One of the things that I see in the suburbs is that people devote large quantities of time to pursuits that are of limited eternal value and crowd out the things that truly matter. People don’t know how to keep the main thing in their life as the main thing. Stephen Covey gives this helpful illustration in his book First Things First and it wonderfully describes how to prioritize the main thing in our lives. One day this expert was... Read more
Many times when Christian parents think about teaching the Bible to their children, their thoughts automatically turn to family worship. While family devotions are a great tool, we have to remember that most of the teaching that we do with our children does not happen in that type of environment. Most of it happens in little everyday situations. What we will discover though, is that if we teach the Bible to our children in these “little” moments, a lifetime of... Read more
Many Christians struggle to read the Old Testament. On the surface, it seems like a long string of unconnected stories with some genealogies sprinkled in. Add to that laws that seem to have very little to do with life in the 21st century. It is easy to see why Christians would look at the Old Testament, then look at the New Testament and wonder what the two had to do with each other. Enter David Murray, professor of Old Testament... Read more
I grew up in Southern culture that spoke of God’s grace, but practically acted as if God only wanted those who had been good enough. The result of this was that those who were churched often looked down upon those who were not. As I was awakened to the realities of the Gospel, the wrongness of this way of looking at those outside the church became readily exposed. One of my favorite explanations of the Gospel comes from Matt Chandler’s... Read more
Last week I highlighted Bob Terry’s editorial in The Alabama Baptist entitled “Why Disagree About the Words of a Hymn?” Dr. Terry seemed to deny substitutionary atonement in the editorial and I was not alone in this estimation. In fact, there was such an overwhelming reaction to the original post that he wrote a clarification on Friday afternoon. He has added several additional paragraphs since then and I thought that it was appropriate to post some follow-up thoughts since his... Read more
The internet is full of writings that fall into what could be best characterized as the “reasons why the church sucks” genre. This genre’s offerings are not limited to one subset of the Christian family. They run the full gamut. One article may decry the church as backwards on gender roles while the next one will argue that the entire church is in the midst of a doctrinal downgrade. One pastor will write an article saying that the church is... Read more
There has been a lot of discussion in the last few weeks about the trend of millennials leaving the church and the rise of the “nones,” which is the title that has been given to those who have no religious affiliation. (You can read Pew Research’s article here.) Much of the discussion has centered on why the church is to blame for these trends along with suggestions for what the church should do to change in light of these trends.... Read more
On the second page of every issue of The Alabama Baptist newspaper is an opinion piece written by the editor Bob Terry. In his piece on August 8 entitled “Why Disagree About the Words of a Hymn?,” Terry stakes out a concerning theological position that is not only outside of the bounds of what it means to be a Baptist, but it is also outside of what it means to be an evangelical Christian. Here’s the background, in recent weeks... Read more
For the last several years, our devotional times with our kids has centered on the grand narrative of Scripture. We primarily used The Big Picture Story Bible and Jesus Storybook Bible for this. In the last few weeks, we have started working through the Proverbs with our children. Our oldest two are now seven and five, so we recognized their need for wisdom. As we have been reading through Proverbs and talking with them, I have seen several practical benefits... Read more
Often Christians talk about Jesus dying “for us.” We are correct to use this language because it is the Bible’s way of speaking of Jesus’ death. Just to use one example, Paul said in Romans 5:8 that, “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” What do we mean when we say that Jesus “died for us?” What did he accomplish when he died? Few people have done as much work... Read more
One Degree to Another
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