Our Blog Words of Encouragement & Useful Resources

The miracle of the fallen walls of Jericho recorded in Joshua 5-6 is among the most familiar Old Testament stories. The Israelites marching around the walls, the trumpets and shouting, and the “against all odds” disintegration of an up-until-then impenetrable barrier...

I was deployed with the US Army just 2 weeks after the attacks of 9/11. Eventually, much of our unit found its way to Afghanistan where we were assigned several interpreters. I connected with an interpreter from Pakistan who happened to be Christian. We became very...

My childhood home area was the Appalachian foothills of northern Pennsylvania, a place aptly nicknamed “the endless mountains” of PA. It’s a landscape of wooded rolling hills capped with untold millions of trees, making for bright greens in spring, deeper emeralds in...

I want to let you in on some wrestling I have been doing with God lately. It involves two unassailable Biblical facts about Jesus. First, Jesus never compromised, soft-pedaled, or underplayed truth. Jesus never sinned in any way (Hebrews 4:15, 2 Corinthians 5:21)....

Many of us have watched a television series that ends an episode with a “cliffhanger.” That’s the strategy that leaves an important plot element hanging in the balance without resolution, leading us to say, “wait, what is going to happen?” The need to know how things...

The “Christmas story” is one of the Bible’s most well-known accounts. For Christians and non-Christians alike, the “baby born in a manger” is a familiar event, as the season’s many nativity displays attest. The challenge, though, is that our familiarity may mask how...

We Christians enter the Thanksgiving season with an opportunity to “choose to give thanks.” Many Americans are driven by their feelings—after all, one of the most common excuses for stepping away from most anything is, “I don’t feel like it!”. People abandon marriage...

Any time I have the opportunity to take a commercial airline flight, I am freshly amazed at the view from 30,000 feet. While the details of what is on the ground don’t change physically, seeing them from cruising altitude provides a totally different perspective....

My wife and I noticed yesterday the first blush of brown amongst the green soybean fields in our area. Even as the summer heat lingers, the crops are hinting that harvest is on the way. Farmers are aware of the “harvest envelope,” the limited time between the final...

I remember times during my childhood when my father would send me out of the house with the statement, “You are a Kephart, so act like one!” Dad didn’t intend his words to be particularly philosophical, but his comment accurately reflects God’s heart when it comes to...

A Vienna regulator pendulum clock hangs on our living room wall, with “Kephart” and “1989” carved on the access door. It’s the one object of significant value and quality I have ever hand-made—or, more correctly, was coached through hand-making by an extremely patient...

I recently came across this quote from Steven Covey, the noted organizational expert: “Trust is the glue of life. It’s the most essential ingredient in effective communication. It’s the foundational principle that holds all relationships.” Indeed, trust— “the belief...

As the Ohio corn and soybean planting season draws to a close, I am reminded of the children’s story “The Little Ren Hen”. That’s the one where a hen approaches her fellow farm animals multiple times, seeking help for sowing, reaping, and grinding her wheat crop but...

Women’s ministry leadership team prays together regularly and our planning teams take a significant amount of time to pray before conducting business. Prayer is a vital ingredient in outreach efforts and our women are praying for lost people by name. An emergency...

Relationships are the main tools for ministry. A critical function of church programming is to provide opportunities for developing, cultivating, and maintaining relational connections between church family members. Whether worship services, life groups of Sunday...