Stopping to Think

Disregard the milk seeds, I simply felt like rhyming. Just a quick thought on the value of thought and/or meditation and/or wrestling to understand. I want to break my thoughts into to groups of reading, first Bibles, and second, everything else. This post will only cover #1. And perhaps not even that. So, Bibles. Consider this my critique of paraphrastic "translations" (eg, the New Living Translation), and/or straight up paraphrases (eg, The Message). Before I go too far I do want to be up front and say that part of my frustration with paraphrases is that it can be very frustrating when you know a passage to tun there and find words all out of place or changed. And that frustration can be found even among more literal translations, simply because there are a lot of words that can be translated more than one way. It simply is more common in a paraphrase. Also, I do not claim to be any expert on translations, most particularly because I do not read, write, or speak any of th...

Last night over in Harrison, I had the privilege of listening to Wayne Eve speak on Christian "posers." That is to say, those people who are so called "nominal Christians." He went over what a poser looks like, and contasted that with what God has actually called us to.  And as I lay in bed last night afterward, I couldn't get the topic out of my mind, and my thoughts were churning relelntlesy.  I had to get up and open the Word, and God pointed me to Hebrews 10, and what I saw there is what I'm going to write. You see, in Scripture there isn't anyone who could be called a "nominal" Christian. The term really is an oxymoron. Claiming the name of Christ without a willingness to lay aside all earthly things is of no lasting value. Romans 10:9 says that if you confess with your mouth and believe in your heart you will be saved. It sounds so incredibly easy. But then if you turn back to John 3:36 you will see the unmistakable link between belief ...

Exodus 33:15-16b, "And he[Moses] said to him[God], “If your presence will not go with me, do not bring us up from here. For how shall it be known that I have found favor in your sight, I and your people? Is it not in your going with us..?" I am reading through the Old Testament in my devotions, and this passage struck me the other day as I read.  For a full background it would be good for you to stop here and go read chapters 32 and 33 of Exodus, but I'll try to give you enough context here to grasp the depth of this statement. Following Israel's rebellion against God in the building of the golden calf for worship (in chapter 32), God tells Moses to get out of the way.  God's wrath is burning hot against the nation of Israel, and He is going to wipe them out to punish their rebellion and start over with Moses.  But Moses pleads for His people, reasoning with God-to which God responds in mercy and relents from His wrath.  However, as we move in chapter 33 we see ...