by Tommy Walker | Sep 29, 2026 | Articles, Mentors Corner
“The word of the Lord came to Jonah the son of Amittai saying, “Arise, go to Nineveh the great city, and cry against it, for their wickedness has come up before Me.” But Jonah rose up to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. So he went down to Joppa, found a ship which was going to Tarshish, paid the fare and went down into it to go with them to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. And the Lord hurled a great wind on the sea and there was a great storm on the sea so that the ship was about to break up” (Jonah 1:1-4). Jonah is most associated with the whale, or huge fish, depending on your translation. We can have a tendency to see the whale as a disciplinary measure toward Jonah. I would argue the whale is actual a sign of God’s mercy. The account of Jonah starts very simple: God told Jonah to “Go to Nineveh” and “cry out against it.” God told Jonah exactly where to go and what to do. Despite direct contact from the Almighty Himself, Jonah decided to go in the opposite direction, instead boarding a ship headed to Tarshish. That was not the correct response. God sent a storm that almost breaks up the ship. After some frantic actions, it is determined Jonah is the problem –he ends up in the sea. Jonah finds himself alone, presumably with no life jacket or other means of floatation. All seems desperate, bleak, and hopeless. Jonah disobeyed God and suffered the consequences of his wrong action in what...
by Chris Martin | Sep 15, 2026 | Articles, Mentors Corner
“You will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on You because he trusts in You” (Isaiah 26:3). All men desire peace in their lives. The world defines peace as the absence of calamity and turmoil. However, as we look at the Scriptures, there is a different type of peace that the Lord offers the Christian. For the sake of this article, we will label these two different types of peace as WORDLY PEACE and BIBLICAL PEACE Jesus references this BIBLICAL PEACE, in John 14:27 and provides us some descriptors of this BIBLICAL PEACE when he says “Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Do not let your heart be troubled, nor let it be fearful.” In this verse Jesus explicitly states that his BIBLICAL peace is different than WORDLY PEACE and he teaches us that His peace offers untroubled hearts and fearless hearts. Do life circumstances leave you experiencing fear and with a troubled heart? If this is our experience, then we are not living in the BIBLICAL PEACE that He offers to the Christian. A legitimate question then becomes “How do I grab hold of, or experience, this BIBLICAL PEACE that God offers us?” We find answers in Isaiah 26:3. Isaiah 26:3 begins with a promise that “You (God) will keep him (man) in perfect peace.” What a wonderful promise of God! God himself will KEEP ME IN PERFECT PEACE! But as with all promises in Scripture, God gives man His promises so that HE can get man to do what HE...
by Mitch Hershey | Sep 1, 2026 | Articles, Mentors Corner
The Bible has much to say about fearing God. In fact, the command to fear God is mentioned over 100 times throughout Scripture. But what does the Bible say about fearing man? “And be not afraid of them that kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matthew 10:28). In 1 Samuel 15, we see an example of what happens when we fear man instead of God. In the beginning of the chapter, God gives King Saul clear instructions to “strike Amalek and devote to destruction all that they have” (v3). Saul was not to spare anyone or anything – no person, no animal. Saul and the army of Israel do in fact defeat Amalek, but they took King Agag alive rather than killing him and they took the best of the sheep, oxen, fattened calves, and lambs. In v. 11, God speaks to Samuel and says that he regrets making Saul king because “he has turned back from following me and has not performed my commandments.” When Samuel confronts Saul the next day, Saul speaks first and says that he has performed the commandment of the Lord. When Samuel questions him, Saul defends his actions by saying that it was so they could offer sacrifices to God. Samuel reiterates the clear command that God gave to Saul – destroy everything. Once again, Saul then defends his actions as to why he did not obey God’s instructions. Samuel’s words to Saul after that are convicting: “Has the Lord as much delight...
by Jim Gustafson | Aug 16, 2026 | Articles, Mentors Corner
“It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life “(John 6:63). God has structured our existence with two lives: 1) the one that finds our hope in what we see, feel and experience in this lifetime and 2) the life of the Spirit, one characterized by a hope in the unseen. The first is a temporary hope because all that is seen eventually vanishes or rots away. As a result, it is a hope that cannot be fulfilled. Ironically, it is embraced and encouraged by the world and claims to reward those that seek it. It has an end. It is dead (spiritually). It leads to death (physically). It is used by Satan to entice us and to deceive us. It seems right but does not satisfy—It leaves us always wanting more. “There is a way which seems right to a man, But its end is the way of death” (Proverbs 14:12). In the end, this temporal life disappoints. It is empty, void of any legitimate hope and meaningful purpose. Ecclesiastes describes it as vanity, it is like a wasteland. It promises much, but delivers only enough to keep you pursuing. Solomon presents a stark commentary on the realities of the hope in the temporal life, after having missed the life in the Spirit. It is stark because man has sought to make the life of the temporal something it was never meant to be. It seems that hope in the temporal is ultimately so full of despair, its purpose is to guide us...
by Matt Ramey | Aug 4, 2026 | Articles, Mentors Corner
“Walk in a manner worthy of the calling” is the call to believers out of Ephesians 4:1-8. We have a duty to uphold, being adopted sons of God and imitators of Christ. Humility is freedom from pride and arrogance. However, it is not thinking poorly of ourselves. Instead, humility is the recognition that everything we have comes from God, that we are sinners saved by grace, that we are not superior to others, and that God is the ultimate authority—not us. Humility must be learned, because our natural instinct is often to exalt ourselves. Philippians 2:3–8 gives a clear example of this humility in Christ. Paul tells believers to do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but to regard others as more important than themselves. We are created to look out for our own interests, but we are also called to look for the interests of others. Jesus is the perfect picture of this. Though He existed in the form of God, He “did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped. ”Instead, He “emptied Himself”, took the form of a bond-servant, and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross. That is maximum humility! The concept of being humble appears repeatedly throughout the Bible, and usually with an attached promise. For instance, James 4:10 says, “Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord, and He will exalt you.” And, “GOD IS OPPOSED TO THE PROUD, BUT GIVES GRACE TO THE HUMBLE” in 1 Peter 5:5-6. This repeated lesson is simple: we must let God exalt us and avoid exalting ourselves. Gentleness is the...
by Craig McAndrews | Jul 20, 2026 | Articles, Testimonies
For most of my adult life, I have been a striver. I wanted to excel at work. In leadership. In health. In every measurable category available to me. If there was a scoreboard, I wanted to be winning. Success was tangible. It could be tracked. And over time, I accumulated some wins. But with each win came reinforcement of a definition of success shaped more by the world than by Scripture. I believed the gospel. I believed salvation was by grace. Yet I often lived as though approval—God’s and everyone else’s—still depended on my performance. Paul’s question to the Galatians challenges me: “Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?” (Galatians 3:3). Much of my striving wasn’t ambition. It was fear. Fear of failure. Fear of letting people down. Fear that if I stopped producing, I might matter less. Striving feels noble when people depend on you. As men, we are called to work, to lead, to take responsibility. Those are good and biblical callings. But somewhere along the way, striving can result in carrying responsibility for outcomes God never intended for us to carry. The Bible contrasts the striving of man with the sovereignty of God in Psalm 46:10: Cease striving and know that I am God (NASB1995). When we are still, when we hold loosely to outcomes and let the Lord lead, then we become more aware of God’s will for our lives. It’s not an invitation to complacency but a call to surrender. A return to fully depending on God. Ceasing to strive doesn’t mean abandoning ambition. It means to focus...
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