Author: Texas Gospel

When righteous anger cleared the temple

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JEFF TURNER

Some people picture Jesus as endlessly gentle and soft-spoken, never raising his voice or displaying frustration. Yet one of the clearest scenes in the gospels shows him driving merchants and money changers from the temple, overturning tables and scattering coins in visible anger. This was not an isolated loss of temper but a deliberate act of judgment against corrupted religious practice.

What provoked this response was not minor inconvenience. It was the desecration of true worship and the misrepresentation of God’s character through false religious systems.

Jesus showed remarkable patience and compassion toward ordinary people who lacked spiritual guidance, yet he reserved sharp condemnation for religious leaders who knowingly distorted truth and led others astray, going so far as to label such figures as sources of spiritual ruin.

As Christians we should stay focused on genuine compassion toward those who are lost and firmly stand against teachings or systems that deliberately twist or counterfeit the truth of God.

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which on the outside appear beautiful, but inside they are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness. So you too, outwardly appear righteous to people, but inwardly you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.

Matthew 23:27-28

The slow burn: why no one sets out to fall

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TEXAS GOSPEL CANADA VOLUNTEER

Very few people wake one morning and decide to wreck their life. The catastrophic failures of moral integrity that destroy marriages, careers, and families rarely arrive as sudden decisions. They arrive as the accumulated consequence of a hundred smaller steps, each one seemingly manageable, each one taken just a little closer to the edge.

Proverbs 6:27 asks a question designed to make us pause: can a person carry fire against their chest and expect their clothing to remain unburned? The answer is obvious, and that is precisely the point. Yet countless people who would never describe themselves as reckless, find themselves in moral ruin because they underestimated how fire behaves.

The pattern Solomon identifies is recognisable and patient. What begins as idle internet exploration shades gradually into something more deliberate. A flirtation that seems harmless feeds a scenario that takes root in the imagination. And by the time the danger is undeniable, the fire has already done its work.

The warning is not directed at the already-fallen; it is directed at those who believe themselves immune. No one is exempt from the physics of fire. Wisdom begins by respecting the danger long before it announces itself.

Therefore let the one who thinks he stands watch out that he does not fall.

1 Corinthians 10:12

When every message is dismissed, the problem is the heart

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JEFF TURNER

Jesus compared the religious leaders of his day to quarrelsome children who refuse to join in, no matter what game is offered to them. It didn’t matter whether a joyful song that invites dancing or a mournful tune that calls for sadness.

This picture reveals a stubborn resistance to every approach God placed before them. When Jesus came with joy, eating and associating with sinners, they rejected him. When John the Baptist came with a serious call to repentance, they rejected him as well. Their problem was not the style or method of the messenger; it was their refusal to respond to the message itself. Neither the celebration of the Messiah’s arrival nor the warning about the seriousness of sin could move them toward genuine repentance and faith.

This is a picture of spiritual indifference. I’m speaking of the kind of attitude still seen today when people look for reasons to dismiss the truth rather than honestly consider and respond to it.

For John the Baptist has come neither eating bread nor drinking wine, and you say, ‘He has a demon!’ The Son of Man has come eating and drinking, and you say, ‘Behold, a gluttonous man and a heavy drinker, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’

Luke 7:33-34

Why conscience alone cannot be a reliable guide

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TEXAS GOSPEL VOLUNTEER

Every person is equipped with a conscience, an inner moral filter meant to help distinguish right from wrong. The degree to which scripture has shaped that conscience directly affects how reliable its guidance will be.

Not all consciences are equally trustworthy. Ongoing, unchecked involvement in wrongdoing can dull or harden a person’s moral sense over time. The common advice to simply “follow your conscience” falls short as a standalone principle.

The only safe approach is to test the conscience against scripture itself, asking honestly whether a particular choice aligns with what God has said. Conscience left unchecked and unrefined by biblical truth can lead to serious errors in judgment.

For the word of God is living and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword, even penetrating as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

Hebrews 4:12

Karen Peck Gooch and Susan Peck Jackson turn grief into song with “Mama Knows”

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TEXAS GOSPEL VOLUNTEER

Two years after losing their mother, Karen Peck Gooch and Susan Peck Jackson have turned grief into melody. The sisters and the rest of Karen Peck & New River just released “Mama Knows,” a song built from a single, ordinary moment that became something larger.

The story starts with an azalea tree. Their mother, Myrtle Sue Tench, planted it years ago in her front yard, and it grew into something towering, something people noticed. Every spring it bloomed bright pink, and every spring Mrs. Tench photographed it, often posing beside it herself. The tree became a kind of ritual, a marker of the season, a reason to step outside and pay attention.

This year, the ritual continued without her. Their sister Sandra sent a text to Karen and Susan: mama’s tree is blooming. That was it, nothing more, but it landed differently than any ordinary garden update. “I thought, oh, I bet mama, if she could say anything to me right now, she would say, oh, these flowers are so beautiful, and they smell so, so beautiful,” Karen recalls.

That imagined sentence, equal parts loss and comfort, became the emotional core of “Mama Knows.” The song doesn’t try to explain grief so much as sit inside it, the way a blooming tree can hold a person’s memory without saying a word.

For Karen and Susan, music has become the language for what’s hard to say out loud. Their mother is gone, but the tree still blooms, the pictures still get taken, and now there’s a song to go along with them.

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Mama Knows · Karen Peck & New River · Karen Peck · Kenna West · Don Poythress
Good Answers
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