Presby-Musings

This week our daily devotions will be reflecting on the vision of my church, which is "To Know Jesus & Show Jesus"--a vision that was outlined in last week's sermon entitled, "Knowing & Showing: What It Means To Be Us"  Every day this week we'll be focusing on our five core values (Worship, Pray, Grow, Love and Serve)--values that enable us to pursue our vision.  If you would like to read the transcript of the sermon, click  HERE .  Today we're going to take the time talk about the third of my church's five core values: Grow.   When I was a kid I had this Bible, called "The Picture Bible." It had all of the major stories from the Old and New Testaments in comic book form.  I probably read that sucker fourteen times or more--cover to cover.  But if you had asked me to devote the same time and energy to read the actual  Bible--now that would have been a different story.  I actually fell asleep reading the non-comic book ...

Over the course of the last two weeks, we've explored the first two of what we call "The Five Things ," the core values of our church.  The Five Things are: Worship, Pray, Grow, Love and Serve. We've been working on a very basic premise throughout this entire series:  "We are made of what we value."  This isn't just a metaphor, as it turns out.  As we've learned, the tens of trillions of atoms that make us us are being exchanged with other things and other people at the rate of billions per second.  And this exchange of energy affects us in very real ways. Which explains why being surrounded by negativity, darkness, depravity, sadness and the like has a negative affect on our mood, our outlook and even our physical well-being. And it also explains why surrounding ourselves with beauty, truth, hope, peace and love has the exact opposite affect.  The Apostle Paul , who wrote half of the New Testament in the Bible once wrote about this very th...

I've been thinking about some ways to share what I have been learning lately about personal reflection, Bible study and prayer.  If I had to distill my learnings down to one basic idea it would simply be this:   Without personal reflection, Bible study and prayer my life would be in a shambles. So with this in mind, I thought I would entitle this little series: Check Yourself Before You Wreck Yourself.    Intrigued?  You bet you are. Today's installment has to do with Daily Devotions.  When I was a kid growing up in fundamentalist Christian world, the very best Christians were the ones who would pepper their conversations with phrases like: "Today when I was reading my Bible..." or "Can I just share something I learned today from my devotions...?"  or "I was just praying during my quiet time today and God was just in the room man..." These people always ticked me off.  I wanted to thump them with a Bible.  A really... big... Bible....

This week as the launch of our Lenten sermon series "Walls: What Separates Us From God and Each Other?" I will be preaching on Division. But first, let's take a look at Lent and what it means. Lent is a season within the church that has it's roots in repentance, though it has come to take on different meanings, depending on the tradition within which it is celebrated.  It quite literally refers to "40 days," or more specifically the forty days between Ash Wednesday and Easter.   For centuries Christians have viewed the Lenten season as a time for reflection, discipline and self-control.  Lent has become synonymous with "giving up" something, or denying oneself pleasure as an act of solidarity with the suffering of Christ . More recently, Christians have begun "taking up" something like the disciplines of fasting, prayer or Bible study as a means of expressing their devotion. It's my belief, however, that we need to return...

The One Year Book of Discovering Jesus in the Old Testament by Nancy Guthrie; Tyndale, 2010. Tyndale Publishing's successful "One Year" series of Bibles, and Bible studies has a new addition: Discovering Jesus in the Old Testament.  The author, Nancy Guthrie, has written at least two "One Year" devotional guides in addition to at least two books on the topic of Grief.  With Discovering Jesus Guthrie moves into a difficult and challenging field of study in an attempt to draw the reader into a year-long study of the Old Testament ( Hebrew Scriptures ) as interpreted through the lens of a Jesus-centered view.  Like the authors of the Gospels and the Apostle Paul himself, Christians throughout the ages have drawn threads throughout the Hebrew Scriptures that weave their way to Jesus.  Guthrie provides the opportunity for the average reader to engage in these conversations in what is described as "do-able, daily devotions."  While Discovering Jesus i...