Stopping to Think

This is a series of snippets from previous posts.  I have a tendency to clutter pages with many words, so I tried to sift through and pick out a few that I thought might be helpful. The first thing we need to know…is that ultimately, the glory of God is the primary reason our focus is to be on the Gospel. We see this in verses 5 and 6[of Romans 1]. We have received grace and apostleship to bring about obedience through faith for the sake of His name among the nations. Nations including us, right here, right now. All ministry, all personal growth, all faith, obedience, and work are meant not to somehow earn God’s favor, which Ephesians 2 makes very clear is a gift that we cannot earn. It is meant to display the glory, the weightiness, the importance, and the worthiness of Almighty God to the nations. -The Import of the Gospel in Youth Ministry God's glory is the Big Deal. I am saved, the Gospel exists, and God redeems sinners for the sake of His name among all the nations. ...

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...

So. It has been several months since my last blog post, a fact for which I feel I must apologize. I could throw out several excuses such as the busyness of getting married, a new school year, ministry, etc. However, I do not believe any of these is a sufficient reason for me to not be writing. I have been very convicted of late by my laziness and selfishness. If I am a member of the body of Christ, and writing is a gift He has given me (I assume it is, given past responses), then am I not obligated as a member of the body to use my gifting for the benefit of others? I most certainly am (see 1 Corinthians 12:7). So my lack of effort in this area appears to me to quite obviously be sin (James 4:17). I have not made a point of sharing the truth that God has shown me through His word, I have made little effort in this area of writing, or my life in general, of encouraging others and proclaiming the beauty of Christ and His Gospel. So this is my apology, and I intend to labor more earnestly...

So...first post on the new blog, let's kick it off right.  And by kick it off right, I mean post something that most likely will have a lot people disagreeing with me.  But it's something that's been bugging me for quite some time.  I will apologize in advance for it's disjointed nature, my brain is running sub par at the moment, so bear with me. There is no question...or at least there shouldn't be...that our country is having serious problems.  From our multi-trillion dollar financial deficit, to the attacks on marriage and the unborn, to growing threats from foreign powers.  And while I could write a book on the roots of all these problems and the people responsible, I will refrain, because right now it is a different group of people annoying me.  And that is people on the far right, especially Christians, who are missing the point. These are the people getting riled up and throwing fits over the recent court ruling in California overturning the ban ...