Pastor Claude Thomas Blog

Author: Pastor Claude Thomas

If a person is weighed down or menaced by some burden or threat, be alert to that and quickly do something to help. Don’t let them be crushed. Don’t let them be destroyed.
In the days of Jesus there was a religious group that was gifted at adding burdens to the already overburdened people. They were the scribes and Pharisees. Jesus said, “They bind heavy burdens hard to bear and lay them on men’s shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with their finger” (Mt. 23:4). Don’t increase burdens. Make them lighter for people. You may be wondering what you are supposed to do with your life. Here is a vocation that will bring you more satisfaction than if you became a millionaire ten times over: Develop the extraordinary skill for detecting the burdens of others and devote yourself daily to making them lighter. Some of the burdens people carry are spiritual. Some are physical. Others are mental. Then there are emotional loads that people carry. How can we share the burden of another? Here are some simple and practical ways: Listen to a person who is overloaded. It is amazing how much power there is in telling a caring person about the load you are carrying. Somehow, the opportunity to talk to another person lightens the load. Be willing to invest some time for listening.Pray for the person who is overloaded. We can never underestimate the power of prayer. Physically help when a person is overloaded. Help a neighbor who is working hard to move something out of his house. I have a friend who was president of a seminary. One day he knew a professor was going to roof his house. The president went over and helped the professor carry a heavy load. It was more than the professor could do by himself. So, the president helped lighten the physical load. Point people to Jesus. People are overloaded with guilt from a sin that they haven’t dealt with. What can we do? We can provide a caring atmosphere where they can deal with their guilt and experience the forgiveness of God and the help of His people. We can help others who are carrying a heavy load. And I cannot help but think of the children of our world who are hungry. We can help them lessen their loads.

Author: Pastor Claude Thomas

 For something to be strong and influential, values must be built into it. So it is with the family. We must have high values for our families. And again, we turn our attention to the Bible to gain a perspective of the values that build strong families. Paul, the Apostle, wrote a letter to the Ephesians and in chapters 5 and 6 he gave guidance for experiencing great relationships in the family.First, value the relationship of the husband and wife. The husband is to love and lead his wife, v. 23a, “For the husband is the head of the wife” = strongly leads. And he is to lovingly lead his wife, v.25, “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church…”= he sacrificially loves his wife.    Then the wife follows and respects her husband, v.22, “Wives submit to your own husbands…”= respect him and follow him.    Dads and Moms who give high priority to building a biblical relationship with each other are on their way to building a strong family. That relationship affects everything in the family!    Second, value the relationship of children to parents. Children, in action be obedient and in attitude be respectful. Listen to what he wrote in 6:1,2 “Obey your parents and honor your parents…”.    Students and children who listen to what God says about the relationship with mom and dad will add to their own well-being. If you will obey and respect them, it will be a positive thing for you all the days of your life!
Third, value the relationship of parents to children. Listen to what he said in v. 4, “…do not provoke your children to wrath… bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord” = avoid provoking the children by being a poor model, “do as I say and not as I do,” and sending negative messages that demean them.     Then positively parents are to nurture the children toward maturity with words and ways of reinforcing instruction and encouragement.   Parenting isn’t easy work. Someone said, “About the time we learn how to do it our children are grown and gone.”  Well, there is some truth there. Maybe that’s why God gave us a rather direct and easily understood guidance… avoid provocation and actively teach and nurture!  Each relationship within the family is important. Husband and wife. Wife and husband. Parent and child. Child and parent.   Now there is reason for this and the reason is simply right is best. ROI is a symbol well known in the business world. It simply designates the return made on investments. If the investment is good then we expect high yield or return. Well, Paul and current research reveals the same thing. If we give high value to the relationships of the family, we receive high value from those relationships! After twenty five years of research of over 14,000 families around the world, Stinnett and Beam concluded, “We are confronted daily with evidence that the quality of family life is crucial to our happiness, emotional well-being, and mental health. There isn’t a question about it any more: We know that poor relationships within the family are related to many problems in society.” (Fantastic Families. Stinnett and Beam, p.5).    Value the relationships within the family because the return is of great value!

Author: Pastor Claude Thomas

A golf bag has several clubs in it. They are of different composition and shape. And each club has a different usage depending on the situation. But a good golfer knows the clubs. And the golfer appreciates each for its uniqueness and purpose.

People are different too! And we are to be appreciated for our uniqueness. God made us that way. Here is how the Psalmist said it:

14 Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex!

Your workmanship is marvelous–and how well I know it.

15 You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion,

as I was woven together in the dark of the womb.

16 You saw me before I was born.

Every day of my life was recorded in your book.

Every moment was laid out

before a single day had passed.
17 How precious are your thoughts about me, O God!

They are innumerable!

18 I can’t even count them;

they outnumber the grains of sand!

And when I wake up in the morning,

you are still with me! Psalm 139:14-18 NLT
Each of us has a purpose. Your purpose may be quite different than another person. Yet, we know that God has created each of us with a purpose.

Each of us is important to the plan of God. He made us for Himself and for His design. He has declared us important.

Each of us is unique. We are not the same.

We appreciate how God has made us different and how God has given us different abilities. We are not the same and we rejoice in it! Let’s celebrate how God has made each of us.

Author: Pastor Claude Thomas
A little boy went to church services one Sunday in response to the encouragement of some friends from school. The little fellow was feeling insecure since “church” was out of his comfort zone. But he also felt a little excited because he really did like the idea of going to “Sunday School” and “church” with some friends. But something happened that fateful morning the shaped his attitude about “church people” for many years to come. He was scarred by the experience.
What happened? Well, he did not dress like the other people at church that Sunday. You see, it was still the time when people, even little boys, wore special dress clothes to church. All the little fellow had was a pair of clean blue jeans and a clean polo shirt. And he wore them. And guess what happened. One of the “churchy” teachers scolded the little fellow for not “dressing up” to come to church.
How did he feel? Terrible! Rejected! And less than the “other children.” How did he respond? Well, he never returned to that church. And he did not attend church as a child or teen-ager. It was not until he was an adult he went to church again. The occasion? A funeral of a friend!
That is sad… and so unlike Jesus. He loves all of us. And we do not have to “dress up” to gain His attention or love. He loves us unconditionally. He desires to have a relationship with us… regardless of who we are and where we have been.
Contemplate these true words from Scripture: God showed how much he loved us by sending his only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him. 10 This is real love. It is not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins.
Dear friends, since God loved us that much, we surely ought to love each other. (1 John 4:9-11 NLT)
Consider how you and I have been loved by God and let us show that same kind of love to others.

Posted By: Pastor Claude Thomas

The origin of something does make a difference in how we receive it. If we are told something by someone we trust we are likely to respect and receive what they say. The opposite is also true. Let someone we know is not trustworthy tell us something and we doubt it and are skeptical. Why? The “Source” makes a difference.

From Scripture we are taught government is from God. Clearly Paul set this before the Roman believers. Here is what he said to them. “…for there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God. Therefore, whoever resists the authority resists the ordinance of God” (Romans 13:1- 2). Now we may need to remind ourselves who was in power when Paul wrote those words. The Roman Empire was in power when those words were written.

    When Jesus stood before Pilate, He told Pilate that the authority he possessed had been given to him by God. “You could have no power at all against Me unless it had been given you from above…” (John 19:11).

    Tertullian, the third-century Roman apologist, wrote that the Christian is to look up to the emperor because he “is called by our Lord to his office.” 1

Whether Tertullian, Paul, or Jesus…let’s know Government is from God! The idea didn’t originate with our founding fathers or any man or group of men. It is something God thought and gave to us. And since it is, we are to be active citizens exercising our privileges and rights as citizens of the Kingdom of Christ and the nation where we live!

1.    Mounce, Robert H. “Romans” NAC, p. 53 quoting from Tertullian, Apology, 30.

Author: Pastor Claude Thomas
At one point David, the great king of Israel and writer of the Psalms, was in what appeared to be a hopeless situation. In that moment he did what all of us should do. He turned in faith to God.
What did David believe God would be to him? Psalm 3 pictures David’s belief and hope in God.
And he declared God was “…a shield for me, My glory and the One who lifts up my head. I cried to the LORD with my voice, And He heard me from His holy hill. Selah” (Ps. 3:3—4).
What does this mean? David was humiliated, but he turned to the Lord and recognized the reality of God. Although the enemies were strong and well supplied and they had the best of David’s army, David knew in his heart God was his protector.
David recognized his true condition… he saw God as his “shield.” The shield was a complete covering. It protected from the front and the back and the sides and the top. In other words, God enveloped David as a shield enveloped a soldier. God protected David, and that was of great comfort to him.
Do we see God as a protector or a persecutor? The Bible shows us clearly God is for us even when life has thrown us a “curve ball.” And He delivers us from the destructions of life and gives us hope.
Notice also David declared He was significant because of God. David calls God “his glory.” You know, as rich as David was as king, for all of David’s power and prestige, for all of his reputation as a man’s man, David realized this truth: none of that made him who he was. David knew that God gave him his significance, worth, value, accomplishments, accolades, etc. That’s why David calls God his “glory.” Even in poverty and humiliation, God gives David dignity, honor, and prestige.
Here’s a word to us: where do we find significance in life? Wealth? Power? Relationships? Spiritual knowledge? Let me tell you, if our value is not built on the LORD, and if we don’t “glory in the LORD,” we’ll discover that we’re living for the wrong reason. That’s what Jesus intends when He talks about true riches in His sermon on the mount, “Lay up for yourselves treasure in heaven.” Glory in God, not in stuff.
He was comforted by God. God lifted his head. When David calls God “the lifter of my head,” he paints the following picture: God reaches down and gets hold of the downcast head of David and lifts it up.
A child can be very sad and it shows in a head turned down. What do we do? We lift that child’s head and look into their eyes to give comfort and encouragement!
All of us know what it is like to have your head down. I pray you know what it is like for God to reach down and lift your head, comfort you, give you encouragement, and renew your hope!
God heard David when he cried out to God. Psalm 3, verse 4 says, “And God received David’s cry…” In other words, David knew that God saw his sad situation and didn’t turn a deaf ear or blind eye to it!! David received comfort in the knowledge that God heard, and would soon act for him.
God sees our situation and hears our cry today. That encourages me! That rekindles my threatened hope!
God gave David rest. Psalm 3:5 shows us David was able to lay down and sleep because the Lord sustained him.
God knows how and does comfort us when the adversities of life threaten our hope.
God is our ultimate Hope. He is reliable in any and every situation. It may be beyond all human hope and no one can help us. But God can!
Turn to Him as your Hope and let Him comfort you and let Him give you hope.

Author: Pastor Claude Thomas
What is the adversity that threatens your hope? Is it…
The adversity of a bank account down to zero…and the bills keep coming in…
The adversity of a life-threatening illness… and it doesn’t seem to be getting better…
The adversity caused by poor choices in your relationships…and the loss of the trust of those you care for the most…
Is it the adversity of kids rebelling…and you’re doing your best…
Is it the adversity of a marriage about to crash…and you don’t see any hope of it being better…
Is it the adversity of a dead-end job and you hate getting up in the morning but you are holding on just to keep paying the bills?
These are real adversities. And adversity in life can threaten our hope.
What are we to do? Are we supposed to just give in and live hopeless, despondent lives? NO! NO! NO! Rather than give in we are to look up and discover hope in life through faith in God.
You see… God Is Our Hope in Adversity. At face value, this might seem like too simple an answer. “God is our hope in adversity!” Yeah right! And some of us today might be thinking that.
So, I want to challenge us to look at the experience of the great leader of Israel and writer of so much of the Psalms. At one point in his life he was barefoot, exiled, humiliated, broke, cut off from society, and very, very sad. For all practical purposes, the whole scene seemed to be one of hopelessness. What did David do? Look at Psalm 3. Rather than giving up and giving in to hopelessness he says, “But You, O LORD…” David turned to Jehovah God.
What should you and I do when our hope is threatened? Turn to God!

Author: Pastor Claude Thomas
For a few moments let’s go on an imaginary journey with Jesus. Stay close and don’t miss anything. It’s going to be quick. In this journey we are going to find one word again and again. It is used more than any other in the Bible to portray the heart of Jesus.
First, from Matthew 9:36; “But when He saw the multitudes, He was moved with compassion for them…”
In Matthew 14:14; Jesus saw a great multitude and was moved with compassion. What did He do to show it? He healed their sick.
In Matthew 15:32; a multitude had been with Him for 3 days and had no food. How did Jesus feel toward them? He was moved with compassion. What did He do? He fed them!
In Matthew 18:27; Jesus told the parable of the forgiving and the unforgiving men. One had compassion and one did not. What did the person with compassion do? He forgave. Jesus has compassion. What does He do? He forgives! If we are connected to His heart, we also forgive!
In Matthew 20:34; Jesus encounters two blind men along the road outside of Jericho. He was moved with compassion as they cried for mercy. What did He do? He gave them sight!
In Mark 1:41; Jesus encounters a leper. He is moved with compassion for him. What does Jesus do in response to His compassion? He cleanses the leper!
In Mark 5:19; a Gaderene man was possessed with demons. Jesus was moved with compassion toward him. What did Jesus do in response to His compassion? He delivered the demon-possessed man.
In Luke 7:13; Jesus and His followers are entering the little city of Nain. They encounter a funeral procession going outside the city to bury the body. The body was that of a widow woman. Jesus had compassion toward her. What did His compassion move Him to do? He comforted her with words. And He gave her son life.
In Luke 15:20; parable of a lost son returning home to his father. The heart of the father in the parable is a picture of the heart of God. When the son was still a long way down the road, the father saw the son coming toward home and had compassion toward him. What did his compassion cause him to do? Forgive the son and restore the son!
Notice in each instance, Jesus had compassion for them. And what He felt toward them forced Him to do something for them! He ministered to them!
Hearts closely connected to the heart of Jesus will be moved with compassion and help others! And across America and around the world, there are people in need. They are alone. They are lost. They are defeated. They are hungry. They are sick. They are oppressed. They are naked. And the list goes on.
Who are they? They are children. And we can help change a child’s life today and tomorrow by showing the heart of Jesus and uniting with Feed The Children, Inc. For more information about this international Christian relief ministry go to www.feedthechildren.org

Author: Claude Thomas
The shouts could be heard outside the city walls.  No alarms were sounded, though, because these were cries of joy, of celebration.
A stream of people danced and sang as they waited for their king.  He was coming, perhaps on the back of one of the finest horses in the region.  His eyes would be on fire, his hair flowing in the wind, his face like flint as he absorbed the praises of a people in search of independence from the iron fist of oppression.
The palm branches were waving in the air and set on the ground as the would-be Messiah made his triumphant entry into the city of his homeland – Jerusalem.
The sea of people parted, and the future king appeared and proceeded through the celebration.  His face was like flint, but his eyes were not red-hot with aggression.  Rather, they were a deep sea of tearful compassion.  Something in his eyes rendered you speechless.  Had the masses stopped to consider his gaze, they would have fallen silent – but they didn’t, and the celebration continued.
Jesus knew he looked into the eyes of people who would change. The same voices that cried out: Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord  would one day yell for his death.
Fickle, sinful people. Clothes were spread on the road for him, yet he would soon be naked and beaten, publicly humiliated before them. He rode on, even though he knew it meant death. (Luke 19)
Why? Why did He do it? He did it for you and me Yes, he did it with you and me in mind. Even though he knows we’re not perfect. Even though he knows the many times we fail.

He did it because he loves you and provides for our forgiveness and a pathway to relationship with Him.

Author: Pastor Claude Thomas
The shouts could be heard outside the city walls. No alarms were sounded, though, because these were cries of joy, of celebration.

A stream of people danced and sang as they waited for their king. He was coming, perhaps on the back of one of the finest horses in the region. His eyes would be on fire, his hair flowing in the wind, his face like flint as he absorbed the praises of a people in search of independence from the iron fist of oppression.

The palm branches were waving in the air and set on the ground as the would-be Messiah made his triumphant entry into the city of his homeland – Jerusalem.

The sea of people parted, and the future king appeared and proceeded through the celebration. His face was like flint, but his eyes were not red-hot with aggression. Rather, they were a deep sea of tearful compassion. Something in his eyes rendered you speechless. Had the masses stopped to consider his gaze, they would have fallen silent – but they didn’t, and the celebration continued.

Jesus knew he looked into the eyes of people who would change. The same voices that cried out: Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord would one day yell for his death.

Fickle, sinful people. Clothes were spread on the road for him, yet he would soon be naked and beaten, publicly humiliated before them. He rode on, even though he knew it meant death. (Luke 19)

Why? Why did He do it? He did it for you and me Yes, he did it with you and me in mind. Even though he knows we’re not perfect. Even though he knows the many times we fail.

He did it because he loves you and provides for our forgiveness and a pathway to relationship with Him.