Luke 4:16-21 “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoner and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”  These were some of the first proclamations that Jesus made when he started his three year ministry. Isn’t it interesting that the first group he targets are the poor and those with disabilities. It is actions like these that make it hard for some of us to try and … Continue reading Opening His ministry

    Today I am going to talk a little about a book entitled “If God is Love – Rediscovering Grace in an Ungracious World” by Phillip Gulley and James Mulholland. I must admit up front that I am somewhat fascinated by the Quaker religion of which both of the authors are ministers. Although one of them came through Baptist and Methodists to get there. I greatly respect the position the Quakers have taken on non-violence going all the way back to the Revolutionary war. This is a very readable book on a very important topic. There has been an … Continue reading Book Review – If God is Love

As you can see from the last few posts I have been somewhat down the last few weeks. I have always found that reading Beatitudes is able to pull me up when I am down. I prefer Luke’s version to that Matthew’s. So, here goes: Luke 6:20-22 Looking at his disciples, he said: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.  Blessed are you who hunger now, for you will be satisfied.  Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. Blessed are you when men hate you, when they exclude you and insult you and reject your name … Continue reading Lifting up Christian’s Spirits…

I am making a rare Saturday post to give attention to Trevin Wax’s blog posting for today. Go to http://trevinwax.com/2009/03/21/how-scholarship-shields-us-from-the-bible/ .  It gives credence to my belief that today’s Christians are generally not doing a very good job of understanding what Jesus says in the Gospels. It looks like this was also not uncommon a hundred years ago. Will we ever learn that Jesus really does expect us to actually do what he says. Thanks Trevin.  I will be picking up a book or two by Soren Kierkegaard. Continue reading Kingdom People Blog Post.

Here is another impromptu post related to a discussion I recently had with another Christian. First of all I am a regular supporter, both with my time and money, of a local Christian shelter and soup kitchen. During my discussions with my Christian friend I mentioned that the support of our church to this mission has almost dried up in the recent months. I have tried numerous way to spur support but to no avail. My friend made the statement that maybe we should not ask people to support things like this during these tough times. My friend said many … Continue reading Fair Weather Christians

I imagine everyone has heard the term “you reap what you sow”. There is a lot of reaping and sowing going on in the Bible but I have not been able to find this reference in any of them. Are some of the bad things that happen in our lives a result of our unchristian behavior? Some of the red letters around this theme are:  John 9:2-5 His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the work … Continue reading Do we reap what we sow??

 I don’t know how many of you have read President Obama’s talk at the National Prayer Breakfast a few weeks ago. In that talk he told us how he came to faith in spite of not being raised in the active Christian household. And , no he was never a Muslim. Yes, his estranged father was at one time a Muslim before he became an atheist. Here is his account of why he came to accept Jesus as his Lord and Savior.  I was not raised in a particularly religious household. I had a father who was born a Muslim … Continue reading Coming to Faith -Presidential Style

Since I have been doing book reviews for a while I wanted to break it up with something I have been pondering lately. Is there such a thing as a “couch potato Christians”? Of course there are, so maybe I should say “should there be such a thing? A verse from Ephesians is used frequently by many denominations to show us our salvation is a total gift and has nothing to do with what we do. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith — and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God not … Continue reading Couch Potato Christians???

                This is a follow up of a recent post about eliminating hunger in the world. I’m sure there are some, and probably many, Christian organizations who say “No, no, we must spend our money preaching the Word and not ministering to physical needs. After all our spiritual life is for eternity and hunger is only of this earth”. While I don’t totally disagree with the intent of this, I believe it is very wrong headed and off the mark. There are well known basic human needs that must be met before higher … Continue reading Basic Human Needs

 For those of us who grew up with MAD magazine the title of this posting is very familiar. Alfred E. Neuman the main character in the magazine was constantly captioned to say that. I know I am giving my age away with this knowledge since Mad magazine was published in the 1950’s and that was ages ago for many bloggers. I regularly spent my 35 cent weekly allowance for a copy of Mad Magazine! If you are interested in learning more about Alfred go to Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_e_newman  Little did I know then that there was a biblical basis for … Continue reading What me worry??

It’s time to get back on to the red letters so here goes: Luke 12:48 From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked. There are hard words for us in the first world countries, especially us in the United States. Some say these words only refer to spiritual matters but I don’t buy that at all! We spend more on our Starbucks coffee in a year than most third world people earn. How can so many of us ignore the needs in … Continue reading How fortunate we are!

This is a continuation of the last post where I covered George Washington’s religious beliefs. I will conclude this topic by talking about Thomas Jefferson.  Thomas Jefferson — Jefferson was undoubtedly the strongest advocate for religious freedom of the Founding Fathers. This was quite evident when he composed the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom in 1777. Jefferson was definitely raised in a Christian household. He seemed to have also been brought up in the rituals and customs of the Anglican Church as it existed in colonial Virginia which was much less a high church institution than its England counterpart. He … Continue reading The Faith of our Founding Fathers – continued

       There are a lot of different views of what the Founding Fathers of the United States believed when it came to God. Many evangelicals like to say that we were founded on Christian principles and that is what makes us so unique, some would say superior, but I definitely don’t buy into that. I found the book entitled The Faiths of Our Fathers, by Alf J. Mapp Jr. to be very helpful in discerning truth from myth about this topic. The book goes into quite some detail about 10 of the most prominent Founders and just what … Continue reading The Faiths of our Founding Fathers

 I know I promised another book review for this post but I want to slip in a personal lesson I recently learned. At the Ash Wednesday service at my church our pastor’s sermon was about some of the things we Christians do during the Lenten season. He mentioned that a common sacrifice for Catholics, he was one as a child, was to not eat meat. Other people try to give up things like chocolate, special foods, TV and such. But pastor suggested something entirely different. Why not try to live out part of the Lord’s prayer and truly forgive someone … Continue reading Sacrifices for Lent?

I am going to spend this post studying John Howard Yoder and particularly his book The Politics of Jesus written in 1972. Here is what Wikipedia says about him. John Howard Yoder (December 29, 1927 – December 30, 1997) was a Christian theologian, ethicist, and Biblical scholar best known for his radical Christian pacifism, his mentoring of future theologians such as Stanley Hauerwas, his loyalty to his Mennonite faith, and his 1972 magnum opus, The Politics of Jesus It is obvious from his books that Yoder is a pacifist who strongly believes that it is not God’s will for us … Continue reading The Politics of Jesus

      On the last post I let it be known that I am definitely not a Calvinist. I will give you a few more reasons on this post. Some time ago I read a book entitled Why I am not a Calvinists by Jerry L. Walls and Joseph R. Dongell that very much influenced my views of Calvinism. For those of you who need some more info about Calvinists I suggest you look up the word on Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvinism.  Here is an excerpt from the book: Does God love all of us and desire our well-being? Calvinists … Continue reading Why I am not a Calvinist

  I am going to spend the next few posts reviewing books that I have recently read or reread. I must admit that the emphasis of these current reviews are to generally show areas that some, if not many, Christians believe but I tend to disagree with. As always, even if as I disagree with these things I will respect your not seeing things the same way. It is not for me to judge you, God will do that to all of us in His time. This post is a book by RC Sproul entitled “Essential Truths of the Christian Faith”. … Continue reading RC Sproul Book Review

I know I promised a book review for this post but something else has been on my mind lately so the book review post will come on Friday. Is it OK to question things about your faith, your religion, your theology, or must you take everything at face value with the so called “leap of faith”?  To me, that is a very important question. I seem to be saying “Why” a lot the last few years.  That even seems to be the reoccurring theme of this blog. Some think I am reverting back to my childhood ;) . I don’t remember what age … Continue reading Why???

I am making an unusual Tuesday post to add a little to the study of the Lord’s prayer.  As I mentioned before the only part of the prayer that I have significant trouble with is the petition “lead us not…” I recently received a message from a good friend trying to help me figure this out. Here is his comments: If you read Luke 22:40, Jesus warns his disciples to pray lest they fall into temptation during his trial. One commentary says about the petition to “lead us not into temptation, “To pray not to be led into temptation is … Continue reading Lead us not…. another view

Today I am going to close out the study of the Lord’s prayer with an almost overwhelming task. That is to try and put the prayer into my own words. This endeavor is for my own sake. For those of you who think this is approaching sacrilegious please forgive me. If any of you want to suggest alternate wording please let me know. Thanks to everyone who has helped me along this journey through the most powerful prayer in Christianity. Humbly here is my interpretation:  Lord God in heaven, as you taught us we will always praise and adore you … Continue reading The Lord’s Prayer in my own words

Now that I am done with the “official Lord’s prayer” I want to address the red letter that come immediately after the prayer. For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins. I understand that Jesus by dying on the cross earned us our salvation so that we can stand before God on that last day and He will welcome us into heaven in spite of our sins. St. Paul in his many epistles, and many … Continue reading The Lord’s Prayer (the epilog)

We are now at the final part of the Lord’s Prayer which is: And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. ‘ I must admit these are some of the most challenging words in this prayer for me. I certainly don’t expect God to tempt me with sin. He did that to Job but I think that was a very special case which I don’t really understand either but… The devil constantly tempts us but not God. In Luther’s Catechism he says: “God surely tempts no one to sin, but we pray in this petition … Continue reading The Lord’s Pray (and lead us not into temptation…)

We are now at the third part of the prayer which is Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. Of course we depend on God for our very existence. If he doesn’t want us around then we would no longer exist. We have free will to make our own decisions but not whether we exist or not. So, it is proper for us to thank God everyday for what we eat, where we live, and for our every breath. Forgiving people who have done us wrong is the second issue … Continue reading The Lord’s Prayer (Give us today…)

Continuing through the Lord’s prayer we come to the following petition: your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Even though He knows what is best for us He gave us free will to do what we choose. Many times this gets us into trouble but without free will we would just be robots who mindlessly do what we are programmed to do. “your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” means to me that we are to always seek God’s will in everything we do. If we … Continue reading The Lord’s Prayer (your kingdom come…)

 Let me get to work on my interpretation of the Lord’s Prayer. (see my previous post for more understanding if you missed it). Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, Sometimes we forget just who God is. He is not a buddy across the backyard fence who we chat with from time to time. His knowledge and wisdom are beyond our comprehension. After all He is the creator of the universe including each of us. We should feel comfortable talking/praying to Him, Jesus Christ earned us that privilege. But, we must always remember that He also deserves, some say … Continue reading The Lord’s Prayer (Our Father in heaven)

  Matt 6:9-15 To me the Lord’s prayer is not as mysterious as some would like me to believe. I take the Lord’s prayer to be a call to action for Christians and not just a general statement by God. I don’t believe God wants any “couch potato Christians” but instead wants us to actively practice our faith. The individual petitions in the Lord’s prayer are things that God wants us to do so that His will is accomplished on earth as it is already done in heaven. The previous statement is probably quite shocking to those who say that … Continue reading The Overall Theme of the Lord’s Prayer – My Interpretation

  I have been off the red letters for a few days so now I am going to spend the next few posts on them alone. In the past few weeks I have been reviewing the various commentaries on the Lord’s prayer. Quite frankly many of them aren’t very helpful to me. No one seems to be able to come right out and say what they think they mean in plain talk. Many theologians have “theologian speak”, that is fancy words they throw around, to describe the Lord’s prayer but nothing that the average Christian can make much sense of. This … Continue reading The Lord’s Prayer

Why do Christians and other religions put such value on the places where their deities or prophets roamed? Jerusalem and its environs have been in a steady state of conflict from before Jesus’ time until now and will probably remain so in the future. It seems like there are constant fights going on over that ground. That is because three of the world’s major religions claim the area as part of their traditions. We seem to idolize the land on which our religious leaders roamed more than the teachings they gave us. I know I am going to offend several … Continue reading It’s Just a Place

I am going to do a cross blog thing today. I promise not to do it often. Trevin Wax, who is an author and pastor of a Tennessee Baptist church has a blog entitle “Kingdom People”. He has quite a large and loyal following. Wednesday’s post he questioned the “smug superiority” of the United States especially given the recent inauguration. The post below is a comment I posted on his site. To see his entire posting go to http://trevinwax.com/2009/01/21/echoes-of-babel-our-new-national-sin/  <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Trevin: As usual I will take a somewhat contrarian view of some of your statements on this post. Before I … Continue reading Is the United States the next Babylon?

     Just what does it mean when Jesus said “You are the salt of the earth.” That phrase doesn’t have much meaning for us today but it was very clear to those who lived 2,000 years ago. About the only thing we hear about salt today is that we are getting too much of it in our diets. Too much salt can result in high blood pressure which can lead to heart attacks or strokes. So, was Jesus condemning us by saying we are the salt of the earth? Salt back in Jesus’ day was a very scarce and … Continue reading Salt of the Earth?

 I’m going to move away from my focus on the red letters to look a little at what St. Peter said in the book of Acts  Acts 2:14-21 Then Peter stood up with the Eleven, raised his voice and addressed the crowd: “Fellow Jews and all of you who live in Jerusalem, let me explain this to you; listen carefully to what I say. These men are not drunk, as you suppose. It’s only nine in the morning! No, this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel: “‘In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit … Continue reading Christian Doublespeak?

Many Christians and churches today practice to varying degrees what I call fortress mentality. These Christians almost never associate with anyone outside of their church. They only listen to Christian broadcasts and read only Christian books and media. It is almost as if they believe that if you are part of this world they will somehow be polluted by it and lose their faith. The only way they see to remain in Christ is to almost totally separate themselves for the rest of the world. Of course, this mentality is very counter to the actual words of Jesus. Matt 28:19-20 … Continue reading Christian Fortress Mentality

We most often think of religious persecution as one religion persecuting another. For instance Christians against Muslims (the Holy Wars). But we must remember that one of the reasons that there are so many different Christian denominations around today is that in the past Christians were persecuting other Christians over differing beliefs. I recently took a trip to Bishop Hill in Illinois. I had been there before but decided to go back again and learn some of the particulars about this Christian sect. Bishop Hill was founded by Swedish Lutherans who were trying to escape the Lutheran Church of Sweden … Continue reading Christians persecuting Christians

With tomorrow being the beginning of yet another year I thought it would be appropriate to talk a little about the concept of Jubilee. Here is some info about Jubilee from Wikipedia. a Jubilee year is mentioned to occur every fifty years, in which slaves and prisoners would be freed, debts would be forgiven and the mercies of God would be particularly manifest. Jubilee was an ancient Jewish tradition. It mainly mentioned in the Old Testament in Leviticus but Jesus referred to it as the year of the Lord’s favor in Luke 4 “The Spirit of the Lord is on … Continue reading Jubilee

  Matt 20:26-27 Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave Jesus certainly had the service mentality. The ultimate service was for him to take human form and come to earth for us. He showed service mentality numerous times throughout the gospels. The apostles did not understand this. But, I think maybe when he insisted on washing their feet they finally “got it” or at least a little of it. Of course a central aspect of service is humility. We Christians should never think more highly … Continue reading Service Mentality

On this blog and in my life I try to learn the Lord’s message wherever I can find it. I am just not one to cling to one particular denominational line of thought. I found some inspiring words from Pop Benedicts Christmas message yesterday. He said “wherever an increasingly uncertain future is regarded with apprehension, even in affluent nations.” “In each of these places may the light of Christmas shine forth and encourage all people to do their part in a spirit of authentic solidarity,” “If people look only to their own interests, our world will certainly fall apart.” About … Continue reading The Pope’s Christmas Message

Today I am going to divert from the red letters to talk a little about St. Paul’s letter to the Philippians. Being content this is something we Americans never seem to be able to do! Being content means not worrying whether our neighbor has a newer car than you, or … These words were spoken by St Paul while he was imprisoned in Rome. This is kind of an unusual letter as Paul’s letter seem to go. He basically just wrote it to thank the Philippians for a gift. But it does show us some more about what he considers … Continue reading Be Content

  Here are the red letters for today. Matt 13:53-58 When Jesus had finished these parables, he moved on from there. Coming to his hometown, he began teaching the people in their synagogue, and they were amazed. “Where did this man get this wisdom and these miraculous powers?” they asked. “Isn’t this the carpenter’s son? Isn’t his mother’s name Mary, and aren’t his brothers James, Joseph, Simon and Judas? Aren’t all his sisters with us? Where then did this man get all these things?” And they took offense at him. But Jesus said to them, “Only in his hometown and … Continue reading Hometown Boys never get respect.