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 Sunday we gave some focus to the matter of waiting upon the Lord. The matter of waiting does not seem to be a complicated one. We have waiting rooms in which all we do is sit. Isn't waiting the most brainless, effortless activity of them all? That is not the kind of waiting we are talking about. Life is not like a waiting room; a response like that would be closer a...
Keep ReadingA state-mandated stay-at-home order has afforded us an opportunity we never would have had otherwise. What is that? It is the opportunity to feel what our longing for heaven should be more like. Emotions are tricky things, but they are real and important. You are an emotional being, and emotions reveal the true you. You might be able to hide emotions, but you can't not e...
Keep ReadingThere is only one way that you are going to worship God with real, fervent, soul-pulsing worship. And that is if you see something in God that is so beautiful it takes your breath away. That is what worship is. So how do you see this? Let me tell you the two routes misguided people often take. The first route is the manufactured route. It even comes with a formula: only ...
Keep ReadingWhat do we do about communion while in quarantine? Our church takes communion once a month, on the first Sunday of the month, and it is now upon us. Eventually every church is going to come to this moment. So what are the options before us? I can see at least three different options. As we look at each one, we will think about what the Bible says about communion and how ...
Keep ReadingA global pandemic is a good time for a refresher on fear. During the Great Depression, the newly elected Franklin D. Roosevelt said that "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself." That makes for good speech writing, but not good biblical thinking. As a Christian, your impulse might be to blurt out God's command to not fear. Yes, God commands this, but that is not a...
Keep ReadingMy last post stated that you cannot livestream the church, which may have raised some questions about what churches are doing during our pandemic situation. Is it wrong to livestream a service and have people watch it? Let's step back a few paces and work up to that question. Let's start with the bigger concept of technology. Is it wrong to use technology? That is actua...
Keep ReadingDuring these days of pandemic and our attempts at social distancing, many of the larger churches have resorted to live-streaming a service. Dressed in your Sunday-best p.j.s, you can sing along to songs and hear a sermon right from your couch. This is not a surprising move. Many churches are already catering to the online experience. You can pay your tithe online, submit...
Keep ReadingEvery single person exists in circles of relationships. Maybe we could call them spheres of influence. There is the work sphere, the church sphere, the neighborhood sphere, the school sphere and more. In that circle are certain people that you basically only interact with in that sphere. There might be some overlap in those spheres, but usually the larger part of those p...
Keep ReadingIn the last blog post I laid the foundation for biblical love and the impossibly to do it as an unregenerate person. The first and second great commandments are the heart of the issue and I worked off of those to put together a definition of love. That definition was as follows: Love is the worship and obedience to God that overflows in joyfully and sacrificially doing ...
Keep ReadingDespite all the love songs and love stories and love poems that have filled our culture, the culture is still no closer to knowing what love actually is. You can't change blindness by talking about seeing. The aforementioned songs, stories, and poems have only hardened people into a kind of love that is not actually true and glorious love. Self-seeking human nature stays...
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