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.
Pornography is an epidemic and we had better get really good at addressing it and helping people kill this dragon. To that end I want to give you what I think is a tremendous way to think about a framework of help. This memorable method will help you tackle the problem immediately. This memory device revolves around fire. Let me explain. The Three Parts of Fire and ...
Keep ReadingIf you put a gun to my head, you have just given me a lot of motivation to do what you say. This is basically the idea in a legalistic community. The logic is all there. Motivation springs forth from what you really love. If you can put what is beloved in jeopardy, then you have touched the source of motivation. If you can do it ultimately, then you have found the ulti...
Keep ReadingIt is critical that you do love right. Love for neighbor, as you know, is the second greatest commandment. The thrust of this article is that love is rarely done better or more consistently than when it is being given in a discipleship context. Marriage is the obvious exception to this. But marriage is different because it has a purpose that no other relationship can hav...
Keep ReadingA great question was laid before me after my latest sermon from Matthew 24. The question had to do with verse 22. Matthew 24:22 "Unless those days had been cut short, no life would have been saved; but for the sake of the elect those days will be cut short. The question went something like this, "Verse 22 says that the elect people of God will be in the Tribulation. ...
Keep ReadingDo you want to improve your marriage? How about your relationship with parents, children, co-workers and neighbors? Communication is not the key. I repeat; communication is not the key. You know this. You are probably communicating all the time with anger, complaints and a host of icy body language. The issue most certainly isn't communication alone, it is the kind of ...
Keep ReadingYou may not know it but there is power coursing around you this very moment. It is invisible but it is as real as the air you're breathing. What that power is doing none of us know exactly, but it is doing something. What power is this you ask? Electrical power? Gravitational power? No. It is something far more impactful and penetrating. It reaches through the physical...
Keep ReadingSafety is valuable because life is valuable. We all value our lives and therefore we try to insulate ourselves from danger. The only problem is that safety is an illusion. There is no fortress where pain and death cannot crawl through the cracks. As Proverbs 30:28 says "A lizard you may grasp with the hands, yet it is in King's palaces." Pain and death are like that li...
Keep ReadingIt is time to send our language through the sifter on a particular issue. Feelings are one thing, and beliefs are another thing. They are not the same thing. But for too long we have used them interchangeably and muddied the water of what it is to walk by faith. Sifting Belief from Feeling Belief is not something you feel. Belief is embracing someone's word about reali...
Keep ReadingI mentioned something about divorce on Sunday that I wanted to develop a little further. Divorce is a disasteralwaysand on many different levels. It is never good. It may be a lesser bad, but it is never good. It is no wonder God hates divorce. The true wonder is how God's church could ever slide so far from the character of God as to just offer up a shrug when divorc...
Keep ReadingMany of you came to the presentation I gave Sunday night about my trip to Haiti. I hope you were encouraged by the ministry happening in Haiti and how Open Door Fellowship got to be a small part of that. But I am sure there were many questions raised about the nature of church life at Bethsaida Evangelical church in Haiti in comparison with our own church life. I am sur...
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