Apprentice 2 Jesus

Culture

  • The need to teach THINKING

    We are a culture given to extremes. Rather than living in the balances of feasting and fasting, we go to the extremes of obesity and anorexia. That is not just concerning food. And we highlight the extremes in our culture, wildly cheering one side or wildly despairing over the other extreme. We don’t like the… Read more

  • The small things we do

    If we could possibly move away from doing things that we only think are good enough to post on Facebook, think of all the things we actually DO that bless people in the name of the Kingdom. When you think about all of us as believers simply living out the Kingdom in some small way…… Read more

  • The need of the Church

    The need of the Church is not some cleansing to make sure we have some very strict doctrinal stance memorized perfectly. Doctrine is important. Teaching is vital. Memorizing something to sound absolutely correct and then demanding that precision accuracy of everyone else is not healthy. The need of the Church is not beating our one… Read more

  • The call really is to live differently

    I am working my way through Leviticus… intentionally… Leviticus 18-20 and 1 Peter 1 offer similar exhortations: Where you are headed and how you succeed depends on the relationship you have with God. Live differently. You do NOT have to live like the people in that land. What 1 Peter reminds us in a very sober way… Read more

  • Parenting and discsipleship

    The internet has been around the entirety of raising three boys in our family, but I can’t imagine raising young kids in today’s environment. It’s entirely possible, of course! But the challenges! It is incredibly difficult to “train up a child” as a family, and then add in all the other sources of input flying… Read more

  • Too much of Egypt

    You must have no other gods before me. (Ex. 20:3) The call of God to Israel was to not only be free of the outward slavery of Egypt, but to have their hearts set free as well. 400 plus years of slavery didn’t just effect their physical and mental status. It enslaved their hearts as… Read more

  • God changing the world — through us

    When God wants to change the world, he doesn’t send in the tanks. He sends in the meek, the mourners, those who are hungry and thirsty for God’s justice, the peacemakers, and so on… It is because of this that the world has been changed by people like William Wilberforce, campaigning tirelessly to abolish slavery,… Read more

  • In this world we are like Jesus

    This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus. (I Jn. 4:17) I know I could sure do a better job of THAT! We need to rise to this challenge as the body of Christ. Now, more than ever. There… Read more

  • The privileged life of narcissism

    The big story out of this weekend was Elliot Rodger. Another gunman goes crazy. More innocent lives taken. More calls for gun control. More concern for mental illness. (And by the way, nothing will be done about either of those things. Just chill. No need to comment on either subject.) As I’ve watched this story unfold (and… Read more

  • Angst without the guidance

    This article from First Things is a critique of Matthew Vine’s work on homosexuality. THAT will get some comments (possibly), but that is NOT what I want to focus on. What I want to focus on is the bottom of the article in this paragraph: We do not judge a Christian teacher only by his… Read more