Kingdom of God – Page 2 – Pathway Journey

June 27, 2025June 26, 2025

Understanding God’s Plan in a Troubling World

The randomness of life keeps many people on edge, indifferent, completely checked out of life, or deeply troubled. Life can be difficult, and those difficulties can send us looking for the answers to why. Problems cause us to deal with immediate needs and then the lasting aftermath of making sense of it all.

Some resign themselves to fatalism. This is a belief that whatever happens is predetermined. They think, so what’s the use to even try? This would be like someone getting a hurricane warning and taking no action either in preparation or evacuation.

Other folks are overcome by fear. This fear is coupled with hopelessness. They fall into the pit of despondency. This spoils any part of their lives that have moments of joy.

June 18, 2025June 17, 2025

How Much Does It Cost?

NOTE: This blog post was originally written and shared by me in 2018. I thought I would give it a quick edit and run it through the rinse cycle one more time!

How Much Does It Cost?

“How much does it cost?”, it is a question we ask when we shop. But life is a series of questions of, “How much does it cost?” It all comes down to value. Everything has a value fixed at a different level by different people. What do we really value?

May 27, 2025May 26, 2025

How to Live; How to Die

There are thousands of self-help books promising how to be successful or how to be effective. The Bible, by far, is the most powerful book and instructive book ever written. It tells us how to live. It also shows us how to die.

I have made the Word of God a part of my daily life for many decades. It is one of the most important things I have ever done. The Word of God was delivered into our hands by His servants who penned them thousands of years ago. It is an ancient book that speaks strongly to us today. There are none like it nor shall there ever be.

Learn with me from a few verses from the Apostle Paul to his spiritual son Timothy.

April 25, 2025April 24, 2025

Paul and Silas’ Response to Persecution

Join me in a little stroll through Acts chapter 16 as we journey with Paul and Silas.

We must minister to those God sends us and work with those God brings alongside us.
Paul on his second missionary journey was accompanied by Silas. Silas was not Paul’s first choice as a traveling partner. Barnabas was Paul’s first missionary partner on the first journey. While planning the second missionary journey, Paul and Barnabas had an argument about whether to take Mark who had abandoned them on the first trip. Paul did not want him to go, but Barnabas insisted. Unable to come to an agreement, they separated and went different ways.

April 16, 2025April 16, 2025

The Division of the Resurrection

In my early childhood days, my mother usually bought me an Easter outfit. It wasn’t a suit. It was a pair of pants and usually a matching pastel colored shirt. She warned me to keep it nice because I would be wearing the same outfit on Decoration Day at our community cemetery. To those of you not from the Deep South, decoration day is a certain Sunday designated by the community to decorate the graves of departed family members. It often included a dinner on the ground, an all-day singing, and a community reunion rolled into one event.

April 3, 2025May 2, 2025

Message of the Cross

Jesus was not the first person ever crucified. The Persians had diabolically invented crucifixion in about 300 BC. The Romans of Jesus’ time had put the practice to their own evil ends. It was considered the worst punishment that could be carried out.

Man was created in the image of God, and one aspect of that image was the ability to imagine and create things. This endued gift in the fallen man was corrupted to invent objects for evil use. Death by crucifixion was one of those things. The word we use for unbearable pain is excruciating—which is from the Latin word “excruciare” [ex-scru-char-a] meaning “out of the cross, to torture.” We could say that excruciating is the pain of the cross.

March 13, 2025March 13, 2025

The Paradox of Faith Explained

One of the definitions of paradox is a “statement that seems to say two opposite things but may be true” (Merriam—Webster Dictionary). There are times when we have faith but at the same time doubt raises its ugly head. I assume most Christians struggle in some way with their faith-walk. We walk with Jesus but also leave our footprint in the dust of the earth.

Everyone looks a little better from a distance. When we get closer, we see they are human also. We all have some struggles of faith even though at times other people may think we have it altogether.

When a compliment comes my way, I am more apt to wince than gloat. I have a pretty good idea of who I am. Truth be known, none of us are great men of God, we are mere men who serve a Great God. Our feet are of clay, we just happen to stand on the Rock.

March 6, 2025March 5, 2025

True Disciple: A Follower of Jesus

A disciple of Jesus is a follower of Jesus. Someone who merely acknowledges Jesus as a great religious leader is not a disciple. Many people have only a mental nod to who Jesus is.

The first step of becoming a true disciple is when an individual receives a spiritual revelation of the reality of who Jesus is and their own need for a Savior. The seed for this revelation is the Word of God when one hears the Gospel. This revelation creates a strong desire to follow the One, who has the words of eternal life.

February 20, 2025February 25, 2025

The Bible in a Capsule: God’s Plan of Redemption

The story began long before Jesus was born in Bethlehem. It begins even before the events of the book of Genesis. The Bible tells us that the Son of God is eternal, not only in the future but also in the past.

The Word of God proclaims, “He [Jesus] indeed was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you” (1 Pet. 1:20 (NKJV). God the Father designated God the Son to be the one and only sacrifice for sin from before the beginning of time.

February 6, 2025February 6, 2025

Obscurity of Earth and the Known of Heaven

In the world of social media and in the nature of man, there is a desire by many to be recognized and perhaps even be famous. Many want to become the next TikTok or YouTube sensation. Perhaps we should be more concerned about being known in Heaven.

We should not seek fame but seek to be more like Jesus. It is more important to be obedient to His purpose than to desire His help with our plans. If we are faithful to His purpose then we will be among those known in Heaven.

Most of us will live in obscurity on earth. The vast majority of us will be completely forgotten two generations after our death. Most graves are eventually unvisited. Remember, those old forgotten family photos that hang on Cracker Barrel Restaurant walls next to an old rusty relic were once real families.