Pastor Mickey

This week marked the 33rd Wedding Anniversary I share with Glenda, the love of my life...We have been so blessed to walk arm and arm through these past years. Perhaps the greatest thing about our life together, in addition to holding our children and grandchildren for the first time...is ministering to people! Our pastoral call has brought us in contact with some of the most awesome people on the planet. We have met brothers and sisters in Christ on three continents, as we worship our Lord and Savior with them! Yes, there have been difficult times, when walking through tragedy, death or disease...but the good times far out-weigh the bad... We love our call, and consider ourselves fortunate to bear the name of Jesus to the nations of the world! We are humbled to serve His people, and to walk through life together!!

On Dec. 31st at 11:59 pm EST, over one billion people around the world watched as the “ball” dropped in New York City’s Times Square. The 1st "time-ball" was installed on top of England’s Royal Observatory at Greenwich in 1833. After the success of that event, approximately 150 such time-balls were installed around the world. But few survive and still work. The tradition is carried on today in places like the United States Naval Observatory in Washington, DC, where a time-ball descends from a flagpole at noon each day - and of course, once a year in Times Square, where it marks the stroke of midnight. New York City actually held a New Years celebration as early as 1904, but it wasn’t until 1907 that they “dropped” an iron and wood ball and adorned with a hundred 25-watt light bulbs. It was 5 feet in diameter and weighed 700 pounds. From that date until today, the ball has dropped every year except 1942 and 1943 during the City’s WWII “dim-outs”. Crowds still gathered in ...

When I was a boy, growing up in India, I often went to a potter's house near my high school. I was fascinated to watch him make clay vessels. During those visits, I never saw the potter take a hardened lump of clay and put it on his wheel to make something out of it. He, just like every other potter in the world, used only soft and tender clay to work with. So does God! The prophet Jeremiah tells us that God is like a potter and His people are the clay He wants to form into a beautiful vessel. In order to accomplish this, God looks for soft and pliable hearts. Man measures the quality and usefulness of a person by his education, ability and expertise. Yet God determines his true value by the condition of his heart: "Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart" (1 Samuel 16:7). What Happens if the Clay Is Hard? If the clay is hard, the potter will spend days pouring water on it and pounding it thoroughly until it becomes soft. It took God 20 long ...