A Place Where You Belong (Church Membership, Part 6)
Some final thoughts on the practical need for local church membership....
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Suffering is the Norm
Why is it that we think suffering is the exception and that peace and comfort are to be expected?...
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The Search for Silver Linings
Searching for silver linings in our suffering is a natural impulse. But if we're not wise, it can lead us away from comfort instead of towards it...
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Showing Up
So often we hesitate to be involved in ministry because we feel inadequate. But most of what is required is simply being present....
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The Spirituality of Sorrow
For the Christian, is sadness something to be ignored, something to be repressed, something to be ashamed of? Or is it maybe something to be embraced?...
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Planting Seeds and Buying Fields
What Mike Tyson, Hamilton, and Jeremiah teach me about having a legacy....
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The Serious Business of Laughter
Is it possible that laughter in the face of death is actually an act of faith?...
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"Best Case Scenario" Reconsidered
I get what Paul means when he says, "To die is gain," but we can't skip over what he means when he says, "For me, to live is Christ."...
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Fluffy Pillows
Would you rather go to a hospital with fluffy pillows or with skilled surgeons?...
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Though He Slay Me
Is it a lack of faith to expect death in my situation? That's not really how faith works ...
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Where My Anchor Holds
My soul's anchor is not just information about God. It is the action of God in Jesus Christ....
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My Anchors
A continuation of the previous post - what are the anchors that hold me steady in the storm?...
Modern Medicine's Undefeatable Foe
A few weeks before my mother died of cancer, I learned an important lesson about death and doctors....
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Questioning My Questions
We have a lot of questions when we suffer. Let's make sure we're asking the right ones....
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Gratitude Adjustment
It took my one night in the ER to realize I had a gratitude problem....
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A Worrisome Little Word
What's a child of God to do when even the scientists are worried?...
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Which Step Are We On (and can I freak out yet)?
The surgeon told us not to get ahead of ourselves and start panicking. Scripture says the same thing....
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Entering the Wound
Having my brain surgery scheduled on Christmas Eve got me thinking......
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The Fine Line of Prayer for Healing
How do we pray when we don't know if God WILL do what he CAN do?...
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Wartime Learning, The Dying Senator, and Stupid Me
The reality of death is always there, but we are slow to notice until we are forced to see it....
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A New Curriculum I Didn't Plan
What's a pastor to do when all his plans take a sudden course correction?...
Preferring the Word
How can we receive the word "with love" if we're just not feeling that way?...
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Assuming Truth
When listening to the Word of God, we need to set aside our skepticism and criticism and receive it from a standpoint of faith....
Help Me, Please!
We may think we know how to read and hear what the Bible says, but the Bible tells us something different....
Are You Ready to Hear?
We don't need to be ready to hear. Sounds happen and we hear them, right? But in order to hear God's Word in an effective way, we have to prepare ourselves to hear it....
Working Hard at Hearing
Hearing Scripture can be easy, but the kind of hearing that makes a difference actually requires effort....
Hearing Rightly
The Word of God is powerful, but God has given us responsibility to hear it in a way that puts that power to work....
Putting the "P" in TCPC
Presbyterian isn't just something we have in our name. It's something we put into practice, including sending one of our pastors to a national gathering of PCA elders....
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The Problem with Preaching the Gospel to Yourself
Preaching the gospel to ourselves is a great practice to help us think and live rightly. But there's a problem with it......
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Why Do We Sing Psalm 24?
What exactly is the gospel? And who besides Jesus could ever say they have clean hands or a pure heart? ...
Why Do We Sing Psalm 8?
The Grand Canyon, Mount Everest, the Marianas Trench all scream the same truth...God is majestic. So in comparison, man is nothing, right? Not exactly......
Why Do We Sing Psalm 13?
Christians are called to be joyful in all circumstances, right? So why do we observe so many Christians who are sad, sometimes for a long time?...
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Why Do We Sing Psalm 2?
We often hear God calling Jesus "His beloved Son" in the same way that we hear an earthly Father saying "I love my son." But what if what God is saying is closer to "this is my chosen champion"? Would that change the way you think of Jesus?...
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Why Do We Sing Psalm 1?
How many paths are there in life? Hundreds? Thousands? Millions?!?! What if told you there are only two?...
(Not So) Great Expectations
Expectations can lead to conflict - with other people and with God....
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Stop Apologizing
The Bible never tells us to apologize. Seriously. It tells us to do something else....
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What Is a Psalm?
Why do we sing? Do musicians compose melodies only to aid us in memorizing words? Or does music also serve another purpose?...
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A Place Where You Belong (Church Membership, Part 6)
Some final thoughts on the practical need for local church membership....
Among You and Over You (Church Membership, Part 4)
When Scripture describes the role of elder, it uses language that cannot be understood without the idea of church membership....
Discipline Needs the Church (Church Membership, Part 5)
The way Scripture describes the discipline of sinners is only possible in the context of the local church....
The Case for the Local Church (Church Membership, Part 3)
As a Christian, I'm a member of the body of Christ. Why, then, do we talk about also being a member of a local church?...
The Church Within the Church (Church Membership, Part 2)
Is the church only those who are saved? Or is it everyone that shows up on a Sunday morning? The answer is somewhere in between, and it might be less black and white than we want....
A Farewell to Proof-Texting (Church Membership, Part 1)
Understanding how the Bible speaks of church membership requires a different way of using Scripture than we might be used to....
Crumbled Have Spires in Every Land
Church buildings are significant, but they are still only buildings. The true church exists elsewhere....
Not Stopping at Diagnosis
What do a doctor's office, a mechanic's shop, and the Bible all have in common?...
Analog Sanctification
Putting off the old self is less like digital deletion and more like an older technology....
Chinese New Year's Biblical Connection?
There may be more to Chinese New Year traditions than meets the eye....
What Good is a New Year?
Calling January 1st the start of a "new" year doesn't change anything about us or the year itself. And maybe that's a very good thing....
Before There Was Christmas
The Christmas story is only half a story if we leave out what Jesus was doing before he was born....
An Unusual Christmas Theme
We often see words like "Joy" "Peace" and "Blessing" and Christmastime, but there is one word we do not often associate with the season. And yet it is a very fitting word....
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Something Better than Vegetables (Finding Comfort in Providence, Part 3)
God is loving, but in a way that doesn't always match our demands and expectations. ...
You Do All Things Well (Finding Comfort in Providence, Part 2)
The greatest obstacle to trusting God's wisdom is that we fail to grasp how different God's thoughts are from our own....
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For the Want of a Nail (Finding Comfort in Providence, Part 1)
If we believe that God is on control of the big things, we have to believe he is in total control of all the small things, too....
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Even Christians Sing the Blues
Is sadness a sign of immaturity? Can I worship honestly if I'm not happy? Reading the Psalms might suggest that honest worship embraces the whole spectrum of our emotions. ...
The Problem of Adjectives Becoming Nouns
Scripture tells us to "regard no one according to the flesh." How does this affect the labels our society encourages us to use?...
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Reflections on Debate
What does the pastor of a small Presbyterian church think about while in a room full of Presbyterian pastors in the midst of a debate?...
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Praying our Frustration
Are things getting better? Worse? About the same? And what does that mean for how we live as God's people?...
Praying for the Nation, Praying for the Kingdom
How do those with citizenship in heaven pray for an earthly nation?...
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Surprised by Answered Prayer
How long should we pray for something? Until we receive an answer. An old prayer request list on the church computer helped me understand that....
Choosing the Better Thing (Rebelling Against Exhaustion, Part 3)
Behind the choices we make are a set of values. Letting worldly values often leads us down a path of exhaustion. Jesus challenges us to choose a different path....
Busyness and Idolatry (Rebelling Against Exhaustion, Part 2)
We live in a culture that encourages us to be busy. At the root of that tendency is a false belief that our worth comes from how we spend our time. The Sabbath rest challenges this idol in our hearts....
Big Rocks Go in First (Rebelling Against Exhaustion, Part 1)
Part 1 in a 3-part series on our culture's obsession with staying busy - what that means to our hearts and how Scripture calls us to rebel against it....