Love God First

Marriage is something that affects all of our lives in one way or another. Most people are going to be married at some point in their lives. And, the various authors of the Scriptures have some things to say about marriage. This all means that as a church, it’s something we need to talk about from time to time. For the next four weeks, that’s exactly what we are going to do in a brand-new series called Back to the Basics. We are going to talk about four adjustments we can make in our marriages at a very fundamental level that will help put us on a track toward the relationships we want most. Let’s get start with today with a conversation about getting our priorities right.

Love God First

We do a lot of building in my house. The exact thing being built varies, but the building itself is consistent. Perhaps the most common building that happens is with Legos. Now, of course, you can build anything you want with Legos if you have the right bricks. The sky really is the limit in terms of the creative potential of that particular medium. Most of the Lego building that goes on in my house, though, is with pre-designed sets. These sets come with all the pieces you need to build whatever it is, packaged neatly in numbered bags, and with a set of instructions that walks you step-by-step through the process of building. Pro-tip, though: Don’t open all the bags at once. That makes the building a lot more tedious. Depending on the complexity of the build, the instructions range from fairly short to book length. But however long they happen to be, the most important thing is that you follow them carefully. If you use the wrong piece or put the right piece in the wrong place, that’s going to cause trouble later on in your building process. I can remember some sets I got mostly built only to discover that I had placed a piece incorrectly dozens of pages before. I had to go back and systematically take things apart in order to get it straightened out the right way. It was not very much fun. 

Read the rest…

Digging in Deeper: John 17:3

“This is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and the one you have sent — Jesus Christ.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

The Scriptures are like a gem mine of endless supply. The more you plumb, the more you find. And sometimes, the discoveries you make will surprise you. They will come at times you least expect. They will turn up in places you thought for sure you had completely exhausted because you had mined there so many times. None of this should be surprising in the least. It is, after all, God’s word. The writer of Hebrews identifies it as living and active. God’s Spirit is present in it, and He is the source of all wisdom. Where and how He chooses to reveal it is up to Him. I was reminded of this again last night while reading a new old book. Allow me to share what I am learning.

Read the rest…

Digging in Deeper: Romans 1:26-27

“For this reason God delivered them over to disgraceful passions. Their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. The men in the same way also left natural relations with women and were inflamed in their lust for one another. Men committed shameless acts with men and received in their own persons the appropriate penalty of their error.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Hot topics tend to be faddish and cyclical. An issue that is absolutely crucial to have an opinion on in one season doesn’t even register on the radar in another. The issue of the morality of homosexual practice is not the issue in our culture that it once was not all that long ago. This is mostly because as a culture we have decided it’s fine. And as the church has continued losing cultural power and position, most people just don’t care what the church thinks about it anymore. But this doesn’t mean the position of the Scriptures has changed. And it doesn’t mean the culture doesn’t dislike the position any less. These two verses aren’t terribly comfortable to talk about, but here they are, so let’s do it.

Read the rest…

Morning Musing: Romans 1:24-25

“Therefore God delivered them over in the desires of their hearts to sexual impurity, so that their bodies were degraded among themselves. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served what has been created instead of the Creator, who is praised forever. Amen.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Thanks to a few hundred years’ worth of pop culture, when we think about the judgment of God, we imagine fire and brimstone. We picture great floods and earthquakes. We imagine something dramatic and terrible. We imagine God’s actively doing something to punish us for our sins (or, better yet, them for theirs…we usually give ourselves a pass). Yet so much of the judgment we encounter in the Scriptures doesn’t look like that at all. Instead, it takes the form of God simply stepping back and letting the consequences of our sin play themselves out naturally. Paul describes something like that here. Check this out with me.

Read the rest…

Morning Musing: Romans 1:21-23

“For though they knew God, they did not glorify him as God or show gratitude. Instead, their thinking became worthless, and their senseless hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man, birds, four-footed animals, and reptiles.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

One of the things I have enjoyed as a dad over the years is playing with my kids. We’ve played all sorts of different things, but when they were younger, the playing tended to be more make-believe in its nature. Playing make-believe games is fun, but it’s not real. Part of the fun is in knowing there is a real world to enjoy together. When someone gives into a fantasy too long or too thoroughly, that’s a sign of a problem that needs to be addressed, not just harmless fun. The trouble here is that some of the fantasies we indulge in don’t look like fantasies, and so we dive in not realizing how they are warping our thinking. Paul says that’s really a problem. Let’s talk about it.

Read the rest…