Are the Gospels Reliable? Part 2- Wasn’t Stuff Changed?

Welcome back! We are in the midst of a five part blog post series answering the main question “Are the gospels reliable?” After a brief intro where we laid out the issues in play, we jumped into the first question of the feasibility of reliable written manuscripts in a predominantly oral culture. In this post, […]

Going Beyond

In Matthew 5:43-48 is another well known passage where Jesus is teaching on loving your enemies. Matt 5:44 says “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” Bonhoffer in “Cost of Discipleship” clarifies enemies are those who have hostility against us, not necessarily those against who we have hostility against. How we […]

Jesus – God’s Chosen Servant

As I’m proceeding through Matthew in my yearly read, there seems to be a “ratcheting up” of the fact that Jesus is the Messiah – God in the flesh, The One that has been foretold in the Old Testament (as far back as Genesis 3) that will reconcile sinners to a Holy God. In Matthew […]

Doubting the truth in the darkness

My good friend Stacey Pop once encouraged me by saying “Don’t doubt in the darkness what God has told you in the light.” She then went on to feed my soul with several scriptures and pray for me. I remember that day well, as an example of God’s goodness in the ministry of His word […]

Our Greatest Need

In Matthew 9:1-8 is the account of Jesus healing a paralytic, but with a twist – look at the first 2 verses: And getting into a boat he crossed over and came to his own city. And behold, some people brought to him a paralytic, lying on a bed. And when Jesus saw their faith, […]

Building Your House on the Rock

In Matthew 7:24-27 Jesus says this: “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who builds his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had […]

Matthew 6

Matthew 6 (and 5 for that matter) have so much in them – so many wonderful things to sit and soak in. It’s kind of hard to pick out 1 thing – but perhaps what did jump out at me most this morning is the place God needs to rightfully have in our lives if […]

Which kind of servant are you?

I was reading the Parable of the Talents this morning [Luke 19:11-27 / Matt 25:14-30] and it kinda hit me in a new way. Jesus tells this story of a master who gives three servants three different amounts of money – Matthew tells us it was five talents, 2 talents, and 1 talent each according […]