A Prayer to Prepare for Easter
This is a guest post from my good friend and colleague Dr. Randy Millwood, Church Services Consultant for the Maryland/Delaware Baptist Convention, FBC Frederick member, and best Real-Beard Santa Claus in the world. He wrote it as an email to the ministers of BCMD for Maundy Thursday, but it speaks to our situation on this Holy Weekend and so I offer it to you, with the necessary alterations, to help you in your preparation for Resurrection Day. In the Christian calendar, the Thursday of Holy Week is...
A Maundy Thursday Prayer (Psalm 88)
Despair is difficult when the Resurrection hovers nearby. For two millennia the story of Jesus’ death and resurrection have been told and retold, celebrated and feted. Everyone knows how the story ends. It doesn’t end with “It is finished.” Rather, with “”Why do you look for the living among the dead? He isn’t here, but has been raised.” It’s difficult, therefore, to read the Passion–the betrayal, the arrest, the beating, the mocking, the...
The Relevant Temptation
The other day our son Austin asked Pam and me if we had ever gone through anything like the COVID-19 pandemic before. The answer, of course, was no. These are unprecedented times. People are fearful, anxious. Angry. Some are complacent. Some are in denial. We are isolating ourselves from each other. If ever we needed a word from God, it is now. As one who weekly speaks to people about God, on behalf of God, and maybe, every once in awhile, delivers a word from God, I feel the weight of that need to hear...
You Don’t Learn Wisdom From a Book Like Proverbs
Let’s talk about the Book of Proverbs. Hey, wait, where are you going? Get back here! Sheesh, hear me out for a second. I know it doesn’t sound very exciting, but hang on, I’m gonna bring on the excitement in a minute. Well, no, probably not, but hang with me for a second anyway. The Book of Proverbs has been called “God’s Instruction Book for Life,” which sounds awesome. Not content with that pithy title, another person said, “Proverbs is actually a book of instructions on how to live a life pleasing...
Posted by Larry Eubanks on May 9, 2016 | 0 comments
A One-Question Bible Pop Quiz: Who was the first apostle? If you said Peter, you’re wrong. If you said John, you’re wrong. If you said any of the original 12 disciples, you’re wrong. They were disciples, but they didn’t become apostles until after the resurrection when they were sent—apostle means “one who is sent”—to proclaim the victory of Jesus and the kingdom of God. They were apostles, but none of...
The Scandalous First Apost...
Posted by Larry Eubanks on May 3, 2016 | 2 comments
What does it mean to “accept Christ”? What are we asking a person to do? Traditionally this has involved believing as true certain things about Jesus: that he is the Son of God and thus divine himself; that he was born of a virgin; that he died on the cross for our sins and was resurrected from the dead; and that he is returning to earth in victory over the forces of evil. I call these data points about...
Accepting All of Christ
Posted by Larry Eubanks on May 2, 2016 | 0 comments
5th in the series, “Modern Family?” Larry L. Eubanks, First Baptist Church, Frederick, Maryland, May 1, 2016 This message went in a decidedly different direction than when I had planned it weeks ago. After I had done the research, I came away with a completely different view. And then I realized that there is a message for all of us to hear, related yet having little to do with parenting or adolescence or...
Adultescence
Posted by Larry Eubanks on Apr 25, 2016 | 0 comments
4th in the series, “Modern Family?” Larry L. Eubanks, First Baptist Church, Frederick, Maryland, April 24, 2016 In 2004, Dr. Carolina Izquierdo, an anthropologist at UCLA, spent several months in Peru living among a tribe of about 12,000 people called the Matsigenka. This tribe lives along the Amazon. Now, for all you young people, the Amazon is a river in South America, not the place where you can order...
Kidolatry: Growing Up in t...
Posted by Larry Eubanks on Apr 18, 2016 | 0 comments
3rd in the series, “Modern Family?” Ephesians 6:1-4 Larry L. Eubanks, First Baptist Church, Frederick, Maryland, April 17, 2016 Maybe you know who comedian Jim Gaffigan is. He has five children. Yeah, I know. Nowadays if a couple has more than three kids, the whispers start behind their backs. “Don’t they know how this works?” At six or seven kids we actually think they are a little weird. Or they are...
Parenting in the Modern Wo...
Posted by Larry Eubanks on Apr 14, 2016 | 2 comments
My wife is mad at me because I took away one of her favorite verses. Well, not me, actually, but Shannon McWilliams. Shannon’s teaching is usually derivative of my own, which is good because it keeps him from error. When he goes off on his own he tends toward heresy. On this one occasion, however, he went off on his own, and when Pam told me what he said I made the mistake of agreeing with him. So now she...
Should You Personalize Bib...
Posted by Larry Eubanks on Apr 13, 2016 | 0 comments
“Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” (Matthew 5:11-12) I’ll start with something obvious: sometimes Christians act badly. Can we just admit this? In the history of the church, along with...
What It Means to be Persec...
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I am a lifelong student of the Bible, and have been a pastor for over twenty-five years. My desire through this blog is to help people see things in the intersection of Scripture and real life that they might have missed. The careless handling of the Bible is causing a lot of problems in our churches and our culture--and is literally turning people away from the church, and, sometimes, God. I hope to treat Scripture with the respect it deserves, and, even if you don't agree with what I say, give you some insight.
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