Tommy Mann

  Where we sit says a lot about us. Or I should say, who we sit with says a lot about us. Do you prefer the company of the wicked or the righteous?   In Psalm 26 David prayed for God to vindicate him because he was being falsely accused of something. To David, the problem wasn’t just that he was accused of something he didn’t do, but that he was accused of something he wouldn’t do because he hated it.  (Although we don’t know for sure, this psalm may be in reference to the assassination of Ishbosheth, the son of Saul who installed himself as king even though David had been anointed as successor. People likely accused David of ordering the hit, and he didn’t want people think he condoned the murder.) In v.4-5 of the psalm the king said, “I do not sit with men of falsehood, nor do I consort with hypocrites. I hate the assembly of evildoers, and I will not sit with the wicked.” If hate seems like a strong word, to David it wasn’t strong enough. What else could he say? He loa...

  Two famous men lived at the same time in the mid 19 th   Century. One was Charles Spurgeon, one of the most beloved men to ever stand in the pulpit. The other man was Karl Marx, the communist leader whose ideals resulted in the death of millions of people around the world.     Part of Marx’s strategy was to supplant Christianity because he viewed it as the greatest obstacle to his goals. Recognizing this, Spurgeon was an outspoken critic of both Marx and his socialist ideals. This was more than just political disagreements, but was Christianity vs. atheism. Marx was successful in turning many pastors towards socialism, but it was a Godless religion, one that minimized the cross and the sacrifice of Jesus.   Marx wrote  The Communist Manifesto,  but he didn’t write alone. He had a coauthor named Friedrich Engels. Engels was asked near the end of his life who was the one person he disliked most in the world, and he replied with one word: Spurgeon. The ...

  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...