Tommy Mann

Christians should be able to rest easy knowing that God is sovereign. According to the dictionary, to be sovereign means to be “supreme in rank or authority,” and God certainly is that. The word   reign  is right there in the word—as our Sovereign God, He reigns supreme over the universe He created.     The word sovereign does not appear in the Bible, but Isaiah 45:5-7 says, “I am the LORD, and there is no other, besides me there is no God; I equip you, though you do not know me, that people may know, from the rising of the sun and from the west, that there is none besides me; I am the LORD, and there is no other. I form light and create darkness; I make well-being and create calamity; I am the LORD, who does all these things.”   That sounds like sovereignty to me.   God does whatever He wants. He consults no one; He seeks advice from no one; He answers to no one. Psalm 115:3 tells us, “Our God is in the heavens;  He does all that he pleases .”   We might be tempted to think that we ar

Twelve years can seem like an eternity to some people, and yet feel like just months to others. When you are twelve years old, that number is literally a lifetime. But when your baby turns twelve, you shake your head and wonder, “Where has the time gone? How did this happen so fast?”    In Luke 8 there are two people involved in the same span of time—twelve years—but their circumstances could not have been more different. There is an important man named Jairus, a leader among Jews in his synagogue. He made his way to Jesus to implore Him for a healing because, “he had an only daughter, about twelve years of age, and she was dying (v.42).”   His little girl. The one who hugged him as he tucked her into bed at night. The one who melted his heart when she called him  Daddy.  His  only  little girl. Now she is sick, and as the Greek text reads, was “at her last breath.” Indeed, she would die within a few minutes of her father finding Jesus.    His twelve years with his daughter had surely

One of my favorite poems by Robert Frost is Wind and Window Flower, which goes in part like this: Lovers, forget your love, and list to the love of these: She a window flower, and he a winter breeze. Perchance he half prevailed to win her for the flight, From the fire-lit looking glass and warm stove-window light. But the flower leaned aside and thought of naught to say, And morning found the breeze a hundred miles away.* Despite being a person who likes to be on stage, I have always struggled in one-on-one conversations. I would rather talk to a thousand people than one person. In high school I often used this poem as motivation to push myself outside of my comfort zone. I never wanted to be like that flower, who, thinking of nothing to say, missed out on what could have been a life-changing relationship. Today this poem reminds me to share the gospel. If I choose to keep my mouth closed, morning might find that person a hundred miles away.