Rev. Mark Marxhausen

So, let me ask you a question… What’s your most favorite part of your body? Go ahead… think about it? What’s your most favorite part of your body? I’m pretty sure as you’re doing an inventory of yourself, you’re also thinking of those parts of your body that don’t make the top 5 list… that ring around the middle… sagging skin… droopy muscles… gnarly toes… protruding proboscis! There, I listed my top 5 with no...

Let me see if I can tie two Bible verses together to help us understand a great truth. Here’s the first one…“But when the Lord judges and punishes us, He does it to keep us from being condemned with the rest of the world.” 1 Corinthians 11:32 CEV And you thought you were just going through a rough time in your life, right? Absolutely not! God loves us more than we could ever imagine. So much so,...

I remember many years ago when I first started reading the Bible from front to back, getting a little bored reading certain books of the Bible – like Leviticus and Deuteronomy in particular. There just wasn’t enough action or movement. It was a bunch of laws that seemed impertinent to me. Even as I read it, my mind would start to wander in every other direction. It was hard to concentrate on the words I...

So, while I was in Papua New Guinea with my daughter, we had many occasions to worship with the blood bought saints there. We sang and worshipped in our church services… we sang and worshipped in the car as we drove from one place to another… we sang and worshipped in the houses we stayed in… we even sang and worshipped in the open air, under the canopy of heaven. Each time we sang and...

We all know that sometime or another we’re going to go through some things we wished we didn’t have to. Things like the loss of a loved one… being released from a job… the breakdown of a relationship… financial setback. Most often we don’t see these things coming, so when they do, they totally knock us off kelter. But while in Papua New Guinea, the Holy Spirit really drew my attention to who I am...

Sometimes it's not easy making decisions. We’re faced with difficult decisions all the time. I’m not talking about your garden variety type of decisions, like, “What should I wear today?” Or “Should I go golfing today?” I’m talking about those types of questions that keep you awake at night. The ones that demand an answer but have so many angles to them that you’re not sure if you’re coming or going. These are the types...

Remember the time as you were growing up  you did something you were afraid to tell your parents? You were certain there was no way they would ever forgive you. You had hoped everything would just go away or you wished you could relive the disaster and make it all better. But it didn’t matter how much you wished to change the indiscretion, it wasn’t going away. When your parents found out, they were mad,...

I’m wondering if your mother ever said anything like this to you… “So, if your friend jumped off a bridge, would you too?” That was the question I got when my mom asked me why I did one of the many stupid things I did, and I told her it was because one of my friends did it. Her point was a real one – why do you want to be like everyone else or...

I’ve said this many times before, but most Christian people either don’t like what I say or how I say it. They feel it’s too blunt, too harsh. To some, they feel it’s disrespectful. But, I can most certainly tell you, I mean no disrespect in the slightest manner. I’m referring to our God and Him constantly talking to us. If I were to be honest with you, I think God is a chatterbox. There,...

So my very good friend, Pastor Carl, told me a joke the other day that relates to what I read in my Bible reading this morning. I hope I can tell it right, it goes something like this… There’s this man pondering the deep questions of life, the universe, his own personal problems. And since he couldn’t find any answers on his own he decided to ask God for some help. “Dear God” the man...

When our children were small, a couple of them had difficulty in making decisions. It was almost like the end of the world had come when they were faced with deciding what they wanted to eat, or what they wanted to wear, or which TV program they wanted to watch. So I implemented a new rule. I would give them two choices and only two choices, but they had to pick one of them. “Do...

Have you ever made a promise and then broke it? You remember, maybe it was a time of desperation and you needed money or you needed a car, and then after all was said and done, you went back on your promise? I thought of that today as I read the word and had to ask myself if I’ve ever done that. I wanted to take it a bit further than the surface and ask...