Grace Baptist Church

At the mention of Halloween, most people think of kids having fun dressing up and collecting as much candy as they can. It is a time to have some extra fun with hay rides and haunted houses. Dusk comes early and there is ample opportunity to enjoy being scared of what is imagined to be in the dark. Yet, is there more to Halloween than just fun, games, and wild imaginations? Is there really something lurking in the shadows that we can’t see? Read More

Seventeen years ago, on a picture perfect September morning, four planes took off into the beautiful blue morning sky never to return to an airport again. Nineteen men aboard these planes were set on a suicide mission to use these jets, full of passengers, as weapons of mass destruction against innocent civilians. Three planes hit their mark, one into each tower of the World Trade Center in Manhattan, NY, completely destroying the towers, and one into the Pentagon in Washington D.C. The fourth plane crashed into the Western Pennsylvania countryside. Almost 3000 people lost their lives that fateful day in September, in one of the most egregious acts of aggression our country has ever seen. It seemed as if we all suffered loss that infamous day, if not the loss of a friend or loved one, then the loss of naivety and a sense of security. Though terrorism was nothing new around the world, that day it became real to those of us who call the United States home. Shortly thereafter, a new phase arose in our nation’s vocabulary- “The War on Terror;” a war that has continued for seventeen years and still seems to have no end in sight.

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It was a beautifully bright sunny and hot late July morning in 2017. The heavy morning dew had recently evaporated away by the heat of the sun. It was time to resume harvesting wheat, and I had no time to spare. You see, for the past couple of weeks it seemed that just about every time the wheat was dry enough to combine, it rained. The wheat was starting to sprout because of all the rain, and it needed to get out of the field and into a dry bin. As was typical for this season, the forecast for this particular day was chance of showers in the early afternoon, and I still had two other farmers counting on me to harvest their wheat after I finished this job! To top it all off, we were missing our lake side camping reservations in the Adirondack mountains, and my wife and kids were waiting for me to finish combining so that we might be able to salvage at least part of our vacation (on a dryer, “normal” year, wheat harvest would have been finished a couple weeks earlier). Read More

By Rob Wilson

When a women becomes a mother, there are many things she has to give up, like time alone, a clean house, sleep, and a quiet dinner in a nice restaurant. These are all things which my wife, Kim, has likewise had to do without, but this Mother’s day she was really looking forward to once again enjoying a meal in a fancy restaurant. I was more than glad to oblige her in this request, and so I made dinner reservations for our family. As it turned out we did have a good time, and a memorable evening, but  just not the way we used to enjoy a meal out together when it was just Kim and me. Read More

This past Thursday afternoon as I started up my pickup truck, I caught the tail end of a news report stating that a bridge had collapse, people had been trapped, and casualties had occurred. As it turned out, this breaking story was that of the collapse of a pedestrian bridge which had been under construction at the edge of Florida International University's campus, in Miami, Florida. I later heard that six were confirmed dead, and nine taken to the hospital. My immediate response was to pray for all those involved, and then I thought how tragic this is, especially for a state and a nation still mourning the school shooting that happened just last month in Parkland, Florida. It seems like there is just one disaster after another these days. I knew that the big question of “why” would be on everyone’s mind, and that the news would be full of speculation. Then it occurred to me, that the Lord, whom many of us instinctively pray to in times like these, knows exactly what happened. It was not a surprise to Him. Read More

By Rob Wilson

Dr. Rosaria Butterfield was a professor of English and Queer Studies at Syracuse University. She described herself as being happy in the monogamous lesbian relationship which she had been in for a decade, but like the rest of us, she was blind to the truth about God, and headed toward an eternity without Him. Then God placed a believing couple, Ken and Floy Smith in her life. Read More

By Rob Wilson

Every Christmas Eve the whole Wilson Clan gathers at Grandma’s house for our Christmas celebration...This year, however, is going to be a little different, because for the first time, Grandma is not going to be there. You see on December 13^th the Lord suddenly took her home to be with him. She was 101 years old, but still in good health, still living at home, and still blessing & spoiling us in so many ways.  Read More

By Rob Wilson

In my last blog post we saw how Jesus is the solution to mankind’s heart problem and to the problem of hate and division in the world around us. We saw how God, through Jesus’s death on the cross, served our death sentence for us, sparing us from an eternity in Hell (the greatest danger facing mankind). We saw how God gives each believer a new heart which is able to love God and other people with the same supernatural love which God has loved us with; and we saw how this heart change can change bitter enemies into loving brothers. So what does this mean to you?

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By Rob Wilson 

My previous two blog posts (Part 1, Part 2) unpacked these truths in much greater detail, but left us in a depressing place. I am glad to say that we have now come to the solution! As bad as the problem is, the solution is disproportionally more amazing and wonderful! Read More

By Rob Wilson

In my last post I asked the questions “Why is there such racial and cultural division in our country, and why are we seeing so much hate and bloodshed?” We looked at the commonly held belief that something must be wrong in the environment in which these “persons of hate” grew up in. In other words, the blame rests fully on flaws in our country’s culture and societal institutions. This widely held belief is based upon the premise that people are naturally good. Yet, this premise is the exact opposite of what the Bible says is true of mankind. Read More