Stopping to Think

"There is a simple cure for people who doubt God's love and question God's grace: to turn to the Bible and examine the kind of people God loves." Phillip Yancey Commonplace Monday is a series of posts wherein, on Monday mornings, I share short quips, sentences -perhaps as much as a paragraph- which I have collected in my various commonplace books and files. If I wrote down or recall where it came from I will certainly give attribution. However, sometimes I write down things and not where they came from. So if you see anything like that here and recognize it, that's what comment sections are for. 

This is the outline to a lesson I taught a while back. Numbers of these thoughts are not very well developed, so if you have questions or comments, feel free to take advantage of the comment section below. Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, To those who are elect exiles of the Dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in the sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood: May grace and peace be multiplied to you . Preface: A Trinitarian Greeting. I think it is important to note here, before we dive into the nitty gritty of looking at 1 Peter, that the actions of God in salvation are laid out in Trinitarian terms. Why is this important? Because the doctrine of the Trinity, our understanding of God's Threeness and Oneness, is the most distinctive doctrine of orthodox Christianity. It is not the mono-personal understanding of other monotheisti...

"I rejected the church for a time because I found so little grace there. I returned because I found grace nowhere else." Phillip Yancey Commonplace Monday is a series of posts wherein, on Monday mornings, I share short quips, sentences -perhaps as much as a paragraph- which I have collected in my various commonplace books and files. If I wrote down or recall where it came from I will certainly give attribution. However, sometimes I write down things and not where they came from. So if you see anything like that here and recognize it, that's what comment sections are for. 

"The key to faith's power is that it embraces the future grace promised by God, and is more satisfied with this than with the pleasures promised by sin--even if it costs us our lives." John Piper Commonplace Monday is a series of posts wherein, on Monday mornings, I share short quips, sentences -perhaps as much as a paragraph- which I have collected in my various commonplace books and files. If I wrote down or recall where it came from I will certainly give attribution. However, sometimes I write down things and not where they came from. So if you see anything like that here and recognize it, that's what comment sections are for. 

"Grace teaches us that God loves us because of who God is, not because of who we are." Phillip Yancey Commonplace Monday is a series of posts wherein, on Monday mornings, I share short quips, sentences -perhaps as much as a paragraph- which I have collected in my various commonplace books and files. If I wrote down or recall where it came from I will certainly give attribution. However, sometimes I write down things and not where they came from. So if you see anything like that here and recognize it, that's what comment sections are for. 

Before we dive in, I think a slight preface is in order. I try not to comment too often on current events, for a number of reasons. First of all, I spent several years of my life totally wrapped around what was current, and the reality of this age is that what is current today is obsolete tomorrow. Even stories that get run for a week or more will be long forgotten by this time next year. Why become wrapped up in what is transient? Secondly, it is often hard to see enough of an issue to make intelligent comment upon it when the issue is still upon us. There are more reasons, but those two will suffice for now. So why am I writing now? Well, I am angry. Last week Michael Sam was taken in the 7th round of the NFL draft, becoming the first openly homosexual player to have had this honor. Unless something goes terribly wrong in training camp or preseason, he will become the first openly homosexual man to play in the NFL. This of course is no small feat considering the hyper-testost...

I wrote this quite a while back. It was a Saturday Morning in Missoula. I woke up and tried to pray before I started reading my Bible. Prayer can be a real labor for me, and this morning was worse than usual, so I decided to write it down. As I went back over it a while later, I thought it might be worth sharing, and so I sent it into the eZine I write for, Genuine Motivation . I think a lot of what I wrote down comes from desires most Christians have. We want to love God more, and we want to be used by Him. We want our lives to matter. We don't want a wasted existence. Realizing that my readership there is quite different than who reads GenMo, I thought it worthwhile to post here as well. Father God, Thank You for who You are. I thank You for being so enormous and majestic that even the rocks will cry out if we fail to. I praise You and thank You for the fact that You made creation in such a way that it really does speak so plainly that it is not only a statement of Your e...

I want to use this post to address three points, all brought up in comments to the last one. First, I want to address the comment made by an Anonymous individual whose main thrust in argument was that prohibiting homosexual marriage a)prevents no one from sinning, and b)is a violation of religious freedom. On point "a", of course I agree with that. I can never do anything to stop another person from rebelling against God, because ultimately that is a heart issue, and I cannot see their heart, let alone change it. That being said, laws exist not because their existence precludes the possibility of evil, but because sinful human beings need both encouragement towards right behavior, and punishment for wrong behavior. Simply put, laws exist for the good of society (see Romans 13-or the entire Pentateuch). If a person believes, as I do, that the basic human relationship that society is built upon is the relationship of husband and wife in marriage, then encouraging and fig...

Just a quick thought on grace. Reading in Matthew 26 in my devos today and Jesus tells them the will all fall away, and of course as we know, Peter says "not me! I'll die before I leave you!" Of course he's wrong. Peter's confidence is misplaced. Jesus reinterates that Peter will not only fall away, but more than the other disciples, will verbally deny Jesus three times before morning. imagine being Peter right now. You are Jesus' closest earthly friend. And you're told that you will fall away. You reassure him that you are faithful. And then you're told you're falling will be worse than the rest. Isn't that us? Does it not seem that every time we become more determined to be "good  Christians" that these are the moments we fall the hardest? Of course they are. That used to terribly frustrate me. Reading that today though showed me something beautiful. Those failures are the grace of God. If through grit and Will-power(pardon the pun...