Reflections on the loving kindness of the Triune God
As I’m traveling myself I recruited Mark Nicklas, a pastor in Beaverton, Oregon, and good friend to share from his own heart for God. As you will read here, we once shared in a 4-month Bible read-through together, sharing with me the pleasure I always find there. I’m pleased to have him fill the post …
Read More I hear voicesI preached a sermon on 1 Corinthians 7 today, calling it “Marriage Matters.” The double entendre was intended. Paul addressed matters of marriage that Christians need to embrace; and the text reminds us that marriage is wonderfully important. The chapter also illuminates the weak status of marriages both in and outside the church throughout human …
Read More Marriage MattersFear holds a paradoxical status in Scriptures—it is regularly treated both as a positive and a negative; as fruitful and as destructive. Positively, wisdom is a crucial moral outcome for those who “fear the LORD”. On one occasion in Genesis God is even personified as “fear” when Jacob twice addressed his hostile father-in-law, Laban, …
Read More On fear, faith, and loveIt is my pleasure to introduce a second guest entry by Dr Peter Mead of OM, in London. His first posting, published here on January 4—“Preaching and Affective Hermeneutics”—was a compelling call to engage any given Bible text with a lens of spiritual and personal affectivity in order to capture and then to offer the …
Read More Preaching and the Great CommandmentThe heart is mentioned throughout the Bible—used as a term that summarizes the motivations of both God and humanity. Anyone who reads through the Bible very boldly, say in five to six weeks—or less—will be struck by the role the heart plays in God’s conversation with his people. So much so that when I encourage …
Read More Out of the HeartCreativity is a gift. And everyone is gifted with creation. The two are united in expressing God’s overflowing goodness. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. This through the Son’s creative work: In the beginning was the Word and the word was with God and the Word was God. He was …
Read More The Gift of CreationMany in the church of Corinth were enamored with style. And Apollos had style to spare. He seems to have been bright, articulate and alert to the philosophical streams of his day. In a nutshell, Apollos and his offspring are the sort of men every church wants to recruit as a speaker for their annual …
Read More The Wise FoolMartin Luther, in his 1518 disputation at Heidelberg, compared a theology of glory with a theology of the cross. Theologians of glory were—in a modern term—triumphalists. They presented God as the basis for success; and in that success they impressed people with their intelligence, their erudition and their godliness. Personal achievement and godliness were represented …
Read More The Glory of the CrossDr Peter Mead of OM [Operation Mobilization], a Brit living near London and a dear friend, is my first guest contributer. There is a need to offer God’s love in ways that meet people both affectively and effectively—that is, in heart and in practice! I asked Peter to share something on that topic in line with …
Read More Preaching and Affective HermeneuticsPontius Pilate famously asked Jesus a rhetorical, and probably cynical, question: “What is truth?” The context of this episode in John 18 is important. Jesus was being tried on trumped up charges by the religious leaders of the day. They knew they needed to charge him with a capital crime but nothing he had done …
Read More “What is truth?”