August 31, 2026

Dear Friend,

Two ministry trips separated by 56 years¹

My Most Recent Ministry Trip

June’s ministry trip to the Iowa Holiness Association camp meeting has come and gone. So far as I can tell, the trip was blessed in every way I look at it:

• Fellowship:
  Our dear friends, Al & Sue Strickland²

  There were refreshing and encouraging visits during the trip with friends and family. (Hello again to Al & Sue, Cyril & Jan, Brady & Leah, Misty, Keith, Dorian, Colleen & Donny, Dave & Eva, Becky, Ray & Twila Mae, Michael, Kristen & Alyson, and so many others!) And there were many hours of sharing between meetings, over meals, and into [continue reading…]

Copyright © 2007¹

Chapter 13 of the book
Boyhood Memories & Lessons
by
Isaiah Reid

This article is also available in the complete paperback version.

BUT FEW NOW KNOW about log meeting houses in all this central west, yet they were common in the opening of the country. Won­derful meetings have been held in them. Heaven will be richer for the work wrought in these rude places of worship. Grand characters were forged there. There were sound conversions. There were vigorous gospel sermons. The stal­warts of the last generation were spiritually born there, where “the old-time religion” we now sing about was in the full bloom of its glory. What if they had no gothic architecture, chancel win­dows, or carpeted aisles? They had what is infinitely better, actual sal­vation that saved. What if they had no fine turnouts and cushioned pews? They had the fine array of the saints, which was so well pleasing to God. Ah! good old days of simplicity and faith that took hold of God!

The plat of ground on which the church stood was not large. The build­ing was in [continue reading…]

Copyright © 2007¹

Chapter 3 of the book
Boyhood Memories & Lessons
by
Isaiah Reid

This article is also available in the complete paperback version.

THERE ARE OTHER FACTORS than nature around us whose environments have large part in molding and shaping all young life. Parental influence is both pre- and post-natal. Doubtless there are hereditary tendencies in our nature which largely affect us; but greater, perhaps, are the early home life influences. I remember Bishop William Taylor² told us, when speaking of the children born in Africa, that they were not born heathen, though born on heathen soil, and that if they were taken before they had learned the ways of their people, they were no more heathen than our children. This makes but little place for hereditary influence, and places the more weighty bulk of evidence in favor of early life and teachings.

Traveling in review the byways of my early life, I notice there is much in hereditary and early family life that has helped to make me what I am, though it was not until later years I came to any [continue reading…]

7 June 2026

Dear Friend,

“Here’s Your Hat. What’s Your Hurry?”

I don’t know where my dad got the expression, but he frequently would say, “Here’s your hat; what’s your hurry?” if someone had to leave quickly. (And, come to think of it, I heard him say it when he wished someone would leave!)

Like I said, it’s a long trip!

Well, even though I don’t normally wear a hat, I am in a hurry packing to leave tomorrow, June 8th, for a long ministry road trip. When I say long, I mean that Google Maps tells me that I’ll log over 3,500 miles (about 5,600 kilometers) between now and when I get home (around July 2nd). My spirit was uneasy until I postponed a July 1st doctor appointment so that I could extend the trip just a bit. As soon as I did that, I was released in the Spirit to finish planning.

So this short newsletter is mainly a prayer request [continue reading…]

Copyright © 2007¹

Chapter 4 of the book
Boyhood Memories & Lessons
by
Isaiah Reid

This article is also available in the complete paperback version.

COUNTRY AND HOME have their universal impress on the race. Among other well-defined environments that help largely to make us what we are is the home church and its life and in­flu­ence. As the years move me away from life’s first sights, sounds, and im­pres­sions, the old church crops out more and more like the rocks on my na­tive hills.

The old log church was a very primitive affair. It was not a quarter of a mile from the old home, up a little incline to the top of the ridge, and through a strip of old-time forest which the axe had but little marred. The bur­ial of my grandfather was the first gathering of the people ever held at the place. There in the deep, dark woods they laid him to rest, when as yet the trees had kept their silent and solemn guard for long centuries. When I came to know the place, a nice plat of ground had all been nicely cleared off, fenced, sown in grass, and planted with some shrubbery, and was already marked with a number of [continue reading…]

Jim Kerwin
(1952- )

To discover more hymns, visit our growing list of Powerful Poetry.

Copyright © 2007¹

Chapter 2 of the book
Boyhood Memories & Lessons
by
Isaiah Reid

This article is also available in the complete paperback version.

IT IS HARDLY FAIR to refer all the meaning there is in these words of inspiration to the mineral treasures hid in the hills, or their wealth of timber or pasture, or in their springs, or rugged fastnesses, na­ture’s strong fortifications. “Our fathers worshiped in this moun­tain,” said Jesus.² Always in the heights of the hills has there been a sug­ges­tive­ness in the minds of the races, that as heaven was “on high,” so the heights were nearer to God. It is true also that re­markable events, some of them the most momentous that humanity knows, occurr­ed on these same heights. The second cradling of the race was on Mt. Ararat.³ The Law for God’s whole world was a mountaintop revelation.⁴ Mount Mor­iah was the scene of Abraham’s greatest trial,⁵ and the heaven-ap­point­ed place [continue reading…]

Palm Sunday, March 2026

An Easter Verb

(See image credit below.)¹

Dear Friend,

I’m writing these words on Palm Sunday 2026. And I’m putting off the conclusion of our series on Little Faith and God’s Faith because a word has been impressed on my heart. It’s a Greek word that sneaked up on me during my morning Greek research this past week; but now it’s also an abiding Easter verb for me because of its special association with the Resurrection.

Here’s the background: Oikos (οἶκος) is a very common New Testament noun. It means a house or dwelling or just about any place a person might live; and by simple extension, it also means household, that is, all the people who live in the oikos. There’s a closet full of oikos-related words in the New Testament, some of which come down to us in English, like our word economy (oikonomía / οἰκονομία — management of a household).

A related verb—oikéō / οἰκέω—means to dwell [in a home]. It’s used of a married couple dwelling with each other (1 Corinthians 7:12-13), and of [continue reading…]

Copyright © 2007¹

Chapter 1 of the book
Boyhood Memories & Lessons
by
Isaiah Reid

This article is also available in the complete paperback version.

The above words of the poet Hood² tell with simplicity and ever fresh­ness just a few things which draw after them memories ev­ery heart weaves into its own life story. The following from our own Bryant³ no less touch the deep memories of life’s first years.

I stand upon my native hill again,
Broad, round, and green, that, in the southern sky
With garniture of waving grass and grain,
Orchards and beechen forests, basking lie;
While deep the sunless glens are scooped between,
Where brawl o’er shallow beds the streams unseen.⁴

One cannot well escape [continue reading…]

Copyright © 2007¹

Introduction to the book
Boyhood Memories & Lessons
by
Isaiah Reid

This article is also available in the complete paperback version.

There are days when the tides of life seem turned back, and we obey the divine injunction, “Remember the days of old.”² It is not that we have willed to do so, or had so planned it. These days just come. They have their own times and seasons. We know not their day and hour. We cannot produce them at will. They drift in on us as a “sweet refrain,” setting aside the present or so molding it and suffusing it with a softened, mellowed light that life is ever afterward different, owing to the new meaning brought in. We pay little attention to these memories. We may not even cherish the occasion or give the suggested thought any special attention.

Perhaps these seasons belong more to middle and post-meridian life than to youth, and yet I remember they began with me early. After the win­ter school closed and the long vacation followed, and I saw not the happy faces any more, I remember how fondly, and yet with a cherished sadness, the hours of remembrance would come on me and make me almost live over the lost hours. Later, when school life, [continue reading…]

6 November 2025

Dear Friend,

I’m showing a magnification of black mustard seeds here, but lest you think that they’re anywhere near this big…¹
…here’s a small pile of “yellow” and black mustard seeds compared with 2 centimeters (20 millimeters), or a smidge less than 13/16 of an inch.

In the last newsletter, we explored our human state of oligópistos — “little faith.” I say it’s a “human state,” because each of us, created in the image of God, has a measure of faith. But like all the elements in natural man, that measure of faith is diminished, enervated, and spoiled by sin. Human faith can accomplish certain things (the old phrase from the 50s and 60s—“positive thinking”—comes to mind), but in Kingdom matters it has its limits; and all too often we crash up against those limits.

The original “ye of little faith” Apostles were keenly aware of such crashing failures, and each of the Synoptic writers (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) has Jesus addressing these men when they’ve reached their limit. Two incidents are similar. In Matthew 17:19-20, nine of the Apostles, perplexed by their inability to deliver a demon-possessed boy, ask Jesus, “Why could we not drive it out?” “Because of the littleness of your faith,” is Jesus’ reply. And Luke 17:5-6 records their plea to Jesus at another time: “Increase our faith!” (As for Mark’s contribution, we’ll get to that in a bit.)

In both cases, Jesus’ response is the same: “If [continue reading…]

25 May 2025

Dear Friend,

One helpful benefit of extra shelving: my grew-up-in-Africa missionary-kid wife gets to display many of her African treasures and mementos in special ways.¹

At long last we are seeing a light at the end of the tunnel of unpacking and “moving in.” As our three recent family deaths fall farther behind us, the Lord has been enabling us to give more focus and energy to completing our task of getting settled. In practical terms, the most helpful step forward has been the building of bookshelves. Those erected in Denise’s office and the living room have allowed the emptying and displaying of many boxes of books, photo albums, family photos and heirlooms, as well as other memorabilia. Two new bookcases for my office have added sufficient shelf space for the rest of my boxed books.

What’s ironic is that all the time we’ve been building those bookcases and emptying boxes, I’ve been thinking about “being shelved” spiritually for the last year or more. There are those times in our Christian walk and ministry during which God takes us and sets us aside— puts us “on a shelf,” so to speak, taking us out of normal ministry and duties. These times of “being shelved” used to be very worrisome for me: Was God displeased with me in some way? Had I offended Him? What could I do to get back in His good graces?

One advantage of being an older Christian is [continue reading…]

Copyright © 2025¹

by
Percy Gutteridge

The Original Blessing and Its Loss

In the beginning Adam and Eve were created partners, of the same substance. Eve and women were not created to be a different and an inferior race. They had the same kind of natural, physical body, the same kind of soul, the same kind of spirit. Woman, like man, was a tri-unity, a trichotomy—body, soul, and spirit. Thus Mary, the mother of Jesus, speaking out of her physical body, could prophetically say,

⁴⁶“My soul magnifies the Lord,
⁴⁷And my spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior.”
Luke 1:46-47

The original blessing of God was on the pair, not upon Adam alone—

Once again, please note that the blessing is on them, not only upon him.

Available soon as a Kindle ebooklet

But there came the Fall and the sentence of judgment upon the man and the woman. Eve was made subject to her husband:

“…Your desire shall be for your husband,
And he shall rule over you.”
Genesis 3:16

But notice that this was a punishment upon Eve; it was not so at the beginning. And unfortunately, with ever-increasing sin, evil men took advantage [continue reading…]