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...

Do Not Judge: What Did Jesus Really Mean?

Jesus said, quite straightforwardly, “Do not judge, so that you will not be judged.” (Matthew 7:1) Darn! We like the last part—I mean, who likes to be judged?—but judging others is so…satisfying. Maybe even fun. Certainly natural. It comes so easily to all of us. But that first part. There must be...

The Struggle of Following Jesus

What does it mean to be “close to the Lord”? That’s a phrase that I’ve heard all my life, though I’m not sure it was ever defined for me. It was never a phrase that a person would use to describe themselves; no one who was truly close to the Lord would ever tell someone, “I’m close to the Lord.” It was...

Boring Isn’t Always Bad

A guitar that only costs $150 new is not a good guitar. It doesn’t sound that good, it is not very easy to play, and it has few if any of the decorative features that make a guitar beautiful. So why do guitar manufacturers make so many of them? There is only one reason why there are $150 guitars: because...

Is Prayer Effective When Our Situation Doesn’t Change?

In my last post I wrote how prayer is primarily designed not to move God to action, but to move us. That is not to assert that God does not listen to our prayers, or isn’t active in our world. He does, and is. It is, however, an acknowledgement that a God who is good and who is characterized by...

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