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 Jan 27, 2014 | 0 comments
This is part 3 in my look at discipleship in the church. See part 1 and part 2. In 2006 ago I got the chance to do something that I had wanted to do for a while, and that was learn how to build acoustic guitars. I attended a two-week workshop at Vermont Instruments and came home with a guitar that I built with my own hands. It was led by a luthier named George Morris. I didn’t want to go to the workshop...
Discipleship Jesus’ ...
Posted by Larry Eubanks on Jan 23, 2014 | 0 comments
Second in a series on discipleship in the church. Click here for part 1. So many of the discipleship programs I have been through have focused on teaching me to do religious things like prayer, Bible study, and tithing. These are all good things to do. But here’s the thing that stands out to me as I read the gospels: Jesus rarely told his disciples to do religious things. Seriously, go read the red...
Discipleship and Religious...
Posted by Larry Eubanks on Jan 20, 2014 | 2 comments
This is the first in a series of posts on discipleship in the church My dad taught me to tithe. When I was a kid my dad gave me an allowance of 25 cents a week, back when 25 cents was…okay, my dad was cheap. But he tithed; still does. And he taught me that I needed to tithe: to give 10% of my income to the church. Since my income was 25 cents a week, a tithe was 2½ cents a week. A little word of...
Discipleship on an Envelop...
Posted by Larry Eubanks on Jan 20, 2014 | 0 comments
When I am building an acoustic guitar, I mess up all the time. This is always frustrating, though I am learning that it is also natural. Even the best, most experienced luthiers mess up. I don’t like to take pleasure in another person’s misfortune, but I am actually encouraged by this. It tells me that it’s a normal part of the process and not wholly a result of my incompetence. We mess up because no two...
No Throwaways
Posted by Larry Eubanks on Jan 19, 2014 | 0 comments
Soon after arriving with our church’s mission team at Turtle Shores, a Christian mission and retreat center in Belize, I had an interesting conversation with Sarah Bradbury, one of the resident missionaries who worked alongside us. Sarah told me that she had been doing a lot of reading in the Bible about the poor and asked me about my understanding of what the Bible says about our obligations to the poor....
The Community of Jesus
Posted by Larry Eubanks on Jan 19, 2014 | 0 comments
Theological insight and ethical guidance can come from many places, but I didn’t expect it from a book titled “The Genius of Dogs: How Dogs Are Smarter Than You Think” by Brian Hare and Vanessa Woods. Early chapters talk about the domestication of dogs from wolves, and counter the theory that humans adopted wolf puppies, tamed them, bred them and over time they became the domesticated dog. Since this...
Survival of the Friendlies...
Posted by Larry Eubanks on Jan 19, 2014 | 0 comments
When I was in the third grade my parents made me take piano lessons. I didn’t ask to take them. I didn’t have a burning desire to play the piano. I’m not sure I had any desire. They just thought it was a good idea. It was no surprise, though. A couple of years before they signed up my older brother Mickey for piano lessons, and he was still taking them, so I knew my time was...
The Power of Small Things
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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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