Worth Reading

Psalm 83

Do you come to our gathered worship service expecting God to speak to you through his Word? We encourage you to prayerfully read through the passage that will be preached prior to the service to help you prepare.

Psalm 83 is an imprecatory Psalm, a prayer for God’s divine curse on his enemies. Below are several articles that help us understand how to pray these Psalms:

Praying the Imprecatory Psalms

When was the last time you, in your prayers, addressed God as the psalmist does: “O Lord, God of vengeance, O God of vengeance,” and then asked Him to “Rise up, O judge of the earth; repay to the proud what they deserve!” (Psalm 94:1-2)?

What’s going on? Are these tar pits we need to avoid as we make our way through the green pastures and still waters of the Psalms’ landscape? A while back I encouraged my congregation to begin praying the psalms because doing so would enrich their prayer life, give greater variety to their prayers, and increase their vocabulary concerning God and what they pray for. I put together a schedule of praying through the Psalms in 100 days. Some in the congregation expressed to me their discomfort when they would come upon these imprecatory sections. They didn’t know what to do with them. What do you do when you get to passages like these? We wonder what sentiments like that are even doing in the Bible.

Three more articles on this topic you may find helpful:

Should We Pray the Imprecatory Psalms?

Should We Pray for ISIS to be Saved or Destroyed?

Should We Pray for God to Punish Our Enemies?

The Story of Iran’s Church in Two Sentences

Everyone loves a good story. As Christians, we especially love stories that tell us how, when all seems lost, God makes a way.

One such story is about the church in Iran—and it’s one of the greatest stories in the world today.

It’s a simple story that can be summarized in just two sentences: Persecution threatened to wipe out Iran’s tiny church. Instead, the church in Iran has become the fastest growing in the world, and it is influencing the region for Christ.

WHAT THE PRO-CHOICE AND PRO-LIFE MISS ABOUT SIMONE BILES

As Simone Biles was clinching yet another gold medal in Rio, people on both sides of the abortion debate were pointing to her achievements and background as a justification for their position.

But both miss out on a very important fact: Simone Biles has value not because she is a young woman inspiring the world or because she is a world champion gymnast who was adopted as a child. Simone has value simply because she is Simone.

Worth Reading

Psalm 111

Do you come to our gathered worship service expecting God to speak to you through his Word? We encourage you to prayerfully read through the passage that will be preached prior to the service to help you prepare.

The Bible Is Not Boring

If God’s word seems boring, there’s either a problem with the reading or the reader.

6 Christian Athletes to Watch at Rio 2016

Here are six of the athletes that I’ll be watching as they represent not only their country but also their Savior, seeking to integrate their faith and their work.

To Your Daughter, Speak the Truth

Tell your daughter she is beautiful. Tell her, not because she needs to know she’s beautiful, but because she needs to know she is beautiful to you. In our image-driven culture, she will already perceive her physical “flaws” to the point that the face value of your words will ring untrue. But she will learn to trust their deeper significance because of who speaks them. She will learn, God willing, that “face value” is fleeting and deceptive. When every billboard and magazine cover and pop-up is telling her she is not beautiful, the knowledge that you absolutely, irrationally, vehemently disagree may just be the thing that keeps her heart whole. Don’t let the shouting match be one-sided. Tell her she is beautiful. Because, by the only measures that matter, she is.

Worth Reading

Psalm 105

Do you come to our gathered worship service expecting God to speak to you through his Word? We encourage you to prayerfully read through the passage that will be preached prior to the service to help you prepare.

God’s Sovereign Grace in Timbuktu

As a child, Steve Saint thought of Timbuktu as a made-up name for “the ends of the earth.” In 1986, while traveling in western Africa for Missionary Aviation Fellowship, he found himself stranded in the real Timbuktu…

We won’t all, in this life, meet someone whose story will suddenly shed light on God’s purpose in our loved one’s suffering or death. But I think most of us will have that very experience one day, beyond the ends of this Earth, on that New Earth, where we, eyes wide, will hear countless jaw-dropping stories of God’s sovereign grace.

The Excommunicated Member Who Thanked Me

These are the stories that don’t get told. But they’re real. Real people are helped and loved and strengthened when the church has the courage to obey the Scriptures. So, pastors, be faithful in teaching about church discipline. Members, be thankful that your church practices discipline, even when it’s difficult.

Biblical church discipline isn’t punitive; it’s beautifully redemptive. But it takes some time to see the fruit.

The Old Cross and the New

Relevant words from A.W. Tozer written 50 years ago:

ALL UNANNOUNCED AND MOSTLY UNDETECTED there has come in modern times a new cross into popular evangelical circles. It is like the old cross, but different: the likenesses are superficial; the differences, fundamental.

Worth Reading

Psalm 51

Do you come to our gathered worship service expecting God to speak to you through his Word? We encourage you to prayerfully read through the passage that will be preached prior to the service to help you prepare. We also encourage you to read 2 Samuel 11-12 in preparation for this Sunday.

The Legacy of One-Point Calvinism and Casual Churchianity

Good follow up on last week’s sermon as well as a tie in to this week’s:

I grew up among a few million “one-point Calvinists” who misunderstood their one point: “once saved, always saved.” In general, it meant, if Johnny asked Jesus into his heart at age six, left the church at sixteen, mocked Jesus for ten years, and died in Vietnam with a bullet hole through his playboy bunny, he was in heaven.

In my first year in the pastorate, I told a young woman who was committing fornication that if she didn’t repent and turn to Jesus, she would go to hell. She was not happy with that theology. Later she accepted it. I did her wedding, and for twenty years she wrote me at Christmas to say thank you for the warning. No one had ever told her that growing up in a Christian home...

Don’t Waste Your Vacation

You never take a vacation from your Christianity, so why would our modern concepts of vacation sway us away from attending worship on the Sunday of our vacation?

Touched by Biblical Beauty

The world may be "death impregnated," as one of my mentors used to say, and most of us know the bite of suffering in one form or another, but it also is brim-full of beauty because it everywhere bears the mark of his thumbprint, his "It was very good" (Gen. 1:31). The common graces of tastes, sights, touch, sounds, enduring friendship, love, joy, community. And much, much beauty has been squeezed into the world through the funnel of God's good Word, the Bible.

Worth Reading

Psalm 96

Do you come to our gathered worship service expecting God to speak to you through his Word? We encourage you to prayerfully read through the passage that will be preached prior to the service to help you prepare.

God’s Beauty for the Bored, Busy, and Depressed

Psalm 96:6: “Splendor and majesty are before him; strength and beauty are in his  sanctuary."
Good read as we prepare to look at Psalm 96 this Sunday:

To escape our bondage to sin, we must come alive to the glory of God in Christ. He’s our only hope. On this theme, theologian Jonathan Edwards was a master. He discovered God’s glory and beauty all over Scripture, and he centered his understanding of the Christian life there. . . So what does God’s splendor have to do with my daily life right now — in my busyness, in my temptations, in my boredom, and in my spiritual dryness? I recently sat down to talk with Dane Ortlund, who serves as the Bible publishing director at Crossway.

The Role of Singing in the Life of the Church

Psalm 96:1: Oh sing to the LORD a new song; sing to the LORD all the earth!
Another good one to prepare us for gathered worship:

Christianity is a singing faith. It’s one of the chief things followers of Jesus are renowned for, both down through the ages and now all around the world. While the proportion of singing has varied from time to time and from place to place, most churches today devote about a third of their gathering time to congregational singing and invest a considerable amount of time, money, effort, and energy into the musical side of church life. But why do we sing? What does our singing accomplish? What purposes does it fulfill? According to Scripture, God has both created and called us to sing for three principal reasons: to help us praise, to help us pray, and to help us proclaim. Let’s look at each of these reasons in turn.

In Celebration of the PCA

I could celebrate the fact that a south-born Church has repented of racial sin, and taken steps to walk in repentance. I could celebrate our pursuit of God’s truth in our study of Gender roles in the Church. Both of which cause me to rejoice.

But I want to celebrate something less structural but just as significant:

I praise God for the work accomplished on the Assembly floor, but I’m just as thankful for our witness outside of the convention center.

I have no idea if the World is watching our assembly debates, but I know that men and women working around Mobile noticed us, and I’m proud of the fact that the PCA loved them well.