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 Jun 3, 2018 | 4 comments
What happens when the earthquake doesn’t come? In Acts 16, Paul and his companion Silas are thrown in prison in Philippi. They had delivered a young girl from a spirit of divination, and this angered some powerful men who had enslaved her and profited from her fortune-telling ability. Now out of a high-revenue, low-overhead business, they dragged Paul and Silas before the city magistrates, accusing them...
When God Provides An Escap...
Posted by Larry Eubanks on May 31, 2018 | 0 comments
Last week Paige Patterson was removed as president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Ft. Worth for comments he made about women that are insensitive and demeaning at best. Yesterday he was fired. It is not my intent to write a commentary on Patterson as a person or as a leader in the Southern Baptist Convention. Plenty of people are doing so, and it is the responsibility of the trustees of...
Abuse, Divorce, and Paige ...
Posted by Larry Eubanks on May 20, 2018 | 0 comments
I want to follow up on a comment I made in last week’s post about Beth Moore and the mistreatment of women ministers in evangelical circles. I wrote that one of the things that was said to diminish women was that Eve was “last in Creation and first in the Fall.” I want to dig into that statement a little further because I think it illustrates something about the misuse of the Bible. The biblical support...
Paul and the “Silent...
Posted by Larry Eubanks on May 14, 2018 | 0 comments
Last week popular Baptist author and Bible study leader Beth Moore published “A Letter to My Brothers,” in which she shared, lovingly but honestly, her experience as a woman in the male-dominated world of evangelicalism in general and the patriarchal SBC in particular. If you haven’t read it, you should. The tone of the article isn’t angry. That’s not the type of person Moore is; she’s not out to attack...
Beth Moore and Evangelical...
Posted by Larry Eubanks on May 10, 2018 | 0 comments
One of my readers, commenting on a post I wrote about grace and nonjudmentalism, wrote, “How about writing a little about the difference between forgiveness and indulgence. What does biblical discipline, rebuke and reproof look like for believers in the church?” It’s a legitimate issue. I’ve said many times that grace and forgiveness make us uncomfortable because it feels like we are letting people off...
The Dangers of Church Disc...
Posted by Larry Eubanks on Mar 31, 2018 | 0 comments
Today is Saturday. It’s the day between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. Does today have a name? Easter Eve? Easter Saturday? No, apparently that’s the Saturday after Easter. Even if it has a name, no one that I know does anything religious on it. A lot of churches have Maundy Thursday services, and a lot have Good Friday services, and some have both. And all churches have Easter Sunday services, when...
The Significance of Saturd...
Posted by Larry Eubanks on Mar 1, 2018 | 1 comment
When I was a little boy growing up in Alabama there were two names that were iconic in our household: Mickey Mantle and Billy Graham. This was in the early 60’s when Mantle was at his height, hitting 500 foot home runs with regularity. It was also before we moved to Maryland, I became an Orioles fan, and I learned that the Yankees were in reality the Evil Empire. But Mantle had retired by then, so he...
Learning From Billy’...
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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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