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 Jun 24, 2015 | 3 comments
Once again we are reeling in the aftermath of another mass killing, this one clearly and explicitly racially motivated. As usual, we also have to listen to the same rhetoric from both sides of the gun issue, then watch while nothing gets done before the country gets distracted by the next big thing in the news cycle. And brace ourselves for it to happen again, as we all know that it will. I’m not going to...
Charleston and Our Culture...
Posted by Larry Eubanks on Jun 18, 2015 | 0 comments
Train yourself in godliness, for, while physical training is of some value, godliness is valuable in every way, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come. The saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance. For to this end we toil and struggle, because we have our hope set on the living God, who is the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe. (1 Timothy 4:7-10) Ivan Lendl,...
Training in Godliness
Posted by Larry Eubanks on Jun 15, 2015 | 0 comments
This is the second of four messages on the Prodigal Son. For last week’s message click here. Last week I attended the inaugural Frederick Buechner Religious Writer’s Workshop. If you don’t know who Frederick Buechner is, I encourage you to find out. He’s a the author of over thirty books, none of them large, but all of them densely packed with wonderful insight into the human condition, written in some of...
In a Far Land
Posted by Larry Eubanks on Jun 10, 2015 | 0 comments
Right field. On every baseball team there was always a kid who had a hard time judging fly balls. This was the guy who was so fixated on where the ball was that he never could figure out where the ball was going to be. So the coach stuck him out in right field, where few balls are hit. (Right-handed batters tend to hit to center or left fields, and since there are fewer lefties than righties, fewer balls...
Right Field Bible Reading
Posted by Larry Eubanks on Jun 8, 2015 | 0 comments
The Permissive Father: A message given on June 7,2015 Today we begin a four-week series on what I believe is the greatest parable ever told, the parable of the Prodigal Son. This parable shows the absolute genius that Jesus was, because on the surface it’s a very simple story of a man who had two sons, one foolish and wanton, the other faithful and diligent. But as with so many things, beneath the...
The Permissive Father and ...
Posted by Larry Eubanks on Jun 4, 2015 | 1 comment
The Bible can be difficult to understand. Books have been written about how to study the Bible. Invariably they say that you should start by trying to understand what a passage meant to its original audience, to understand their culture, their history. There are literary questions to ask: what kind of literature is this, what metaphors, allusions, figures of speech are being used? How does this passage...
Using the Bible Online
Posted by Larry Eubanks on May 31, 2015 | 0 comments
In Galatians 5:22-23 Paul lists what he calls “the fruit of the Spirit”: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity…wait, stop right there. Look it up in your Bible, and it probably doesn’t say “generosity”, it probably says “goodness”. That’s what the King James says, as does every other translation except the New Revised Standard Version, which uses “generosity” instead of “goodness.” The Greek...
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Welcome!
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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