The Importance of Preaching
Cowper on Paul on Preaching Preach the word! Be ready in season and out of season. Convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching. 2 Timothy 4.2 William Cowper, in his day a much-loved poet and writer of hymns, believed in the importance of preaching. It was not to be trivialized or reduced. He considered most […]
At Odds
We can’t worry about whether our faith in Jesus will offend some people. It will. In fact, in many ways, we may find ourselves at odds with people who don’t know Jesus. Just as Jesus did. Today’s reading from The Kingdom Turn is found on pages 107 and 108: “The first Christians knew that they could not […]
Church and Churching: State of the Body
How to Church (3) Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? If anyone defiles the temple of God, God will destroy him. For the temple of God is holy, which temple you are. 1 Corinthians 3.16, 17 A holy nationThe apostle Peter described the Church as “a […]
The Right Credentials
Matthew 10: The First Sending (1) Pray Psalm 40.11-13.Do not withhold Your tender mercies from me, O LORD;Let Your lovingkindness and Your truth continually preserve me.For innumerable evils have surrounded me;My iniquities have overtaken me, so that I am not able to look up;They are more than the hairs of my head;Therefore my heart fails […]
Plead!
Hosea 2:2–5 (ESV)  “Plead with your mother, plead—   for she is not my wife,   and I am not her husband—that she put away her whoring from her face,   and her adultery from between her breasts;lest I strip her naked   and make her as in the day she was born,and make her like a wilderness,   and […]