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.
Symbiotic relationships are absolutely fascinating to me. God has made his creation to have systems and entities within it that are dependent upon other systems and entities in direct ways. I say direct ways because we all recognize that everything within creation is dependent in some ways. Only God is self-existent. But there are things in creation that are dependent in w...
Keep Reading30 seconds sounds like nothing in the scheme of things. But have you ever been in a teaching setting with a group of people and tried sitting silent for 30 seconds? I'll tell you what will happen. Your awkward-ometer will redline after about 10 seconds. Another version of this is the old saying "The watched pot never boils." What is happening in these situations? What is h...
Keep ReadingOne of the regular issues that arises in busy families is keeping all of the proverbial plates spinning. The schedule is full, the laundry needs to get done, soccer practice is starting, kids are fussing about something, and guess what? The dishwasher just started leaking. In the middle of all of this comes church. And not just Sunday Services but bible studies, kids clubs...
Keep ReadingThe following story comes from James Montgomery Boice's commentary on the book of Psalms. May you be blessed by it as much as I was. Psalm 84 is a psalm of longing, longing for God's house, and it is by the sons of Korah, as the title indicates. This is very important, as we will see. Psalm 84 is one of the four Korahite psalms found in book three of the Psalter (Psalms 8...
Keep ReadingThe following are good questions that arise concerning fencing the Lord's Supper I have been a Christian for decades. Why would you deny me the Lord's Supper if I am not a member of a gospel-teaching church somewhere? By requiring membership to take the Lord's Supper, are you saying I am not really saved if I am not a member? We are not saying a person is not saved. A p...
Keep ReadingOne thing you can dismiss out of hand is the all-too-common promises of quick growth, easy growth or silver-bullet growth (doing one special thing guaranteed to work). That is simply not how spiritual growth happens. That is not to say that the Spirit of God does not at times do a dramatic work in a person's life. That does happen sometimes as a sovereign work of God. That...
Keep ReadingThe Scripture says in Psalm 139 that people are "fearfully and wonderfully made." We see this regularly in medical discoveries, but I want to show you another way that the nature of people is getting revealed. What is that way? YouTube. That's right. Sure, it is not as heady and academic as the inner mechanics of a cell or the brain, but it is still revealing the fearful a...
Keep ReadingLast week we were talking once again about our supported missionaries in Ukraine. There is a lot of international drama playing out there right now and things certainly look serious. This led us into thinking about safety and risk. How does the Christians consider such things? There are a few things I would like for us to think about. First, I think it is good to say that...
Keep ReadingOne of the key axioms for the seeker-sensitive church is as follows: "Do nothing offensive, boring, or unpolished." This means that prayer is always hovering at the edge of the chopping block. Unless you make prayer really bouncy and really quick, people don't have much tolerance for it in a service that is geared for short attention spans. Yet, the problem for seeker chur...
Keep ReadingWith the reversal of Roe V. Wade becoming a real possibility, the question of abortion will come closer to home as it becomes a state issue to be voted on. People must be well versed in pro-life arguments and able to bring them persuasively. Below are key thoughts to help you toward this. The foundational point: Human life and personhood are inseparable and not diminished...
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