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.
Last week the movie Unplanned opened in theatres and I went to see it with a number of others. I am no movie critic, but I wanted to offer some thoughts about this film as you consider seeing it. First, I am glad this film was made. Abortion is a stain on the conscience of America like none other. It is the vilest atrocity our country as ever witnessed. We regularly...
Keep ReadingIn many college 101 philosophy classes there is an unstated class project underway from day one: how many freshman can be brought to doubt and then reject the Christian faith. This happens in the biology classes as well, but today our focus is the philosophy class. A common approach in the philosophy class is to put questions to the freshman that will cause a faith uph...
Keep ReadingBad things happen. We understand that is part of this living in this world. Cars break down, parades get rained on and raisins are put into cookies instead of chocolate chips. Some bad things are on another level. People get diseases, relationships are broken and wars are fought. But a tragedy is something unique. A tragedy is when an exceptionally wonderful good is ...
Keep ReadingThere is a remarkable side note made in John chapter 14 that cuts to the heart of what true and false belief is. The verse states: John 14:22 Judas (not Iscariot) said to Him, "Lord, what then has happened that You are going to disclose Yourself to us and not to the world?" "Not Iscariot" is a very brief note indeed, but it tells us something p...
Keep ReadingAll teachers are not created equal. Most of us have had a few teachers in our past that truly changed us. Perhaps it was their ability to communicate. Maybe it was how they taught a paradigm-shifting truth that upended what you thought you knew. Or maybe it was their servant-hearted investment into you that made you learn and do what you didn't think was possible. Tod...
Keep ReadingFreak. Extremist. Religious Nut. If you have been a Christian long enough you have heard the names the unbelieving world gives to believers. The problem is, sometimes you kind of agree. There are people that get themselves situated on a street corner with signs and beards and materials that make us cringe. Is that weird or is that the kind of "strange" the Bible says...
Keep ReadingI read a letter from a missionary today and it got me thinking about a topic the church needs to think through regularly and precisely. That topic is expendability. What do we mean when we speak about being expendable? It means the willingness to be spent completely, in all manner of life and experience, up to and including death, for the sake of the kingdom. That mis...
Keep ReadingLegalism is a category of false teaching that is so regularly misunderstood that the church engages in friendly fire because it doesn't know the enemy from the ally. Many Christians have been labeled a legalist because they wisely restrained themselves from something they knew could cause problems later. Legalism is not necessarily making a rule or boundary for oneself...
Keep ReadingI have always been intrigued by something Jesus said in his upper room discourse found in John 13-16. In chapter 14 he says; John 14:2 "In My Father's house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you. There are two wonderful realities here that are easy to see. First, the Father has a special place where he...
Keep ReadingWhat does an infant do with a diamond? Let me give you the two most likely options: 1) eat it, 2) lose it. We might show a little toddler our diamond ring, but there is no way we are going to give it to him. Why? He simply does not understand the concepts of value and rarity or how such concepts are attached to this shiny rock. There is a parallel to this when it come...
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