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 Sep 11, 2014 | 1 comment
Jesus says that when we have faith in God and pray, we can move mountains (Matthew 21:21-22). Makes you wonder why more mountains aren’t moved. I think we tend to look at Jesus’ statement with an understanding that the moving of mountains is God’s work. We ask in faith for the mountain to be thrown into the sea, and God is the one who does it. After all, who among us is capable of such a thing? The roles...
The Prayer That Moves Moun...
Posted by Larry Eubanks on Sep 4, 2014 | 0 comments
I’m tired of people rejecting Jesus for all the wrong reasons. Whatever else you may say about the Romans and the temple leaders in 1st century Israel, at least they rejected Jesus for the right reasons. Pilate and Caiaphas may have been power-hungry, exploitative, greedy, fearful, violent and manipulative, but they understood the actual threat that Jesus posed when they had him eliminated. I...
Rejecting Jesus for All th...
Posted by Larry Eubanks on Aug 25, 2014 | 0 comments
In my last post I wrote about the relationship between the Old Testament and the New. In a culture that tends to value the new over the old, it’s not surprising to find that Christians tend to elevate the New Testament over the Old, whether by considering it to be mere background to the really good stuff found in the New Testament, or by considering it to be mainly about the Jews while the New Testament...
The Incarnation Lens
Posted by Larry Eubanks on Aug 20, 2014 | 0 comments
Imagine that you and a friend decide to go see a movie. You arrive at the box office at what you thought was fifteen minutes before the scheduled start only to find out that you had misread the schedule and the movie had started over an hour ago. Would you still go in and watch the last half of the movie? Of course not. You’d either wait for the next showing, go watch another movie, or leave and catch it...
Is the New Testament More ...
Posted by Larry Eubanks on Aug 20, 2014 | 0 comments
One of the things that I have heard recently is that the New Testament is anti-Semitic. Certain New Testament passages, particularly in John and in Acts, are cited to justify the claim, and at first glance the verses do seem to support the accusation, citing that Jesus’ main opponents are the Jews, and they are the ones who are most responsible for killing Jesus. For instance, John 7:1 says that Jesus...
Is the New Testament Anti-...
Posted by Larry Eubanks on Aug 19, 2014 | 0 comments
Though Christians today almost universally accept that slavery is an intolerable evil, it is also almost universally accepted that the Bible stops short of outright condemnation of slavery and can even be considered to be somewhat accepting of it. Christian slaveholders in the U.S. pointed out that Paul instructed slaves to obey their masters (Ephesians 6:5) and that the Bible, both Old and New...
What The Bible Really Says...
Posted by Larry Eubanks on Aug 19, 2014 | 0 comments
When it comes to love, I am an unbeliever. There was a time when I was young, naïve and uneducated that I believed in the existence of love. People talked about it all the time, songs were written about it, and in almost every movie and every novel love played at least a small part. In many it was the major theme. Everyone around me just assumed the existence of love, so I did also. It never occurred to...
I’m a Love Atheist (...
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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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