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 Jul 16, 2014 | 0 comments
Perhaps you’ve heard the phrase, “Begin with the end in mind.” It was popularized in Stephen Covey’s book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, but it’s not a new concept. It means that instead of just letting your life unfold, buffeted by forces around you, with the result that you end up not some place of your choosing, perhaps regretting that you aren’t somewhere else, you begin by envisioning...
Ending with the Beginning ...
Posted by Larry Eubanks on Jul 14, 2014 | 0 comments
In the last post I wrote about how Solomon’s temple as well as the palace complex, which were all part of one big building project—was built on injustice: the forced labor and heavy taxation of most Israelites except the rich nobles around Jerusalem; the accumulation of extreme wealth by Solomon and those same nobles; alliances with pagan kings who brought their pagan influences into the temple; and a...
The Human Cost of Tabernac...
Posted by Larry Eubanks on Jul 14, 2014 | 0 comments
Exodus is a pretty good book, especially at the beginning and the end. There’s a baby hidden in the Nile, the burning bush, Moses trading tricks with Pharaoh’s sorcerers, the plagues, the Red Sea crossing, manna, and all sorts of other really good stuff. Then you get to chapter 20 and things slow down a bit. God gives Moses the Ten Commandments; that’s significant, obviously. After that, however, you are...
The Human Costs of Taberna...
Posted by Larry Eubanks on Jul 11, 2014 | 0 comments
We have different ways in which we speak of what a person does with Jesus when they become a Christian. We ask them to believe in Jesus, or accept Jesus as Lord and Savior, or trust him, receive him or some combination of those. We also talk about worshiping Jesus and following Jesus. All these are perfectly acceptable ways of putting it, although each of these can indicate different things to different...
He Said to Follow Him
Posted by Larry Eubanks on Jul 10, 2014 | 0 comments
It’s a curious thing that the first Christians were called “atheists.” That’s right, atheists. Obviously that wasn’t because they didn’t believe in the existence of any god; it was because they didn’t believe in the existence of any of the Roman gods. The earliest Christians confessed that Jesus, and only Jesus, was Lord. It was the “only” part that earned them the atheist label. If they had simply added...
So, Maybe I’m an Ath...
Posted by Larry Eubanks on Jun 5, 2014 | 0 comments
There was a lot of fighting going on when Jesus was alive. Not war, necessarily, although it was always bubbling just under the surface crust, ready to erupt at any time. The absence of war, however, doesn’t mean that there wasn’t other kinds of fighting going on. It is common to talk about 1st century Judaism, as if it was just one big unified religion, but in the first century Judaism was no more...
Fighting Christians
Posted by Larry Eubanks on May 29, 2014 | 0 comments
We humans are pretty self-centered. I’m not speaking primarily of us as individuals, though that is certainly the case for most people. No, I mean that we humans, as a race, a species, are pretty self-centered. Oh, not all of us, but a substantial number of us think that humans are the pinnacle of creation, the central and most significant entities in the world. This philosophy—I prefer to call it a...
The Work of Redemption in ...
recent from Blog
recent from Blog
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.
Feel free to leave a comment. I promise to respond to you. All I ask is that you be respectful in your comments. 
Connect with Me