The Barnabas Blog

I have over the years gotten much inspiration and a lot of devotional mileage out of the Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan. Back at the first of the year (2009), I was rummaging around through the massive amounts of cassette tapes of sermons that I have and ran across a sermon preached by Pastor John Harrell in Bridge City, Texas. Sometime in the late ‘80’s or early ‘90’s he preached a two-part sermon series on Vanity Fair and although I only had the second part, it proved to be much for mental and spiritual rumination for me over the last eight months. In fact much of my encouragement to dig into Pilgrim’s Progress from a devotional standpoint came from my friendship with Brother Harrell. He is a masterful preacher that week –in and week-out does much from the pulpit in Bridge City. From that old classic Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan there is a scene that serves well as a leaping off point for this blog. Christian and Faithful are on their way to the Celestial City and hav...

Teresa said, “Philip, let’s go do the Parade of Homes!” Philip said, “Teresa, I don’t want to do the Parade of Homes! ” Teresa said, “Philip, we are going to do the Parade of Homes! ” Philip said, “Teresa, we are not going to do the Parade of Homes! ” Then we got in the car and went to the Parade of Homes ! I have found that doing such things as this creates for a mostly blissful state of marriage. Little did I know what was in store for me on that day several weeks ago. I have not gone to the Parade of Homes in over ten years because. . . well, just because. One of the reasons that I don’t go is because it has a tendency to skew my priorities and it gives me the “Greedy Galloping Gimme’s.” This is one of the good lessons the Berenstain Bears taught me years ago when I was reading to my kids. The Parade of Homes, in times past, has created an uncomfortable discontentment with where I currently live which is not a good thing (not that there is anything wrong with where I cur...