shawnethomas

I want to begin by congratulating Dewey Phipps, Josh Peterson, and Anthony Burdick for completing the Bear Run last week. If you aren’t familiar with that, it is a 5-mile run ALL UPHILL on Grandfather Mountain. I can’t imagine how challenging that run would be. When you are out driving up a little hill in your car, you don’t think much of it — If you saw someone out there running up that “little hill”, you might think, “That wouldn’t be too hard.” But when you are actually out there, running up any kind of an incline — it’s a lot harder than you think!

There are a lot of things in life that are a lot more difficult than we think. We often talk like getting to heaven is easy; that almost everyone is going there — “they’re going to a better place” — but are they? Are WE? If Jesus shows us ONE thing here in the last part of Matthew Chapter 5, it is that having the righteousness that actually gets you into the Kingdom of Heaven is a lot harder than many people think! Continue reading →