Words on the Word
Archive for June 2012
Prophetic Whiplash…God of Mercy or God of Wrath?
Reading the Biblical prophets (like Micah) can give the reader emotional whiplash. The prophets often alternated abruptly between communicating God’s good news and bad. So which one is it: does God graciously forgive his people’s sins, or does he harbor his anger against them in judgment? The prophets didn’t feel a need to necessarily resolve … Continue reading
Schedule
I’m loving this blog I just found out about, Honest Toddler, written from the vantage point of a 2-year-old. See especially Schedule.
Is cloth diapering a waste of time?
It’s Family Friday here at Words on the Word. And nothing says “family” to me like diapers! We have two children in diapers right now, and our third has been fully potty-trained for just about a year or so. We know poop. Cloth diapering has long been a value for us (here‘s a great place … Continue reading
Verses of Scripture to Pray for Youth
I’m convinced that one of the best things youth ministers can do is to pray for their youth. In fact, in my 10 years of church-based youth ministry, when people asked me how they could help the youth ministry, the first answer I always gave was: please pray for our young people. God has given … Continue reading
Is Spanish more useful than German?
Is Spanish more useful than German? Great question and interesting conversation in the comments at Near Emmaus blog.
Can’t be perfect? Do what you can.
I’ve been reading the Didache lately, an important discipleship treatise in the early church. It was probably written in the late first century. It quotes a good deal of Scripture, and speaks primarily to would-be disciples about choosing between “two ways, one of life and one of death.” The early church held it in high … Continue reading
Book Review: The Next Evangelicalism, by Soong-Chan Rah
Soong-Chan Rah writes, “As many lament the decline of Christianity in the United States in the early stages of the twenty-first century, very few have recognized that American Christianity may actually be growing, but in unexpected and surprising ways.” In The Next Evangelicalism: Freeing the Church from Western Cultural Captivity, Rah posits that mainstream evangelicalism … Continue reading
Bifid
The prophets in the Hebrew Bible knew how to throw down. They often ran the risk of death for their faithfulness in sharing God’s message with others. But that didn’t stop them. One potentially confusing thing about the prophets is their frequent and sometimes abrupt transition between good news and bad news. Scholars refer to … Continue reading
Restoration in the Wilderness
From the wilderness comes restoration. The wilderness for Israel was all too often a place of dissension and lack of trust in God’s promises. Exodus 17:7 says, “Moses called the name of the place Massah and Meribah, on account of the quarreling of the children of Israel, and on account of their testing Yahweh, which … Continue reading
Junia
My wife and I just gave birth to our third child, Junia. The name Junia comes from Romans 16:7–she was an “outstanding” apostle, as noted by the apostle Paul. There is nothing else about Junia in the New Testament except for the rest of what Paul says about her in that verse, the full text of which … Continue reading
