Category: 2019

I remember being in the youth football program back in Doddridge County, West Virginia. The first time I put on the uniform with the helmet and pads, I felt invincible. To prove my theory of invincibility, I would ride my bicycle down a steep hill with my uniform on, and then just jump off the bike and roll down the hill. I’d get up, dust myself off and do it again, because I was … invincible. A few years later, as an underclassman in a high school varsity football game, I was jogging down the field on a kickoff, looking the action on the other side of the field, far away from me, when a player from the other team hit me like a hammer. That kid was determined to hit somebody, and hit them hard, and I became the unfortunate target of his nefarious intentions. It felt like I was hit by a freight-train, and those pads didn’t really do much to stop the bell from ringing in my head.

Mark Hardgrove was a 21-year-old college drop-out in 1982, living in my mother’s old mobile home, deep in the heart of the poverty-stricken hills of West Virginia. I had no job and no prospects for a job. My car was as clunker held together with chicken wire and duct tape, and I was coming out of a bad relationship with a young woman who broke my heart. It was at that low point in my life when I received a call from someone I had known in high

IF IT DON’T FIT … YOU MUST QUIT! By Mark E. Hardgrove, PhD Text: Ephesians 5:3-7, NKJV 3 But fornication and all uncleanness or covetousness, let it not even be named among you, as is fitting for saints; 4 neither filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor coarse jesting, which are not fitting, but rather giving of...

Do you pray for other people? Hopefully everyone here can honestly say that we pray for others. As your pastor, I can stand before you, with God as my witness, and say without fear of rebuke or rebuttal, that I pray for you. There have been times when I’ve spent most of the night on my knees in prayer for people going through some type of life crisis. I’ve seen some recover from what looked like certain death, while others have gone on to their reward in heaven. I’ve prayed in tears for your children, even as I pray for my own, that God would grip their heart and bring them back to the Father’s House. God expects the pastor of a congregation to hold the flock up in prayer. I can be sitting at my desk or driving down the road when the Lord puts someone on my mind, and I pray. I often wake up in the middle of the night with someone’s need in my spirit, and I pray.

THE SON’S GIFTS TO THE FATHER’S CHILDREN By Mark E. Hardgrove, PhD, DMin Text: Ephesians 4:7-16, NKJV 7 But to each one of us grace was given according to the measure of Christ’s gift. 8 Therefore He says: “When He ascended on high, He led captivity captive, And gave gifts to men.” 9 (Now this, “He ascended”—what does...

I recently read the story of an elderly man who was laying on his bed at the point of death. With each breath feeling as though it would be his last, the aroma of his favorite freshly baked sugar cookies filled his room. Gathering his remaining strength, he lifted himself from the bed, and leaning against the wall he slowly made his way out of the bedroom, and with even greater effort, gripping the stair-rail with both hands he crawled downstairs. With labored breath, he leaned against the doorframe gazing into the kitchen. If it wasn’t for the pain, he would have thought that he had already died and gone to heaven; for there, spread out upon waxed paper on the kitchen table were literally hundreds of his favorite sugar sprinkled cookies gloriously warm and soft, fresh from the oven.

At my first fulltime pastorate in Junction City, Kansas, there were several Korean speaking people in the church, along with couples where one spouse was South Korean and the other American. To address the spiritual needs of the diversity in our church, I invited a Korean evangelist as our guest speaker for a revival. The evangelist spoke in Korean while my wife translated his message into English through the use of wireless headphones that the English speaking members were wearing

What is the most difficult thing you’ve ever been asked to do? Was it to give someone bad news, or maybe to fire someone? Maybe you were asked to give up something so that someone else could have it, or to make a sacrifice of time or money for a cause. What did it cost you to do that difficult thing? The apostle Paul was given the unenviable task of taking the gospel of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles. I say “unenviable” because his fellow Jews had a very difficult time believing that Gentiles could become members of the exclusive club known as, “The People of God.” But this was the ministry Paul was given, and he gave it everything he had. It cost him his vaunted status among his countrymen; it cost him freedom; it cost him physical harm and mistreatment; and eventually it cost him his life. He talks a little about the cost in the 2 Corinthians. Reluctantly responding to the Jewish crowd who considered themselves superior to Paul and who constantly criticized him, he writes in chapter 11, beginning at verse 22,

How many of you have looked at yourself in a mirror at least once today? I’ve looked several times. We look in the mirror to assess how we look to ourselves, but have you ever stopped to consider that what other people see when they look at us is the exact opposite of what we see in the mirror? I don’t mean this spiritually, but literally the mirror image is the opposite of who we really are. In the mirror our right is left, and our left is right, and we part our hair on the other side of our head. We spend a lot of time looking at ourselves in the mirror and we think we know how other people see us, but if we could hear what people say behind our back, we might be surprised. We think we look and act like a Christian, but we might be shocked to hear them saying that we think we’re better than everyone else. Or, they might have seen that little outburst of anger, and they’re saying, “I thought he was a Christian!

Have ever taken the time to just sit down and meditate on what God has done to bring us back into a right relationship with Him? I mean, think about it . . . we were dead in trespasses and sin, lost and undone without God or His Son, when He reached down His hand, brought us out of the deep miry clay, and put our feet on the Rock to stay. We weren’t looking for Him, but He came looking for us. As the Hindsons’ used to sing, "And I'm so glad He found me..."