Friends,
Welcome back!
I hope you are challenged by this post.
Please continue to change your world.
Bob
Link to a previous post on my blog.
Bible Study: Luke 16: What can Christians learn from a dishonest accountant?
“I have taught Luke’s Gospel many times in different settings.
Most of my students have concluded that Luke 16 contains one of the weirdest parables that Jesus taught.
Jesus told the story of a dishonest manager who was called to give an account of what he had done before he was fired. He had some time to act quickly so called in some of his master’s debtors and rewrote their accounts so that they owned less. He reasoned that they would provide for him after he was fired. After all, physical labor would be too hard for him and he did not want to beg. This would be best for him.
His rich master found out about what he did and commended him for it. He thought that the manager’s dishonesty was very shrewd.
The rich man and his manager lived in a moneyed world. Dishonesty, bribery, and inflated commissions were the norm. In this world and by these standards, the manager was shrewd.
What can Christian learn from this?”
Links to things I’ve read recently.
Beyond the Battlefield: Veteran Suicide and the Value of Life
“We’ll teach you how to kill. When you get back, you’re the VA’s problem.” That’s what they told my old team sergeant before he deployed to Afghanistan with the 82nd Airborne Division. The risk of killing or being killed is an inescapable part of military service. …
But this same dynamic that makes militaries potent threatens the lives of those who fight, through the tragedy of veteran suicide.”
Don’t Forget the Great Commission When You Counsel
“Abstract: Nick Gardner reminds pastors of the usefulness of the Great Commission when they counsel church members. Jesus gave the church the task of making disciples, which involves applying his teaching to the sin and suffering of his people. In the midst of trials, disciples of Jesus need to be reminded that their Lord and Savior has all authority in the universe and promises to be with them to the end of the age.”
A New Serpent in the Garden of Africa
“ABSTRACT: Just as the serpent led Adam and Eve into idolatry by reinterpreting God’s good word, so prosperity and word-of-faith preachers are today proclaiming a false and idolatrous gospel. But unlike Adam, African preachers are refusing to stay mute. Recognizing the need for faithful interpretation of Scripture, they have drawn up a statement to help pastors stand against the idolatrous assumptions and teachings of the prosperity gospel and word-of-faith theology.”
Salvation Makes You Part of a Family: The Corporate Component of Conversion
“Abstract: Jonathan Leeman highlights the corporate component of conversion, pointing out that God not only reconciles us to himself through Christ but also to one another. While our (vertical) reconciliation to God is foundational and primary, our (horizontal) reconciliation to others is necessarily bound up with our salvation. Conversion makes us part of God’s people, and this corporate aspect of our salvation should compel us to join a local church.”
How Knowing God As Father Fights Fear
“ God Loves it When We Believe Him
God loves it when we trust Him. He loves it when we believe who He says He is and that He will do what He says He will do. God called Abraham His friend because Abraham believed God, even when he couldn’t yet see what God had promised him (James 2:22-23).
Have you ever had a time when your children didn’t believe that what you were doing was good for them? Maybe you had to take them to the doctor for an annual check-up or pull out a splinter in their skin, and they recoiled in fear, believing their childish, limited perspective. Saddened by their lack of trust, you likely spoke words of comfort and assurance to them, just like God does to us when we are afraid (Isaiah 41:10).
Often we respond similarly to God. We can’t see the whole picture, so we choose to rely on our limited perceptions, responding in fear instead of trust. This reveals what we truly believe.”
“Christians, know that God is in control. Armed with this truth, our response should be simple: pray for our country. …
But what should we pray for?
Pray for the preaching of the Word. What our nation needs is a great awakening of its heart, a turning back to Jesus and the truth of His Word. Where does revival start? It starts in the church. …
Pray for our elected officials (1 Timothy 2:1–2; WCF 23.4). The Bible calls us to pray for those whom God has placed over us in government, and we should pray for them regularly. Pray for their salvation, and pray that they would govern the nation and the states by the principles of Scripture.”
How We Saw God’s Goodness Through Our Child’s Cancer
“Our 3-year-old son, Ben, had an unexplained illness. After a week in the hospital, we were ushered into an ICU conference room full of doctors and nurses. They delivered the news: “Your son has cancer.” One of the nurses was crying before they even said a word.
Our family is from Washington, DC, but we were about 10,000 miles from home. We’d been serving as missionaries in Costa Rica, yet we weren’t there either. On that January day, we were in a hospital in Sydney, Australia, on our dream trip—a family Christmas in summertime. It was quickly becoming a nightmare.”
“One of my favorite hymns is all about feasting. The chorus is a reminder of this feast to come, where God will wipe all our tears away and there will be no more pain or sorrow. So we sing it as a reminder that:
We will feast in the house of Zion
We will sing with our hearts restored
He has done great things, we will say together
We will feast and weep no more
In the midst of everything, it’s the one feast that I can sing of and long for. I can know that I will be fully satisfied and the darkness of the night, the vows that I’ve broken, the betrayals and the constant fear will be removed.”
“Devotions. Morning Watch. Daily Office. Quiet Time. This habit has carried many names over the years. But they all boil down to two simple things: Scripture reading, and prayer.
God’s words are living and active, it says in Hebrews. I have found that to be true in my own life as I have read and re-read those precious words, day after day after day.”
Three Instincts to Help Recognize When One Passage Alludes to Another
“How do you know when a Bible passage refers to another, earlier text? Sometimes the author signals a direct quotation with such phrases as “it is written” or “as in the Law of Moses.” But many times there is no such direct quotation but merely an allusion. For example, Jonah grabs a variety of psalms in his prayer in Jonah 2. And his flight toward Tarshish was motivated by his belief that Exodus 34:6 was true (see Jonah 4:2).
Recognizing such allusions often unlocks part of the author’s argument in a passage. Missing the allusions leaves you in the dark. So how do you learn to recognize them so you can make use of them?”
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