Seventeen82

  “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.” (2 Timothy 2:15) A few years ago, our church updated its interior signage. We posted directional arrows to the restrooms and room numbers for the classrooms. For our administration area, we added the names of our administrator and myself. One request I asked was that we change the name of “Pastor’s Office ” to “Pastor’s Study .” After a few good-natured critiques (What, you’re too good to make copies? Do you know how to check email?), most everyone was in agreement. The pastor’s labor is the pastor’s study. When Paul says that it’s only the Lord who can provide the increase to Paul’s plantings and Apollos’ waterings, well, this implies that there’s some actual planting and watering going on. There is labor for the Lord to bless.  If I'm to offer any guidance in counseling sessions, it’s from time in the Word. If I’m to preach anything worthw...

  As part of our weekly worship at Heritage ARP in Springfield, Mo., we  corporately join together  to pray our Lord’s prayer. Th is  means that weekly, we confess and affirm the most beautiful of truths. We c onfess  God as our Heavenly Father. The fatherhood of God is a great source of comfort and strength, especially when we do approach Him in prayer. Our Larger Catechism  provides us with good insight into this p reface to the Lord’s prayer: Q. 189. What doth the preface of the Lord's prayer teach us? A. The preface of the Lord's prayer (contained in these words, Our Father which art in heaven)  teacheth  us, when we pray, to draw near to God with confidence of his fatherly goodness, and our interest therein; with reverence, and all other childlike dispositions, heavenly affections, and due apprehensions of his sovereign power, majesty, and gracious condescension: as also, to pray with and for others. Note, the first item our catechism touches...

 I grew up working farms. I worked several commercial chicken farms, turkey farms, some hog farms, and baled more hay than I care to think about. I have helped deliver breech calves—those who know, know the nature of such. I have dug innumerable post holes and stretched enough fence to wrap around earth at least once. I have pranked and been pranked enough with electric fencing to wonder why my heart is still in rhythm. In school, I was tops in academics in the FFA, gladly learning about soil and fertilizer and what slope of field was conducive to crops and at what slope it was best to give over to cattle. I raised show steer and went to FFA camp. I had every desire to be a farmer, and still have coursing through my veins a strong desire to a more agrarian and less suburbanite life. On the home front, my grandfather had a small farmstead that all my mother’s 9 other siblings pitched in with. There was a large garden there—enough that my grandparents and their ten children and their...

  You may not be familiar with the name Rollen Stewart, but if you watched any major sporting event in the 1970’s and 80’s, you are probably familiar with his handiwork. Rollen Stewart was the man who used to wear rainbow-colored wigs and carry large signs that read “John 3:16.” He could often be seen (or at least his sign was seen) on extra points as he sat in the end zone of football games. I did notice that when the Georgia Bulldogs' defensive back Kelee Ringo scored the decisive touchdown in last Mondays' College Football National Championship game, there was someone in the end zone holding up one of those John 3:16 signs. It was not Rollen Stewart, however -- he is currently in prison serving three life sentences for kidnapping. John 3:16 is, of course, an appropriate verse to display on such a sign. It is a well-known verse (most have in memorized), and it contains a word that resonates with our culture ("love"). Because of that, it runs the risk of being a very...

  I just finished watching a video by comedian John Crist about a new Bible app, the  MeVersion  app. The video is an obvious satire on people taking the Bible out of context and offers the option to change Bible verses to suit the individual. In it he says, “finally a bible that justifies my lifestyle,” and when rewording 2 Timothy 3:16 he says “All Scripture is God-breathed and… useful to take out of context to justify your actions.” This  deserved  jab shows how much many outside and even inside  Christianity  desire Scripture to conform to our wishes rather than u s  conforming to it. Many are renewing their Bible reading plans at the new year, attempting to reestablish helpful, faithful patterns, and in doing so, let me encourage you not to leave the Holy Spirit out of those plans. If we leave the Spirit out of our Scripture reading, then we will expect Scripture to conform to us.  It’s worth asking then:  what is the relationship b...

  In my study right next to a deer skull/antler mount is a picture of Seceder and original Marrow Man Alexander Moncrieff. He’s long been my favorite of the Gairney Six due to his doggishness and godly spirit, both as a minister and as a fighter for the truth of the Scriptures. Moncrieff was called “the Lion of the Secession” and was later appointed as the Secession Church’s Professor of Divinity and served faithfully at the Associate congregation in Abernethy near Perth. He was most well-known later in life for aligning himself with those who were against the imposition of the Burgher Oath, which sadly caused a break amongst his brethren. Yet in all these things Ebenezer Erskine was able to say of Moncrieff that he was the backbone that allowed others to stand tall in the day of trial in the difficult days of 1733. Here recently I had the blessing to re-read a pamphlet of his entitled, The Glory of Immanuel and the Desolation of Immanuel’s Land For the Sins of Them That Dwell T...

  Happy (belated) New Years! May God bless you in the fullness of the Aaronic benediction this coming year. I still well remember that fall evening when I was eleven, and my dad and I went into Waldenbooks in the Jasmine Mall in Sumter, and I got my first copy of Transworld Skateboarding magazine. That evening, I devoured it from front to back - and my life changed. I fell in in love with all things skateboarding. I had seen other kids around on the air base riding their skateboards and it looked interesting to me. What I didn’t know was that skating was more than a sport - it was a lifestyle. And, it was that lifestyle that grabbed my attention. A skater was someone who was out of the mainstream, marched to a different beat, didn’t go along with the rest of the world. They had a DIY (do it yourself) mentality to their sport - making their own ramps and parks, looking at the urban landscape in a different way. They had their own sense of style. To me, most of all, was the soundtrac...