Five Smooth Stones

Sometimes life is great. We are blessed abundantly to live in peace with our neighbors, our health and the health of our families are of no immediate concern, bills get paid on time and the baseball team of our choice is on a winning streak. The sun feels a little warmer and the birds sing a little more sweetly when this is our situation it seems. How easy it is to feel the love of God raining down on us from heaven! To anyone who wasn’t born yesterday though, it is obvious that life isn’t all rainbows and sunshine. Real life is hard. There are times like those stated above, but there are dark times too. Solomon mused that “there is an appointed time for everything. And there is a time for every event under heaven”. Among these are “a time to weep and a time to laugh; a time to mourn and a time to dance.” (Eccl. 3:1, 4) In these verses are both encouragement and warning. If you are going through hard times, they won’t last! They have their season, but the next season has also been appo...

Observing the merger of culture and religious beliefs and traditions throughout history is a great point of interest for me. The addition of secular traditions and even the traditions of other religions into church practice and belief is the source of a great deal of division of the body of Christ throughout time. It is also the source of much apostasy. The most obvious culprit of this unlawful adoption that springs to my mind is the Catholic Church. Throughout history, it is easy to see where the Roman Catholics adopted aspects of Roman and Druid pagan religions, co-opting art, highjacking festivals, and codifying aspects of nearly every culture the Empire contacted in order to persuade members of those cultures to convert and submit to Catholic rule. This very clearly led to a perverted gospel, a corrupt theocracy, and a religion of worldly aspirations. This concept of “teaching as doctrine the traditions of men” is heavily condemned in Scripture.  It is easy to look back into hi...

Modern Christians take a lot for granted- or at least I know I do! I often find myself wondering what my life would be like if I were a Christian in the first century. It is my life’s greatest ambition to serve God according to the New Testament pattern and to be an instrument of His will in restoring that New Testament pattern to the world. However, truth be told there will always be some big differences- hopefully not in doctrine (if that is the case I hope someone tells me so I can change!), but the things we have to face today may be a little different than in ancient times. I imagine myself as a preacher of the kingdom of Jesus in a land and time where almost no one has heard His name. I imagine preaching a concept that is completely foreign to the religious thinking of everyone around me, “a stumbling block to the Jews, and to the Greeks foolishness” (I Cor. 1:23). But the most terrifying and heart shattering difference is the fierce opposition and persecution that the early Chri...

  “Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood and was praying this to himself: ‘God, I thank You that I am not like other people: swindlers, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I pay tithes of all that I get.’ But the tax collector, standing some distance away, was even unwilling to lift up his eyes to heaven, but was beating his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, the sinner!’” Luke 18:10-13.  Have you ever finished reading this parable and thought to yourself “thank the Lord that I am not like that Pharisee”? Oh the irony… and what a wake up call! We live in a culture that promotes self righteous attitudes and worldly justification. While the struggle in many other countries seems to be mainly outward (persecution, famine, disease), the primary threats to American Christians seem to be more in the realm of inside jobs (spiritual complacency, materialism, etc). That is to...

When We Substitute Philosophy for Doctrine... The last few weeks in Missouri have not been without internet controversy for the religious community. On February 21, the preacher at First General Baptist Church in Malden, MO gave a sermon that landed him in the national news (and not in a good way). It seemed as though my Facebook feed was full of comments from religious and non-religious friends alike about the horribly carnal perspectives of the message. Among the valid claims against the sermon were these: It reduces the value of women in marriage to mere physical attraction. It implied that if a man commits adultery, it is at least partly the wife’s fault for not trying hard enough to be attractive.  It claimed that man has an excuse to commit adultery (at least with his eyes) because we are “visually driven” and “God made us this way.”  Points in the sermon included “Weight Control”, “Make Up” and “Flattering Clothing” The sermon included multiple jabs at women who did not...