errors on Roman sculptures that were fixed with wax. God wants to mark us “sine cere”; sincere followers of Christ that don’t cover up their flaws with the wax of religious language or actions. God wants a real and genuine people who follow a real and authentic God.
-Pastor Dino Griffin

Remember when Jesus told Peter that Satan had asked to sift him as wheat. Jesus had just told them that one of them would betray him, and they had gone from asking who that might be to arguing among themselves about which one of them is the greatest.
Even as believers, pride can be the darkness that connects us to Satan’s underworld. We are no better than Peter or the rest of the disciples; we are capable of the same pride. But we should recognize that the areas where we hide our darkness contain our future defeat. We must be discerning of our own hearts. We must walk humbly with God and others.
There is nothing in the Bible that says that Satan can’t still get permission to sift us like wheat. Wheat is sifted so the chaff can be thrown away. The chaff on wheat is a hard, husk-like covering that has no nutritional value and once it is separated from the wheat it is thrown away.
But it is good to know we have wheat in us. Sometimes God allows a satanic attack to clean us up: to get rid of our chaff; to cleanse our souls of darkness; to cleanse us of pride and greed and things that are opposed to His will. He wants to produce greater meekness and transparency in our lives. Our husk-like outer nature must die to facilitate the breaking forth of the wheat-like nature of Christ in us.
The greatest defense we can have against the devil is an honest, pliable heart before God. When the Holy Spirit puts his finger on an area of sin in our life, we must not run to defend ourselves. Submit to God; humble yourself, resist the devil and he will flee.
296 Words

God’s value system is different from ours. For us the words "good" and "blessing" signify comfort and convenience and happy cir­cumstances. But to God the same words may signify character and virtue and integrity. We think in physical and material terms; God thinks in spiritual terms. To Him, holiness is better than happiness, character more desirable than comfort.
When Jesus came on the scene he announced a kingdom that seemed completely upside down from the normal world. When the world said, “The best will be first”, he said, “The first will be last”. When the world said, “Do to others before they do to you”, he said, “Treat others as you’d like to be treated”. When the world said, “Live for yourself”, he said, “Die to yourself in order to live”.
This was an other-worldly kingdom. It was not over in this province or in that region. It was not a tribe of people whom he would lead to overthrow the Roman occupiers. The kingdom of God was the rule and reign of the King—Jesus Christ. Wherever God’s desires were made manifest—where there were people putting their faith in Jesus, being healed from sickness, delivered from demons, set free from sin and addictions, and raised from the dead—that was the kingdom! 
Jesus asked his followers to pray to the Father, “Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven”. This is not a prayer for a better society or for more comfort and peace on earth. This is a radical request for the invasion of this world by The Architect of Society and the Prince of Peace himself. It’s not like anything you’d expect. It can take your breath away. This is no ordinary kingdom.
-Pastor Dino Griffin

C. S. Lewis talks about nearness to God in two ways: nearness of approach and likeness to God.
          In Likeness to God, humans were created in the image of God. Through the fall, that image has been marred—much like an image is distorted in a defective mirror. We imperfectly reflect a perfect God.
          Nearness in approach has to do with the state of humans as they seek God and find Him through the salvation that is freely offered in Christ.
          He uses an analogy. Let’s suppose that we are doing a mountain walk to our home village. At noon we come to the top of a cliff where we are very near it because it is just below us. We could drop a stone into it. But there is no way to get directly down to the village because we have no equipment and we are no mountain climbers. We must take a long way around, ten miles maybe. At many points during that detour we will, spatially, be farther from the village than we were when we sat above the cliff. But only spatially. In terms of progress we will be far nearer our home.
          God does not want us sitting on the cliff counting on our likeness to Him to get us to Him. We may think we are good enough, but there is no way to get to Him from there. We don’t have the equipment—and we don’t have the skill. The only way to God is the path around—the path through the cross. That’s why God wants us to seek Him; He doesn’t want us to rest on our feelings of being near enough. He wants us to go down the only real path in which He can be found.
-Pastor Dino Griffin

Genesis records a wrestling match. It’s not really a smack-down or even a caged match. God shows up and wrestles a man named Jacob.
Now Jacob has been self-defining his whole life. He has often taken things into his own hands to accomplish what he wanted. He stole his brothers’ blessing, tricking and conning it out of him instead of waiting for God to give it to him. Jacob was always working an angle; always defending and protecting himself, trusting no one, always fighting his own battles.
But now Jacob is in a fight he cannot win. He wrestles with God all night and is unable to gain any ground. But he doesn’t quit; he won’t give up. And then God gives him a painful lesson.
While Jacob is holding his ground, God, with a single touch, throws Jacob's hip out of joint. Jacob the wrestler is now Jacob the clinger. He is holding on to God. This is a redefining moment for Jacob—he has never really lost before, at least, not like this. He has always been able to rely on his own strength or cunning or fortitude. But now he has lost control. He no longer has the high ground. Now everything has changed.
Jacob hangs on to God and says he won’t let go until God blesses him. He may have been somewhat smug before, but he is smart enough to know when he is beaten. He will limp with the reminder of this encounter for the rest of his life.
God isn’t offended by our wrestling with Him. And he doesn’t wrestle us just to win; he wasn’t bullying Jacob. He wrestles to show us a little more of who we are, and, in the process, a lot more of who He is.
-Pastor Dino Griffin

The female angler fish can grow up to 47 inches long, yet the male only grows up to 2.5 inches long. The male is rarely larger than a man’s fist. These fish are found from 1600-10,000 feet deep in the Atlantic and Antarctic Oceans.
          The male angler fish, when it is mature enough, connects itself to the female angler fish and is mated for life. It connects itself to the female with its teeth, and gets its nourishment for life from the female’s blood stream. It completely depends on the female for nourishment, protection, and life. He literally has a grip for life.
          Our life in God is much like that. He has made us so that when we “attach” ourselves to Him through Jesus Christ, we literally lose our lives into His. We may feel like at times we can barely hang on, but the truth is that He gives us a grip for life—nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.
          It’s not uncommon for believers of Christ to struggle with thoughts like, “Maybe I’m just not good enough to be a Christian,” or, “Nothing really happened, nothing really changed.” But Christianity is more than jumping off a cliff in the dark and hoping there is something to land on. It is a personal relationship with the God of the universe. Your assurance of your relationship with God is based on the authority of the Bible, God’s Word, not on how you feel.
          We must not depend on our feelings about our salvation; we must trust God and take Him at His word. We can know that we are truly Christians as we put our faith in what God says.
-Pastor Dino Griffin

God is holy and our sin separates us from Him. He cannot tolerate sin. He loves us, but he cannot embrace us as long as we embrace sin. The truth is, we deserve to be punished by God for our rebellion. It really stinks, but that doesn’t make it less true. We have a problem that we cannot, on our own, make right.
I watched the TV in horror as the space shuttle exploded in a million tiny pieces. Everyone on the shuttle was killed. The ground crew apparently knew that during lift-off, some small piece of the spacecraft broke or fell off, but it didn’t seem like a big deal at the time. But it was a big deal. It was a matter of life and death.
A Vaccination works by giving a person a small dose of the virus so that the body builds up its own immunity. A similar thing has happened in our culture regarding sin. As we have indulged in sin, we have become immune to its effects and blind to its presence. Sin is rampant in our society and it is in us. We see it and think it is no big deal. But that’s wrong. Like the small piece of spacecraft that broke off, our sin is a matter of life and death.
We need to understand God’s hatred for our sin, and his incredible love for us. God doesn’t stop hating our sin in order to love us. He had to fix the sin problem in order to embrace us. Instead of punishing us for our sin, Jesus was punished. Jesus went to the cross so that the love of God could be demonstrated, and the holiness of God could be satisfied.
-Pastor Dino Griffin

God often takes longer than we expect. Judging by the way some of us pray, you’d think God was a cosmic bellhop just waiting for us to ring our bell so he could grab our bags and show us our room. We are so disappointed when we ring and he doesn’t show up.
Abraham and Sarah experienced long waits, as did Moses, and Hannah, and most of the prophets. God often takes the long walk. For Him a thousand years are as a day and a day is as a thou­sand years. As one author put it: “With God, timing is more important than time.”
And yet we have the prayer of the persistent widow in Luke 18. The passage begins with these words, “Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up.” Now I’m thinking that is not really good news. What I read in a statement like that is, “God may take a really long time in answering your prayer, so I need to teach you not to give up”. Why, you might ask, do we need to be taught not to give up? Because you are going to feel like giving up.
In Luke 11 the disciples ask Jesus to teach them to pray and he tells them a story about a friend who needs bread at midnight because someone has shown up and they’ve go nothing to feed them. The moral of the story is “Ask and keep asking and you’ll finally get what you’re asking for.” Eventually.  
What all these stories have in common is relationship—at least if we are persistent in our prayers, we are still talking to God. And that seems to be what he is most interested in.
-Pastor Dino Griffin

“Jesus made a whip from some ropes and chased them all out of the Temple. He drove out the sheep and cattle, scattered the money changers’ coins over the floor, and turned over their tables.” John 2:15 (NLT) 
He sat down and made the whip himself. This was no flash of rage or impulse. But what was he so angry about?
          Jesus, the man of peace, performs a violent act. Everyone seems bewildered. In this age of inclusivity where all are encouraged to “just get along”, this act seems almost barbaric.
          The priests of the day thought they stood for God. But they had confused respect for themselves and their religious system for true reverence for God. The temple was meant to be a place for people to have access to God; instead, it had become a place of ritual and profit. It became a place where it was hard to find God behind all the rules and expense.
          We must be careful not to worship our institutions or programs or buildings. It is a frightening thing for our reverence to only be a reflection of our own glory; where our worship and our life together are all about us and not about God.
          Do we reflect today the outlook of the priests of Jesus day rather than that of Jesus himself? I was once standing near the front of a church building following the morning service, and some children were playing around what was called an ‘altar’. A lady came rushing up from somewhere and shouted at the kids “stop playing in here” she yelled, “This is God’s house!”
          If we say this, we are perpetrating a lie. God doesn’t live in buildings. He lives in us. We are His dwelling place!
 -Pastor Dino Griffin

Billy was raised in an angry family. Mealtimes were either silent or sarcastically noisy. They often ended in arguments and tears. He usually got yelled at if he spilled any food or drink on the table, of if he didn’t finish his food, or if he slumped at the table—it seemed as though he couldn’t do anything right.
When Billy was about ten, he began excusing himself from the dinner table (as soon as he could without being yelled at) and walking down the street to a neighbor’s house.
          The old-fashioned house down the street had a big porch on the outside and a happy family inside. If Billy arrived there during dinnertime, he would crawl under the porch and sit there quietly, listening to the sounds of warmth and laughter.
          One day Billy was invited for dinner. He was so excited and so nervous that when he reached to receive some rolls from the person next to him, he accidentally spilled his milk. He would have shrunk into his napkin if he could. He waited for the expected verbal blow. Instead, the father stood up, and with a roar of delight cried, “get the boy some more milk and a dry shirt. I want him to enjoy this meal!”
          Billy’s experience showed him that not all fathers are angry and harsh. We often get our ideas of what God the Father is like through our experiences with our earthly fathers. But even the best earthly father cannot love us with a perfect love like our heavenly father can. We need to look at the scriptures to get an accurate picture of what God the Father is like. Let Him surprise you with his love in the pages of the Bible.
-Pastor Dino Griffin

Let’s not be too quick to despair because the world is turned from God and it seems like the bad guys are winning. Into a seemingly dark and despairing time, God choose to send his Son and offer salvation not only to those in that time—but those before and after. In the midst of a great darkness, God choose to shine his brightest light!
We have all had times or seasons in our lives where the heavens seemed like brass; as if our prayers stopped at the ceiling, or worse, just drooled off our lips and dripped to the ground. We all have experienced darkness in our lives when it seemed that God was no where to be found; when the deepest cries of our hearts have gone unanswered—when we wished that just one thing in our lives would work out right. We have all tasted despair.
Today, for those who have or are even now experiencing a time of despair, I believe God wants to offer you hope. I believe God wants you give you a taste of the presence of His kingdom. I am not saying that God will instantly remove all the negative circumstances of your life. I am not saying that God will come sweeping down and fix all your problems. What I am saying is that God offers His presence to you in the midst of your circumstances. The Messiah has come, the Holy Spirit is here now to speak, to comfort, and to give life. Even if the world has failed you, or worse, the church has failed you—perhaps even your friends or family have failed you; God will not fail you. He is faithful. He will bring light to the darkest night.
-Pastor Dino Griffin

“At the sixth hour darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour.” Mark 15:33 (NIV) 
          These are the last three hours of Jesus on the cross. From noon until three, darkness covered the land.
          Jesus had been arrested and tried. Peter had denied knowing him. The disciples were helpless before the power of the Pharisees and Sadducees, and the iron hand of Rome. Their Rabbi, their Lord and King had been crucified. The darkness of these hours was more than the absence of sunlight. There was a darkness that had crept into the hearts of the disciples. After three hours of afternoon darkness the Messiah had died on a cross.
          Jesus had told them this time was coming. He had warned them but in the dark they had lost their way. He had tried to tell them he was going away and would send the Spirit to be with them. He told them plainly that he would be handed over to be crucified. But when the darkness came, they forgot what he had said to them.
          After Jesus was buried, the disciples went back to their old lives. Some went fishing. They couldn’t believe what had happened. But that was nothing to what they were about to experience. Not only had Christ warned them of his death; but he had also said after three days he would rise again.
          Then he did.
It is perhaps too easy for us to see the failings of the disciples from this viewpoint. But we can learn from their mistakes. The darkness may seem impenetrable at times, but it won’t last. God will often instruct us before the darkness comes. And we should never doubt in the dark what God has spoken to us in the light.
-Pastor Dino Griffin

When life hands you trouble, you need to dig below the surface of your experience. You need to dig below the surface of your expectations. You need to dig below the surface of your disappointments. You need to dig until you find the richness of faith.
It is like oil. Oil is precious to our way of life, but it is forged deep within the earth under tremendous pressure.
That is what we dig for; the kind of faith that is forged by the tremendous pressures of life. Don’t give up. Don’t give in. Don’t settle for a shallow faith that puts on a plastic smile and says, “Everything is just fine”.
That is what happened to Job. His wife looked at all his troubles and encouraged him to tell God where he could get off, and then die. His friends weren’t much help either. They wanted to play the blame game. “All this suffering has to be somebody’s fault”, they reasoned. It must be you Job.
But Job did not just lie there and take it. He dug deep. He told his friends, “I will never admit you are in the right; till I die, I will not deny my integrity.
I will maintain my righteousness and never let go of it; my conscience will not reproach me as long as I live.”
In the end, Job got his audience with God, and got put in his place. But he had gone deep and came out of it all with an unshaken, rich and noble faith. A faith that has been a bedrock of encouragement for thousands of years.  So the next time trouble hits, go deep and keep digging; and remember those, like Job, who have gone before us.
-Pastor Dino Griffin

          I believe that God heals today. But in the end, there are no cures, only postponements. The scriptures say “And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment” Unless Jesus returns again in our lifetime, everyone must face death. I have been dying since the day I was born, but no one has really prepared me for death.
There are no cures, only postponements. The shadow of death looms over us—real and inevitable. But we don’t talk about it. Our society, like many throughout history, reveres youth and despises the old. We hide the elderly in institutions. Our mortality is out of sight and out of mind.
     We say the dead have "passed away," or "passed on." Elisabeth Kubler-Ross tells of the time she approached the head of a six‑hundred‑bed facility and said, "I'd like to work with some dying people." The administrator said, "In our hospital, nobody dies. They expire." Our death-denial produces a heightened fear of death in many people.
     Yet we should never give up hope for healing or take that hope away from the sick. We should keep praying for healing as long as we can. But when it becomes obvious that the person is going to die, we have a greater duty to help them die in dignity and peace. John Wesley’s followers were known as people who “died well”.
We don’t have to fight death—Christ has fought and won. In Philippians Paul writes: " I'm torn between two desires: Sometimes I want to live, and sometimes I long to go and be with Christ. That would be far better for me” Death for the believer is to be present with the Lord. Death means going to be with Jesus. He is eternal life!
-Pastor Dino Griffin

       
It has been said that the church is the only institution that shoots its wounded. When there has been moral failure or exposed sin, or even just questionable behavior, then the church has been quick to punish. Excommunication, while not formally practiced, has been informally exercised in the church. People who don’t measure up are often ostracized or put down or maligned. The truth is: Sheep bite.
        But the Scriptures call us to accountability. Some sins require public action. But there is never a call to punish. There is not a call to condemn. Still there is much confusion. Some say, “we are not to judge” referring to Jesus’ words in Matthew seven, yet Paul says in I Corinthians 5:12 that we are to judge those inside the church who are sinning.
        If you carefully examine the passage in Matthew 7, you will see that Jesus tells us to judge ourselves first before judging others.
Then in First Corinthians, Paul tells us to be responsible and hold those who continue to practice willful sin accountable. The emphasis is on “continuing to practice willful sin”.
        But what about those who are not willfully continuing in sin, but have fallen? How do we treat them? Even Christians sometimes morbidly love a good hanging. We sometimes secretly delight in the fall of another. We want to see the guilty punished.
Church discipline should look more like setting a broken bone than just breaking bones. We should be careful, Paul warns the Galatians, when we help someone in sin that we don’t fall into the same temptation ourselves.
        We need less indignation and more gentleness and humility. Sin has its own wages—it pays only death. Our job is not to break bones, but heal them.
-Pastor Dino Griffin

If you were given an outrageous sum of money—say something like $30 Million dollars, how would you spend it; some on friends and family, then some on yourself? Here is a question for you. How much would you spend on your enemies?
To say that Christ died for sinners’ means that God spent Jesus even on those who were opposed to Him. Being a sinner means standing in the place of Adam and Eve, shaking our fist to God, saying “not your will, but our will be done.” That’s where we all were when Christ died for us. The Scriptures tell us that Christ didn’t wait for us to accept Him—he died for us even while we were His enemies. What incredible love, there has never been anything like it! Someone might be willing to give up his life for a close friend; but not for an enemy! We have a hard time just being nice to other Christians sometimes; how much less would we be willing to give up our very best for those who are against us.
We have value not because of our accomplishments, not because of our potential, not because of who we know or what we do.
We have value because God has placed value upon us. What is the price of a human soul? What price has God paid? He has paid for us with His very own Son. There is no greater love than that.
Have you fully embraced the value God has placed on you—not because of what you’ve done, or what you may do, but because He has declared you valuable? Don’t try to earn His favor. Give yourself fully to God embracing the value He has placed on you.
-Pastor Dino Griffin

          Charles Spurgeon, the great English preacher, told this story from his pulpit in London:
          A woman had been hired by a very rich man to take care of his household. She served the rich man faithfully for over twenty years. When the wealthy man was about to die, he called the poor woman to his bedside and thanked her for her faithfulness to him. He had no heirs, and therefore decided to be generous to the woman. He wrote something on a piece of paper and handed it to her. She was grateful for this act of remembrance on his part.
          She lived in a little shack on the outskirts of the city of London. She took the piece of paper home and pinned it up on the wall. Several years later she became sick and Spurgeon was called to visit her.
          After he prayed for her, he walked around the room and noticed this piece of paper on the wall. He turned to the woman and asked her about it and she told him the story. He added, “Can you read?”
          She said, “No, I have never been taught how to read.”
          And then he said, “Madam, this piece of paper is a check for a great deal of money. You did not have to be living in these poor circumstances. You could have been living in the finest houses in London, eating the finest foods.”
The scriptures tell us that when we first put our faith in Jesus Christ, he placed his Holy Spirit in our lives to give us all the resources of heaven. The Holy Spirit in the life of the believer is like a blank check that God has written and signed, all we need to do is cash it.
-Pastor Dino Griffin

          King Hezekiah of Judah went on a mission from God. The second book of Kings records Hezekiahs reforms—going around and demolishing things and places that were used for idol worship. One of the things he destroyed was the bronze snake that Moses had made.
          If you remember the story, the Israelites had sinned and God had punished them with venomous snakes. After many people had died, the nation repented of their sin and God instructed Moses to build a bronze snake so that everyone who looked on it would live, even if they had been bitten.
          There are churches today where people have been using the same method for years and years. That method may have been successful in the past, but there is a limited life cycle on any method. Church members often defend old methods by saying, “This is the way we have always done it”. Do you realize, for instance, that it is not recorded that Paul ever gave an invitation for people to come forward in a service for salvation? That kind of invitation was an invention of the evangelist Dwight L. Moody. That is only one method that God has given us. God led Moody to do it, with great success, but that doesn’t mean everyone should do it.
          We are often tempted to hang on to past successes even when God has already moved on. The brazen serpent was once by God to deliver Israel from judgment, but after that it was just snake on a stick. Sometimes God uses methods and means that at one time serve a purpose and are mightily used by Him, but then their usefulness comes to an end. Anything God has successfully used in the past can become a present day idol.
-Pastor Dino Griffin

Many people sit around waiting for the church to do the work of ministry. But in the New Testament, the church is not a building or a meeting; the church is literally ‘the called out ones’; it is the people of God.
A young man once approached his pastor on a Sunday morning, upset because he felt like the church wasn’t doing its job. On the previous Monday, he had met a man while going to work. This man was out of work and homeless, and had nothing to eat for awhile. “I felt sorry for him” the young man said, “so I told him I would try to help him out. I called the church and no one answered, so I went out and got this guy some food, and told him he could stay at my house that night until we could get him some help. The next day, I called the church and still couldn’t get anyone, so I had to help this guy find a job. I’ve spent my whole week trying to get this guy some help and I just want to know when the church is going to start doing its job and get this guy some help.”
“Well,” the pastor replied, “it sounds like the church did its job.”
The church is not a building or an organization; it is a community of people who are committed to serving God and his cause.
If you are a believer you are a part of the church and you have a ministry. In fact, ministry can be defined as meeting people’s needs with God’s resources. You are part of God’s resources; in God’s hands, you become the carrier of the life of Christ to a world in need.
-Pastor Dino Griffin

          Jesus had just been asked by a lawyer what the most important commandment was in the Law of Moses. Jesus, sounding more like a hippy than a preacher, replied “It’s all about love”.
          Then he went a step further and mentioned the second most important command: love your neighbor.
          Love, love, love. What in the world was Jesus trying to say?
          We should remember that Jesus is talking to a group of people who have spent much of their time defining the legal specifics of God’s law. They had become so consumed by law keeping, that they had made up rules around the law so they couldn’t possibly be accused of breaking Moses law. These rules were called traditions.
          In Matthew 15, Jesus tells the religious leaders of Israel that they were using their traditions to violate the direct commandments of God. They were so tied to the letter of the law that they violated its spirit. They were rule keepers, but not lovers. It is easier to keep rules than it is to love someone.
          Jesus’ correction of their error was to talk about relationship. Love God with everything that you are: heart, soul and mind. And love your neighbor as you love yourself.
If you really love God with everything, you will do everything in your power to please Him. If you love your neighbor as yourself, you will treat him the way you think you should be treated. And if you practice those two things, you will fulfill all the demands of the entire Bible. Of course, to do that you will need the Holy Spirit living inside you, and to have that you have to surrender yourself to Jesus. It is all about the relationship.
-Pastor Dino Griffin
         
         

I am not suggesting this, but if you were to take a mild tranquilizer half and hour before a family meltdown, you would probably convey great peace when it happened. Your anxiety would lessen and you might float through the whole thing calm and gentle. Conflict in the family would seem like no big deal, and you could approach problems calmly as long as the effects of the pill lasted. Perhaps your serenity would spread to other family members as well—but at the cost of exposing you to a bad and dangerous habit.
I am not recommending tranquilizers for family problems. What we really need is a genuine peace—the kind that’ll make a dog wag his tail and babies hold out their arms to you. Neither am I recommending a casual peace of “oh it doesn’t really matter”; a so-called peace that lets important matters slide or that fails to come to grips with real problems. The peace I am talking about must not condone irresponsibility or escapism; but must arise from an inner assurance that all is well—the clear eyed peace of a person who is in touch with God.
When you are upset, irritated and angry, you cannot contribute to peace in others. But when your spirit is quiet and at rest, then when you intervene in a fight your peace will reassure others, diminishing their resentment. Move in with aggression and you may gain some control over others, but you will never solve the resentments and bitterness that gave rise to the explosion in the first place. A gentle and quiet spirit is of great price in God’s sight and an equally priceless resource in family life. Proverbs 15:1 says, “A gentle answer deflects anger, but harsh words make tempers flare.”
-Pastor Dino Griffin

While you can work too much, it is not true that you can emphasize work too much. Work does not produce nervous breakdowns, despite what you may have been told. Work as hard as you like and as long as you like. If you’re in normal health, you will come to little harm, especially if your labor is in the Lord.
Why? Because it is tension that kills, not work. It is getting caught in the Christian rat race that does the damage. It is the desperate fight to keep us a front with Christian friends or with the Christian public. It is the desire to appear smilingly spiritual and produce spirituality when all the while your true inner life does not measure up to your exterior image.
Sometimes we work too much not because the work is essential, but because we are driven by fear rather than being sustained by faith. Workaholics are driven. Work for them is not an expression of faith, but a search for peace. Where some people seek to be justified by works, workaholics try to keep their consciences clean by working. Consequently they work too much and become slaves to their own nervous activity. Workaholics cannot rest; they begin to look haunted when relaxing and turn every leisure activity into a new type of achievement that must be worked at and conquered.
God doesn’t want us to be driven by anything. Life is a gift given to us and we are responsible to steward it the best we can. This is what Solomon said about life in Ecclesiastes 5:18:
I have seen what is best for people here on earth. They should eat and drink and enjoy their work, because the life God has given them on earth is short. Amen.
-Pastor Dino Griffin

How can we humans have an encounter with a spirit-God who is both invisible and holy? We cannot see something or someone who is spirit. And the sight of his perfection—his holiness—would kill us.
Even so God, who is always more ready to draw near to us than we to him, can and does reveal himself in symbolic forms. Some are simple and easy to understand and others are baffling and complex. But whatever the symbolic form, or however obscure, the impact on the individual is always overwhelming.
Pascal claims to have had such an experience with the Lord. Scholars are both frustrated and intrigued by his sparse details of the event. With mathematical precision he records not only the date, but the precise times of its beginning and end. Except for the content of the encounter, he lease us one words only—“FIRE”.
Others have commonly described themselves as weeping, as feeling a loss of strength, as trembling, as experiencing a strange combination of joy and terror. When the utter holiness of God is in view, people often suffer from an appalling sense of their own wretchedness and of their own sin.
At other times, God grants us experiences of himself that overwhelm us with his love, joy and peace. Although our perceptions are feeble compared to the blazing reality that nearly knocks us out, we sense that this love, joy and peace are eternal reality.
Other experiences are far more ordinary, yet the Lord is in them as well. He knows what we need. Sometimes he will stretch our faith by not showing himself at all. The real miracle is that he cares enough to tailor each of our spiritual journeys in the way that we need in order to draw us closer to himself.
-Pastor Dino Griffin

Forgiveness does not just let things float. Of course, it is easier to let things float than it is to have a knock down drag out with someone who wronged you. You purse your lips, shrug your shoulders and say ‘whatever’. But that is not forgiveness.
Christ’s forgiveness was direct, positive and deliberate. Ours should be too.
There was a missionary who had been wronged by another. “Yes, I will forgive him” the missionary said, “but things can never be the same again.”
Is that forgiveness? Is forgiveness just some formal, cold declaration from behind closed doors? Can you imagine the voice from the throne of grace saying, “Yes, I will forgive you, but from now on I can’t feel the same about you”?
The forgiveness offered to us through Christ doesn’t remember. You must have heard this before, “Yes, I will forgive, but I can never forget”. Yet to forgive without forgetting is not to forgive at all.
But the kind of forgetting that God does is not like some old soul who has misplaced his glasses. God’s kind of forgetfulness chooses to release the offense. He refuses to hold sin against us. The Bible says, “As far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our sins from us.” And, “you have put all my sins behind your back.” And in Jeremiah, “I will remember your sins no more.”
We must forgive in the same way. We must choose to let go of any desire for revenge or payment or penalty. We are not called to glibly assign forgiveness while we secretly coddle bitterness and anger. We must not continue to make someone pay for their sin by treating them coldly. We must forgive as God forgives—totally and from the heart.
-Pastor Dino Griffin

Jesus often said “it is written”, and then challenged everyone to obey the teachings in Scripture. Throughout the centuries, those who have done so have found their lives changed.
An atheist once challenged Dr. Harry Ironside to a debate on their beliefs. Dr. Ironside accepted the challenge but proposed that his rival bring with him to the hall two people—one man who was for years under the power of evil habits from which he could not deliver himself, but who had heard the glorification of atheism, and had his life revolutionized for the better. Ironside also asked the atheist to bring a woman who was similarly delivered from corrupt living by the power of unbelief.
Dr.Ironside then offered to bring 100 men and women who for years lived in a similar state, but had been gloriously saved and changed through believing the gospel. The atheist walked away confessing his inability to produce even one person.
So how do we convince others’ of the truth of our position? There is no need to. While we should always be prepared to explain why we believe the Bible to be the Word of God, there is little point of trying to convince others. They must find out for themselves.
Charles Spurgeon said defending the Bible is like defending a caged lion. It is foolish to stand outside the cage with a sword to protect the lion from its enemies. The most effective way to defend the lion is to open the cage and let it go. The Bible, just like the lion, is perfectly capable of looking after itself. The best way to convince people that it is the Word of God is to have them read it for themselves and put into practice what it says.
-Pastor Dino Griffin