Traitors for Christ
I have been blessed with the opportunity to lead the tween/teen class for church, and the material I’ve been provided is very good. However, in today’s lesson (based parts of Amos) it appeared to separate God’s judgment and discipline from God’s love. I think this is a mistake. I love my 7 year-old more than…
Before an article I posted earlier today, I wrote this on Facebook and Twitter: Why do we assume a God who can create time can only create it from the beginning forward? On Facebook my friend Terrance commented: Elaborate !!! Sounds Interesting To which I responded:
Today (and maybe yesterday) I ran into multiple links to “Pope Francis wants Catholics to doubt the Church. He’s right.” by Kyle Cupp. I would posit it is two articles in one. The first theme is what led to the title of this post (“A House of Cards”) and has to do with infallible belief…
Ran into this during today’s reading (wise words from Solomon): “…for you, you only, know the hearts of the children of mankind” (2 Ch 6:30, ESV, in part). The “you,” of course, being God. As I’ve often said, including to employees at work, you can comment on what you observe and how it affects you,…
Mark, I do not remember how it was to live with you the first five years of my life… But I do remember you spanking me—not as cruel torture by a decade older brother—but as a kind sibling helping his frequently-disciplined younger brother no longer feel pain when he got spanked by his parents. Mark,…
Although it’s been a while since I read these words while going through all 66 this year, they have stuck with me: Not one word of all the good promises that the Lord had made to the house of Israel had failed; all came to pass (Joshua 21:45, English Standard Version). This could not be any…
Paul Gets Practical We are now most of the way through our “walk about” in Colossians. This is talk number nine of eleven in the series, “Dear Least Important Church…” And after reading today’s section, Colossians 3:18-4:1, I thought to myself, “Finally Paul is getting practical.” Now, don’t get me wrong…I’m not suggesting that everything…
In the first chapter of today’s Bible reading I ran into this interesting section: 9 Then Moses and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel went up, 10 and they saw the God of Israel. There was under his feet as it were a pavement of sapphire stone, like the very heaven for clearness….
This year I am reading the entire Bible again (you should too), and yesterday the flood subsided. Afterward, our Lord tells Noah: 14 When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, 15 I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of…
A new Twitter friend posted an article which showed that prayer had no effect on the success of heart bypass surgery (and that, actually, those who knew they were prayed for fared worse). For her consideration I shared my article, "A God that Does Not Want to Be Measured Will Not Be Measured." Although she…
Bad Compliments What is the worst compliment you've ever gotten? Does that seem like a strange question? Doesn't it seem like I should be asking, "What is the best compliment you've ever received?" Well, before I did some quick research on compliments I didn't realize just how many categories of bad compliments there are. For…
“Man Will” Versus “God Will” We’ll start off this sermon with a disconcerting set of verses from James…James 4:13-16 to be specific: 13 Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— 14 yet you do not know…
Ray Charles Preaching back in Antrim, New Hampshire I was famous for quoting songs in my sermons…and sometimes having them be the actual inspiration for the talk. Or perhaps it might be more accurate to say I was infamous for it 🙂 In either case, don’t worry…I’m not going to start singing up here. I…
One of the web pages I check on pretty much daily is The Corner at National Review Online. A couple weeks back I ran into the article "You're a Good Man, Cardinal Dolan." Michael Potemra's piece starts off with: The highly mediagenic archbishop of New York, Timothy Cardinal Dolan, visited a mosque on Staten Island…
One of the (many) shortcomings of Christian religion to atheists is that God remains unmeasurable. Here is a being that purportedly has often interfered in the natural realm (including its very creation), yet no scientific instrument, photograph, video, or so on has captured a single one of His miracles (although I'm sure some Christians would…