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 Nov 12, 2014 | 0 comments
Do you read the Bible egocentrically? You probably do, but in many ways it’s not your fault. Most of us were taught to read it that way. By egocentric I don’t mean conceited, arrogant, narcissistic, or selfish. I mean it in the purest sense of the word, that we regard the I and the me as central to the story of Scripture and the aims of redemption. The individual has become paramount in our thinking and...
There’s No “ME...
Posted by Larry Eubanks on Nov 10, 2014 | 1 comment
My parents had three sons, and two of us are left-handed. Neither of my parents are left-handed, so what are the odds that their first two sons would be left-handed? Somewhere between 90-93% of people are right-handed, so the odds have got to be extraordinarily small. Yet here we are. Hand orientation can be detected in unborn children by observing which hand is predominantly licked or held close to the...
A Right-Handed World?
Posted by Larry Eubanks on Nov 6, 2014 | 0 comments
What does it mean to be “close to the Lord”? That’s a phrase that I’ve heard all my life, though I’m not sure it was ever defined for me. It was never a phrase that a person would use to describe themselves; no one who was truly close to the Lord would ever tell someone, “I’m close to the Lord.” It was always used to describe another person. “John sure is close to the Lord.” “I love my Bible study leader;...
The Struggle of Following ...
Posted by Larry Eubanks on Oct 23, 2014 | 0 comments
A guitar that only costs $150 new is not a good guitar. It doesn’t sound that good, it is not very easy to play, and it has few if any of the decorative features that make a guitar beautiful. So why do guitar manufacturers make so many of them? There is only one reason why there are $150 guitars: because learning to play guitar, especially at first, is boring and tedious, and that is true whether you are...
Boring Isn’t Always ...
Posted by Larry Eubanks on Oct 16, 2014 | 0 comments
Why was it a sin for the ancient Israelites to eat shellfish? Leviticus 11:9-12 says, “These you may eat, whatever is in the water: all that have fins and scales, those in the water, in the seas or in the rivers, you may eat. But whatever is in the seas and in the rivers, that do not have fins and scales among all the teeming life of the water, and among all the living creatures that are in the water,...
The Ethics of Eating Shell...
Posted by Larry Eubanks on Oct 2, 2014 | 0 comments
“You can’t just pick and choose which things the Bible calls sin. You either accept what the Bible calls sin or you don’t; you don’t get to pick and choose.” I seem to be reading this a lot, usually in “discussions” about homosexuality. Now let me state up front that this really isn’t intended to be an article about homosexuality, although that is a discussion that needs to happen. It’s just that the just...
Selective Repentance
Posted by Larry Eubanks on Sep 23, 2014 | 0 comments
In my last post I wrote how prayer is primarily designed not to move God to action, but to move us. That is not to assert that God does not listen to our prayers, or isn’t active in our world. He does, and is. It is, however, an acknowledgement that a God who is good and who is characterized by unconditional love is already moving and acting in our world in ways that are good, just, and loving. He can’t...
Is Prayer Effective When O...
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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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