This blog is Pastor Jay's weekly musings about God's Word, God's world, and God's call to our culture. We hope they encourage, challenge, and inform you. Sign up to recieve them in your email.
At the beginning of a new year, when resolutions are fresh, zeal is high and determination is bubbling over, the battle cry for spiritual disciplines harmonizes perfectly with the moment. There is a reason why people feel the need to let loose a battle cry: they know that it is hard. We live in an entertainment age with distractions (and snack food) abounding in every no...
Keep ReadingOne of the most common things you heard in the last days of 2020 was the glee of being done with that horrid year. 2020 wasa trip. But was it really? When you are thinking about something you have to work hard to think about it rightly;thinking can go wrong on so many levels. You can think about things with the wrong information or with a lack of information. You can thi...
Keep ReadingAmong the list of common questions people ask this one hasrisen higher and higher on the list. As many in our culture move farther and farther away from the agrarian life, so too they are moving farther away from typical notions of animal life. What were once work animals or even simply pets are now considered "kids" and furry babies. The growing list of what qualifies a...
Keep ReadingA number of weeks ago I raised the issue that a pastor going into a bar would bring serious questions about his qualifications as an elder. A number of people later followed up on that with pastors they knew who did pub evangelism. Would their qualifications still be in question if that is what they are doing? So that gave me something to chew upon. A pub would certainl...
Keep ReadingPastor John Piper recently wrote that he would not be voting again this year. This has caused a stir and raised the question of when not to vote. What circumstance would compel a Christian to abstain from voting? There are two issues that I think are at play in this question. First is the morality issue, and second is the party platform question. Is the morality of th...
Keep ReadingWe have been hearing the phrase "right side of history" for years now. It has been the mantra of the progressive left so much so that it has become worn out and used less and less. However, it is still undergirding the thinking of the revolutionaries of our day. This showed up again in a recent article in the New York Times by Nicholas Kristof entitled Will We Choose The...
Keep ReadingOur church has been in 1 Timothy chapter three, and there we have been looking at the calling and character of elders. These are the men that God sets aside to lead, feed, and protect his people. But for those who have been in different kinds of churches, they may have seen different kinds of elders. Some churches have teaching elders and ruling elders. Teaching elders a...
Keep ReadingTreasure, riches, wealth, stock options, cash reserves, savings, the nest egg there are a lot of ways to speak of financial resources. Money is always in our lives and conversation. "Follow the money" we are told. Well, when you follow it all the way back, and I mean all the way back to the beginning, we find that God laced this world with gold and silver from the very f...
Keep ReadingThis last Sunday I sought to pound home the kingship of Jesus. Psalm 72 brought us into David's prayer for his son Solomon who would soon ascend to the throne. But there was another king that David was more interested in. As great at Solomon was, there was no way he would fulfill the expansive and universal reign that David spoke of, nor display the personal characterist...
Keep ReadingC.S. Lewis once said that everybody loves the idea of forgiveness, until someone actually has something to forgive. Unity can be the same way. Unity is easy when everybody agrees, but when there are differences, unity is kicked to the curb. Many churches are reeling right now because there are differences when it comes to wearing masks and other responses to Covid. Argum...
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