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.
Today I want to take a different approach in helping make devotional times spiritually valuable. The last three posts have looked at specific features, such as the relational nature of devotional times, the quantity of devotional times, and the quality of devotional times. Today I want to think about what is exactly commanded when it comes to these times. What does God a...
Keep ReadingIn part two, I spoke of devotional times in terms of relationship, namely that there is the need for quality time and the need for quantity time. I first looked at the need for a quantity time. There must be a quantity of time spent in the Bible so that you have a framework upon which times of intimacy with the Lord can even have a possibility of happening. Today I wan...
Keep ReadingMany people are beginning to recognize division and intolerance are everywhere, and they are only getting stronger and more hostile. College campuses have to deal with violent rioting over speakers with certain viewpoints while at the same time creating "safe spaces" for students threatened by opposing ideas. Is this the legacy of progressivism: fight or flight? Apparent...
Keep ReadingLast week I argued that the goal of devotional times was not just to have them, but to revel in them as times of relational intimacy. It is a time for knowing Christ and being known; a time for Christ to dwell in and through you while you rest and grow in Him. Like any relationship, there are two kinds of time spent with a person: quality time and quantity time. They ...
Keep ReadingWhat does it mean to be a Christian? One of the most subtly misguided notions is that a Christian is someone committed to reading the bible, praying, going to church, and maintaining a high moral conduct. If you want an encapsulation of that, you can most easily point to the devotional time. That is the time when a person is reading the bible, praying, thinking about how...
Keep ReadingThe moral revolution continues to speed along with these two commitments: "leave-no-stone-unturned" and "take-no-prisoners." The latest example is the highly anticipated live-action movie Beauty and the Beast. The entertainment industry surrendered to this moral revolution long ago. But the newest twist is Hollywood's offering of a beloved children's story on the altar o...
Keep ReadingWe have been going through the book of Job in our Sunday evening service and I have been wonderfully helped in this close study of God's Word. We are nearing the end, so I may have to come back with an updated post, but up till now one chapter has struck me as exceedingly precious. Most people are familiar with the first 2 chapters and the last 5 chapters, and rightly ...
Keep Reading"Discrimination" has become one of the great taboos of our culture. Dropping this word upon someone is the ultimate insult that is expected to make a person fall over themselves in apologies. Historically, discrimination was the go-to word for prejudices perpetuated against ethnic minorities. More recently, the LGBT community has had almost total success in getting th...
Keep ReadingSo you are one month into 2017, but has your New Year's resolution made it this far? The fact that many resolutions have gone through the wood chipper by now is the very reason people snicker when they talk about these apparent exercises in futility. But for those who know that changes really need to happen, you are in the critical moment. I am told that commanders in t...
Keep ReadingIt was a record breaking night for the NFL's biggest game. All told there were 27 different records broken. In the middle of it all was Tom Brady. His presence and performance alone were 10 of those 27 records. Clearly Tom Brady has not only reached but cemented his place in football history and joined the league of the world's greatest athletes of all time. But that ...
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