Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from January, 2020

I Feel Ya

The room was uncomfortably hot and muggy. The air was stale and had a faint odor, some kind of combination of mildew and the bleach used in an effort to clean it. The padded chairs had grown increasingly harder throughout the day and although the past 8 hours had been informative, the speaker was rather dry, his monotone droning made our eyelids heavy. Those meetings that last all day can be dreadful. Especially in an uncomfortable environment. As my co-worker sat beside me, we found ourselves continually checking the clock on the wall, hoping the speaker would take notice and finally wrap things up. As we sat there, I whispered, "I am so ready to get out of here." My friend put his tapped his hand on his chest and replied, "I feel ya man." I've always enjoyed reading, writing, and just words in general. The way language changes and the clever ways we communicate our thoughts and feelings can be fascinating. Of course, hopefully, no one reading this woul...
Post a Comment
Read more

A Bible Reading Plan For Every Age

As we enter a new year, it is a great time to commit to a new Bible reading plan. With the technology that most of us carry in our pockets each day, finding and sticking with a reading plan has never been easier. There are several apps that you can download that have a variety of plans to choose from and also offer several English translations you can use to make the most of your devotional time. For my own personal preference, I enjoy both the ESV and NIV. I typically use the ESV for more in-depth study and the NIV for reading through a reading plan. This past year, I was introduced to the NIVr , an excellent bible for younger or slower readers, and as we begin 2020, my goal is to encourage my own children to read their Bibles more often. There are several different ways that we can encourage our children to read. We can take time each week to read with them, possibly through one particular book of the Bible. The Gospel of John in the New Testament, or the book of Ruth in the...
Post a Comment
Read more

Popular posts from this blog

Do Not Lose Heart

Anytime someone asks me how God speaks to us today, my first response is through the Bible. God's primary means of communicating to us about who he is and who we are is found in his own revelation to us in Scripture. In the Old Testament, he speaks to us throughout history, through poetry, through his law, and by the mouths of his prophets. In the New Testament, he speaks through his Son - Jesus, as we read the eye-witness accounts of the gospels, see the creation and confession of the early church, and are encouraged by the writings of the apostles. God primarily  speaks through his word... but he can also speak through our circumstances, through situations and other people. This morning, I was reminded of the latter. In our Sunday School class, we have decided to devote one Sunday each month to focus on prayer. Rather than have prayer be the two shorter bookends to a longer lesson or lengthy discussion, one Sunday each month we have decided to invert our "order of se...
1 comment
Read more

Why the Virgin Birth Matters

I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth. I believe in Jesus Christ, God's only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary...  Since the era of the Enlightenment, there have been objections to the authenticity of Jesus' birth found in the gospel narratives of Matthew and Luke. Some scholars have suggested that early Christians borrowed mythical elements from ancient literature in an attempt to adapt the gospel to a Hellenistic (Greek) culture (1), while others have suggested that there has been an error in translating the word almah, leading to a conclusion that the original authors did not explicitly express. Many versions of the Bible render this word as virgin while critics argue that it should be translated young woman or maiden. William Beck, who has done extensive research of the word comments,   I have searched exhaustively for instances in which almah might mean a non-virgin or a married woman. Ther...
Post a Comment
Read more

Judge Not

“Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you. Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye. “Do not give dogs what is holy, and do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you. Matthew 7:1-6 (ESV)  "Judge not" has become the mantra of our culture as it increasingly seeks to equate tolerance  with acceptance . Many people attempt to use Jesus's words here as a means to prohibit someone from evaluating the choices of another. The irony is, these same people are guilty of the very thing Jesus is warning us about. It is obvious ...
Post a Comment
Read more