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 Mar 6, 2015 | 2 comments
At each stage of creation in Genesis 1, God likes what he has created. He declares that the world is good. When it’s all done, he declares that the creation is very good. And then something goes very wrong. First the humans decide that they don’t want to be what God created them to be—humans. They want to be like gods. Well, that’s understandable–who doesn’t? Specifically, they want to be the ones...
Creation Care: A Biblical ...
Posted by Larry Eubanks on Feb 26, 2015 | 1 comment
Thirty-three years ago, Pam and I were newly engaged and getting ready for our June wedding when the warnings started coming in. Warnings about marriage. The warnings were disguised as wisdom from those who had successfully navigated the matrimonial waters for many, many years, but they were warnings nonetheless. “Marriage is hard work.” “It’s all about compromising.” “Never go to bed angry.” “Never give...
Real (Not Ideal) Church
Posted by Larry Eubanks on Feb 24, 2015 | 0 comments
When is the church “the church”? That may sound like a silly, nonsensical question, but work with me here. There are some who like to talk about “The Church” by which they mean the some total of any and all Christians anywhere in the world. I get the concept, and it’s a biblical concept, but it can have the unfortunate consequence of allowing some Christians to think that...
Church Being
Posted by Larry Eubanks on Feb 19, 2015 | 0 comments
To believe in God is to believe that life is going somewhere. It is to believe that the universe is part of a grand narrative with a beginning, middle, and end. And by “end” I don’t mean “the point after which there is nothing,” as in the end of a movie or end of a book. Rather, I mean “end” as in purpose, destination, fulfillment. I am talking, of course, about the God that is revealed to us in...
The End of Creation
Posted by Larry Eubanks on Feb 16, 2015 | 0 comments
A few years ago author Eugene Peterson (The Message translation, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction) gave an interview in which he discussed how he learned to read Scripture contemplatively. “In high school I was very much involved in poetry. You cannot read a poem quickly. There’s too much going on there. There are rhythms and alliteration. You have to read poetry slow, slow, slow to...
Savoring Scripture
Posted by Larry Eubanks on Feb 12, 2015 | 0 comments
If you think about it, Jesus could be horribly inconsistent in the way that he treated people. On the one hand, he could treat people with such grace and kindness that it almost seemed as if he was cavalier about their sin, enjoying dinner fellowship with cheating, traitorous tax collectors and letting women with bad reputations touch him and make a scene at his feet. On the other hand, he could throw...
Inside Repentance
Posted by Larry Eubanks on Feb 8, 2015 | 1 comment
In the story of the Garden of Eden in Genesis 3, Adam and Eve committed the original sin—“original” not in the sense that it was The-First-Sin-Ever but rather that it’s the first sin that any of us take that leads to all the rest—when they ate of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. In other words, they wanted to be able to judge what is right and what is wrong for themselves. The story of Cain and...
Let God Be God
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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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