The Word Is Not Imprisoned

September 12, 2011

Christ is Our Passover Lamb

We have remained steadfast in our discipline of “Family Friday Night.” It began while we were in seminary because time was very limited and very valuable. So, on Friday night, Dad stopped studying at 5:00 pm and did not start back until Saturday at noon. The Saturday morning was a time my wife could actually have an uninterrupted quiet time (husband, you should add up the amount of time your wife is spending with the kids…she needs a break!). And we are still keeping the Family Night though we are not as busy. That is the history and context of Family Night.

Therefore, we plan each Friday night on Wednesday (or further in advance if we are doing something that needs extra preparation). It usually involves everyone’s input. However, when the Holy Days of old roll around, we incorporate them into our family night. I would like to encourage you to consider using these holidays as a teaching tool for your kids. They are rich with imagery that will help your kids develop categories of theology.

So, we have planned the next several weeks to teach our kids about the Passover, The Day of Atonement, and The Feast of Booths. If you are going to attempt this, check out the material available through Jews for Jesus. They have some excellent resources. You will want to spend some time thinking about this and how Christ is our Passover Lamb before you do this. I hope to post my devotions for the kids as I take the week of our scheduled Passover to lead them in our family worship time each night.

I hope you will be encouraged to use these holy days to point to Christ (and learn yourself) in the following days. Also, don’t think you have to do them on their scheduled dates. It can be overwhelming for someone to do all of them. We have been doing them for a few years now, so it takes time to develop a strategy. You can spread them out or just pick one for the year and focus on it and do it well. May you and your family be blessed!

Leave a comment | posted in Bible Study Tools, Family Time, Holidays, Homemaking, Pastoral Ministry

September 3, 2011

Saint Augustine’s Confessions

By Jason

I (Kimberly) decided to begin reading our copy of Saint Augustine’s Confessions the other day. Over the last several months I have really dropped off on reading, outside of daily Bible reading. I have started two or three books and put them down. Anyway, just a few pages into Confessions I am already encouraged. Of God he says on page 23,

“You are unchangeable and yet you change all things.”

Leave a comment | posted in Meditations

April 19, 2011

Truth: How Did That Happen?

By Jason

I once had no idea!!! As I encounter things that differ from what I believe to be true, I try to remember that I too did not know the truth. Whatever truth you might think of, often it is believed to be not true any longer. I have to be careful the way I write this post. For, I believe truth is truth–it does not change. However, things that were once true are now believed to be false. In fact, there is a new truth that has taken its place.
That does not mean the truth has changed. It simply means that truth is no longer believed and something false has taken its place.
I think an example will help (in this post I am not attempting to prove the following–yet). Many believe today that the local church is to have only one pastor (not elder or bishop). Yet the New Testament pattern plainly shows the pattern is to be a plurality of pastors. The New Testament also teaches that pastor, bishop, and elder are speaking of the same office in the church. So, when someone teaches the Scriptures and this topic arises many may think it is false because they have a different belief in its place. Therefore, the truth is now thought to be false and what is false is believed to be true.
In response to this teaching, some counter with, ” We can barely afford to pay one pastor, much less two.” Or, that part of Scripture is “for the Presbyterian or some other denomination that believes that way.” “We are a Baptist Church.” These are merely pragmatic excuses for not believing truth.
Now, I will go along way with those who do not believe things the way I do IF they give me biblical evidence. I think the former complaints to be pathetic.
I do not know exactly how truth gets distorted. I would not be surprised that due to such reasons given for not believing now resulted in the abandoning of it in history. Nevertheless, truth is truth. We must embrace what is true whether we have believed what is false for decades.
If you find yourself in this position what should you do? Well, the many times I encountered similar situations through seminary I would talk it out with my brothers in Christ. I would pray over the word and read it carefully. I would listen to sermons on the verses dealing with a particular issue. And I would move slow but remain teachable. We all have blind spots…which really bothers me. I hope I remember my own history.
Also, no matter which side you are on the delivery of truth is painful. It is painful to receive and painful to deliver. Imagine someone believing a superstition that ended the life of their child. Not only is it hard for that parent to hear the truth but it is also hard to tell that truth when it reveals an unnecessary deaf. Truth delivered and received with compassion is the proper way–God’s way!

Leave a comment | posted in Pastoral Ministry

March 29, 2011

Groaning For Our Hope!

By Jason

Enduring life can become drudgery. We are often times so nearsighted in the present, that we are blinded to the hope of eternity. Paul has some encouraging words for us:

For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. 2 For in this tent we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling, 3 if indeed by putting it on we may not be found naked. 4 For while we are still in this tent, we groan, being burdened–not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. 5 He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee. 2 Corinthians 5:1-5

Here he describes this present body as a tent. Certainly the idea Paul is trying describe is that of temporary, fleeting, and transient maybe.
Our present body was fashioned by God to be temporary for our good! The everyday aches and pains can serve us by reminding us that our present TENT is temporary. This does not, however, relieve us of our present responsibilities. In fact, it is a fuel for us to endure the present as we groan for the hope of a glorified body.
The temporal state of our tent was designed by God to cause us to groan for the eternal dwelling, for we were made for eternity. Paul declares that this is the source of his renewal:

“So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day.” 2 Corinthians 4:16

May we endure as we groan for the hope of a building not made with hands, eternal in the heavens!

Leave a comment | posted in Meditations

March 21, 2011

Fickle Hearts

By Jason

Moses is delayed forty days on the mountain in Exodus 32. It appears the people endured several days before making a god to go before them. Does it not seem odd that if someone must make something to go before them then it is not a god? They just witnessed the amazing parting of the Red Sea, manna from heaven, and water from a ROCK! You would think that after seeing such amazing things they would never disbelieve. O how fickle the heart can be.
Well if you like to one-up everything the people in John 11 move much quicker. John 11:45-46 says, “Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what he did, believed in him, but some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done.” Of course, this is the account of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. Can you imagine walking away from this scene to tell someone–not how amazing it was–but to build your case against him? This was not even a matter of days but possibly minutes.
Now before we throw these fickle-hearted people under the bus, observe your behavior after reading the very story yourself–encountering the resurrecting power of God before your eyes in this text. Beware! The heart is fickle

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March 13, 2011

The LORD Leads!

By Jason

“Take courage church, our God fights for us!!!” This was my plea to the church last Sunday as we mused over Exodus 14. This was not the entire story because God is the One who led Israel to the place of needing God to fight for them.

Moses writes,

Exodus 13:17-18; 13:20 – 14:3 17 When Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them by way of the land of the Philistines, although that was near. For God said, “Lest the people change their minds when they see war and return to Egypt.” 18 But God led the people around by the way of the wilderness toward the Red Sea. And the people of Israel went up out of the land of Egypt equipped for battle…20 And they moved on from Succoth and encamped at Etham, on the edge of the wilderness. 21 And the LORD went before them by day in a pillar of cloud to lead them along the way, and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, that they might travel by day and by night. 22 The pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night did not depart from before the people. 14:1 ¶ Then the LORD said to Moses, 2 “Tell the people of Israel to turn back and encamp in front of Pi-hahiroth, between Migdol and the sea, in front of Baal-zephon; you shall encamp facing it, by the sea. 3 For Pharaoh will say of the people of Israel, ‘They are wandering in the land; the wilderness has shut them in.’

We can take courage, for our God leads His people. Therefore, I concluded that the LORD actively leads His people into impossible situations. Not only that, He displays His power in the impossible situations. And while we are there, He fights for us. There is so much more here in this text, but these are a few of the glorious truths we encountered. Finally, the LORD did this for His glory!!! As we see Israel praising His name in Exodus 15, so we too as we hear of these wonders of God.
One might say, “But we were not there to see the miracles.” I would submit to you that Jethro was not there either. But here is the result of Jethro hearing about these things:

Exodus 18:8-12 8 Then Moses told his father-in-law all that the LORD had done to Pharaoh and to the Egyptians for Israel’s sake, all the hardship that had come upon them in the way, and how the LORD had delivered them. 9 And Jethro rejoiced for all the good that the LORD had done to Israel, in that he had delivered them out of the hand of the Egyptians. 10 ¶ Jethro said, “Blessed be the LORD, who has delivered you out of the hand of the Egyptians and out of the hand of Pharaoh and has delivered the people from under the hand of the Egyptians. 11 Now I know that the LORD is greater than all gods, because in this affair they dealt arrogantly with the people.” 12 And Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law, brought a burnt offering and sacrifices to God

Take courage church, the LORD leads!!!

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March 6, 2011

Roland Allen on the Training of Candidates

By Jason

This is a quote from his book Missionary Methods: St. Paul’s or Ours?
Allen says:

The young men so educated are sometimes, by that very education, out of touch with their congregations. They return to their people with strange ideas and strange habits. They are lonely, and they have to struggle against the perils of loneliness. They are not even the best teachers of people from whose intellectual and spiritual life they have so long been absent. They do not know how to answer their difficulties or to supply their necessities. They know so much Christian doctrine and philosophy that they have fogotten the religion of their country. The congregation has not grown with them, nor they with the congregation. They come, as it were, from outside, and only a few exceptional men can learn to overcome that difficulty( page 106)

I fear that I may not be one of those exceptional men. It is lonely here. I am but a stranger in this place. I do not know which way to turn. I feel as though I am standing on the bank of the Red Sea with walls of water on my right and my left and the Egyptian army behind me. May the gift of faith send me running across the sea on dry land!

2 Comments | posted in Currently Reading

February 28, 2011

Stand in Awe of God’s Mysterious Ways!

By Jason

Exodus 9:14-16 For this time I will send all my plagues on you yourself, and on your servants and your people, so that you may know that there is none like me in all the earth. 15 For by now I could have put out my hand and struck you and your people with pestilence, and you would have been cut off from the earth. 16 But for this purpose I have raised you up, to show you my power, so that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth.

Exodus 10:1-2 Then the LORD said to Moses, “Go in to Pharaoh, for I have hardened his heart and the heart of his servants, that I may show these signs of mine among them, 2 and that you may tell in the hearing of your son and of your grandson how I have dealt harshly with the Egyptians and what signs I have done among them, that you may know that I am the LORD.”

Exodus 11:9 Then the LORD said to Moses, “Pharaoh will not listen to you, that my wonders may be multiplied in the land of Egypt.”

These are only a few examples.

1 Comment | posted in Currently Reading

February 13, 2011

Let Us Pray

By Jason

O God of Perfect Contentment,

We declare You are in need of nothing,
but we need You!
We declare that Your will is perfect,
but our will is selfish and rebellious.
We declare that You are sovereign,
but we only act or pretend that You are sovereign.
We needfully lift the cup of salvation,
to forgive us our sins,
to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
Yet our salvation depends not upon our righteousness–
it lies only in the righteousness of Christ.
And now, upon faith in the person and work of Your Son, we are positionally righteous;
blameless according to the law,
in fact, perfect law keepers.
You have treated Your Son the way we should have been treated
And,
You have treated us the way Your Son should have been treated.
In Your justice the fullness of your wrath was poured on Your Son;
In Your mercy the fullness of your grace was poured on us.
Now may we respond with heartfelt worship–
worship that is true
worship that is spirit
And to this end may Your Great Name
Your Ways
Your Character