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 Feb 13, 2014 | 0 comments
It’s often called The Parable of the Sower (Matthew 13:1-23), but rarely does someone really talk about the sower. It’s always about the soils. That’s understandable, because even Jesus himself, when giving his disciples the interpretation (vs. 18-23), talked about the different types of soils—rocky soil, thorny soil, hard-packed soil, and good soil. So it’s definitely about the soils. But I think it’s...
Fields of Grace
Posted by Larry Eubanks on Feb 12, 2014 | 0 comments
Grace is a funny thing. We all want it, we all believe in it, but we have a hard time trusting it. You would think that the message that God has just chosen to forgive us would be good news, but a lot of people that I have talked to over the years have a hard time trusting it. You can’t just go around indiscriminately forgiving people without requiring something from someone. If you’ve done the crime,...
Do We Really Trust Grace?
Posted by Larry Eubanks on Feb 10, 2014 | 0 comments
When I am building a guitar I am striving for something that I know I will never achieve: perfection. That I will never achieve it has to do not only with my experience and skill level in guitar building, but in the very concept of “The Perfect Guitar.” Every player has a different idea about what constitutes the perfect guitar. For some, the perfect guitar sound is loud and complex, with a bass that...
The Perfect Relationship
Posted by Larry Eubanks on Feb 7, 2014 | 0 comments
Apparently a lot of people were offended by Coke’s Super Bowl commercial, in which “America the Beautiful” was sung in eight different languages, one of which was Arabic. And because a good number of those who seem to be offended are evangelical Christians, I thought it might be good to take a look at what the Bible says about the diversity of languages. The most obvious places to go in the Bible on this...
One Kingdom, Many Language...
Posted by Larry Eubanks on Feb 5, 2014 | 0 comments
Listen to any sermon series on stewardship and invariably Malachi 3:8-10 will be invoked. It makes for a powerful message: it has an accusation—if you don’t give at least 10% to the church, you are robbing God (vs. 8-9); it has clear instructions—“Bring the full tithe into the storehouse” (vs. 10a); and it has a wonderful promise—that if you tithe, God will “open the windows of heaven for you and pour...
The Full Tithe and Caring ...
Posted by Larry Eubanks on Feb 3, 2014 | 0 comments
This is the fifth and final in series on discipleship in the church. See parts One, Two, Three, and Four. In previous posts I pointed out that most of the discipleship training I had in churches taught me to be a good church member, but not necessarily a transformed person; I learned to talk about a lot of things that seemed important to people in the church, but rarely about the one thing—the kingdom of...
Discipleship: The Walk
Posted by Larry Eubanks on Jan 29, 2014 | 0 comments
Fourth in a series on discipleship in the church. See part 1, part 2, part 3. In my last post I said that the process of a disciple becoming like the teacher involves at minimum two things: talking about the things the teacher talks about, and doing the things the teacher instructs the disciple to do. The first has to do with making sure we properly understand and pass on the central message of the...
Discipleship: Talking The ...
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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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