Tommy Mann

  The tongue and the heart are two very different organs. No one would ever get them confused, and they serve drastically different functions. You would not go to a cardiologist because of a sore on your tongue, and you would not go to an otolaryngologist if your heart is beating out of rhythm. And yes, I had to Google “what is a tongue doctor” for that last sentence.    While the heart and tongue are indeed very different, they are also closely related. Charles Spurgeon once quipped that the tongue in man is tied by a string to the heart. The words we say, and even the lifestyle we portray, is really a heart issue.   As Jesus said, “The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks (Luke 6:45).”   The tongue in man truly is tied to the heart because the words we say originate from the heart. Just as our bank records are a good in...

  When I was in junior high the Orlando Magic signed Spud Webb. At 5 feet 6 inches, Webb is one of the shortest players in NBA history, and the fact that he was successful made him a sensation. To introduce him to the community, Webb held an autograph signing at a local shoe store, so I joined a group of my friends to go meet the little legend.    There were signs posted everywhere that told us there was a one autograph per person limit. I came with a basketball card from Webb’s days with the Sacramento Kings, and they were giving away 5x7 card stock pictures of Webb in his Magic uniform. I wanted to get both signed, so I decided to try.    When it was my turn to approach the table I put my card down and he signed it without looking up. I casually slid the other card his way, and without skipping a beat he flipped it back to me and reached for the next person’s card. The security guard told me to keep moving, and reminded me of the one autograph maximum.  ...

What was David’s grave sin? You know what I’m talking about, that terrible thing he did that brought so many negative consequences for his family. Hint: it involves Bathsheba and Uriah.   Most of us are familiar with the account of David’s lust and subsequent defilement of Bathsheba, and then his dastardly plot to cover it up, which culminated in the murder of her husband Uriah. It is a terrible story, and certainly the low point in David’s life. You may well have answered the question of what was David’s grave sin by saying adultery, lust, murder, selfishness, or something else along those lines.  And that is true, for David is guilty and without excuse. But when he was confronted by Nathan the prophet, Nathan framed the sin as an affront against God first and foremost. He didn’t pull any punches. In 2 Samuel 12:9 he bravely asked the king, “Why have you despised the word of the LORD, to do what is evil in His sight?”   One verse later he said David’s impending punishmen...

Do you know your spiritual gifts? I remember taking spiritual gift inventory assessments when I was younger, a tool to help Christians identify and utilize their gifts from the   Holy Spirit. Four places in the New Testament list a total of about twenty different spiritual gifts (1 Corinthians 12:28, Ephesians 4:11-12, Romans 12:6-8, and 1 Peter 4:10-11).    Something that jumps out at me when I read these four lists is that they are not uniform; some gifts appear more than once, while others do not, and some (I believe) are not in use today. I don’t believe, then, that we need to be so rigid about what the gifts of the Spirit are; there may be other gifts not necessarily listed, like those who use their giftedness with technology in the church. Consider what we read about the construction of the tabernacle in Exodus 35:   The Lord “has filled [Bezalel] with the Spirit of God, with skill, with intelligence, with knowledge, and with all craftsmanship, to devise artist...

  The Bible calls us to show love. Jesus Himself said loving God and loving our neighbor constitutes the two greatest commandments. We might become tempted to make a list of people we are supposed to love, and then keep a separate list of people we don’t actually have to love. But the author of Hebrews did not give us that option.   Notice what he says in 13:1-2: “Let brotherly love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.”    This brotherly love, as some will recognize, is  philadelphia  in Greek, where the famous city in Pennsylvania (the city of brotherly love) derives its name. It is a combination of two words, and it literally means love from the same womb. The author told the Hebrews to love all those from the same womb. Because they were all Jews, they were each descended from the womb of Sarah, the matriarch of Israel. There is a clear call to love their fellow countrymen.  ...