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.
This blog post was too good to pass up. If you are not doing several of these at work, you need to do some heart probing to find out why. Posted by Pastor J.D. Greer on August 10, 2014 I mentioned in this weekend's sermon that the Apostle Paul lived in such a way that he provoked a question. Peter said it this way: "In your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always ...
Keep ReadingPeople. Oh, the complexities that come with people. There are so many personalities, so many backgrounds, so many ways we sin against one another. Challenges and perils aside, God calls us to love people and pour out our lives for them. So let's say you want to do better at loving people. You know this is the second greatest commandment, so it isn't effort that will be ...
Keep ReadingA couple of weeks ago I preached through the first half of Matthew chapter 3. It was there that John the Baptist launched a stinging rebuke at the Pharisees and Sadducees who had come to be baptized. This led us to think about hypocrisy. These religious leaders were coming to be baptized with a baptism of repentance which seemed to be exactly what they needed. Any yet, t...
Keep ReadingThere is a sober warning that comes in Paul's last letter. In 2 Timothy, Paul warns that difficult days will come and they will be difficult because they will be filled with godless, evil men manifesting every form of corruption. He says in 3:5 that one of their defining features is they will be "holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power." This ...
Keep ReadingThere is a famous quote that says, "never say never." It is one of those fun little quotes that endures because there is a glaring contradiction that still conveys an important reality that we do well not to forget. That dynamic is very similar to the simple admonition of this blog post, "don't grow weary of growing weary." The main difference is that my reminder is bibl...
Keep ReadingWe have all heard it from someone at some time. They don't want to go to church because of all the hypocrites. But who exactly are they talking about and what church are they talking about. Let's deal with the church first. If the person you are talking to doesn't want to go to your church because of all the hypocrites, he might have a very good reason. If your church h...
Keep ReadingAnger is a difficult thing. The reason it is difficult is because there are two things that are clear from scripture about it. First, anger is not necessarily a sin. Second, most anger is sin. To illustrate the first point, we read of God's anger in the Old Testament, we see Jesus' anger in the temple, and we are instructed in Ephesians 4:26 that we can "be angry yet do ...
Keep ReadingEvangelism is something we are always trying to grow in. Sometimes it is good to review the reality that God really does call each and every one of His children to verbally bring the gospel to spiritually dead people. Below are 8 key biblical reasons why you are called to evangelize. The first and second great commandments are the main heartbeat for evangelism. A person...
Keep ReadingPeople are really good at making the Bible say what they want it to say. There are lots of factors that contribute to this. Not the least of which is a widespread and growing ignorance of what is actually in the Bible. People simply haven't read enough of the Bible to know that what they think it says is absent from and/or refuted by scripture. One area that seems to fi...
Keep ReadingThe right tool for the right job; that's the professional's mode of operation. Even in the area of demolition, If you are going to do it effectively, you need the right tools. So today I am asking, what would be a good tool for dismantling someone's effectiveness for Christ. There are plenty of options, but one less noticed is self-esteem. Your self-esteem is killing you...
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