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.
The health, wealth, and prosperity gospel is a well-established and growing segment of the church worldwide. Though there are countless reasons why the health, wealth, and prosperity gospel is a prostitution of the truth, it just keeps raking in the followers. Why is this? Because there are two powerful forces at work: people are incurably religious and incurably sel...
Keep ReadingI once heard a story of an Asian Christian who was getting a tour of all the grand churches and ministries in a particular part of America. After seeing it all he was asked what he thought. He said, "It is truly amazing what you have been able to do without God." It is a stinging rebuke that touches on a reality that is a constant problem in American Christianity....
Keep ReadingCan I kill this? How do you answer such a question? Scott Klusendorf, a wonderfully skilled anti-abortion apologist, rightly points out that you have to ask another question. That question is: What is it you want to kill? A roach: Yes, kill it now. A wild Turkey: Yes, but only during turkey season. A Bald Eagle: No, it is legally protected. A human baby: ????????...
Keep ReadingTo the dismay of the LGBT community, keyboards only have 26 letters. But if divine authority won't hold you back, neither will a 26 letter keyboard. The solution is the + key. The + key is the ticket to so-called personal fulfillment and you being you. The problem with this is that chaos always comes back on itself. Contradictions cut the knees out from an argumen...
Keep ReadingThere is always a war waging over the Bible. It will be different at different times, but it will be waging. In the last few generations we have seen battles over the full inspiration of Scripture and postmodern approaches to hermeneutics (what it means to me). One of the latest battles over the Bible has to do with sufficiency. People will say that the Scripture is ...
Keep ReadingGod's love is one of the most common themes in many churches. Nothing wrong with that. It is clearly a major theme in Scripture. But just because we have lined up with Scripture's emphasis on God's love, doesn't mean we are lining up with Scripture's description of God's love. People make God's love into a divine version of whatever the culture is peddling; something...
Keep ReadingJeremiah tells us that the fallen human heart is deceitful above all else (17:9). This is not so much a statement about deceptions employed to trick someone else, but the deceptions embraced to trick one's own self. If you are going to pursue sin you have to convince yourself it really is a good move. Watching someone try to justify his sin is a painfully sad thing to ...
Keep ReadingJesus ended his Olivet Discourse with the sobering reality of eternal punishment and eternal life. Hell is frightening, unimaginable, andfrequent. At least it is relatively frequent in the gospels. Jesus spoke more about Hell than anyone else. If you are wanting to be like Christ and speak like Christ, then Hell will be something you talk about. But how do you talk ab...
Keep ReadingWhen it comes to relational failures, being disappointed is bad but being a disappointment is even worse. Failing to come through when people are counting on you is one of the deepest kinds of shame a person can feel. Our very worth is brought into question because now people will regard us as having some degree of evil or incompetence. This can result in a lingering...
Keep ReadingOne of the constant proofs that we are more sinful than we dare dream is that we don't ask the questions that matter. People ask, "Why isn't God blessing me" when they should be asking "why isn't God destroying me?" People ask, "Where is God in this trial" when they should be asking "Why would God be in this trial." Most of the time we are comfortable with a sin-cursed w...
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