Last week, we investigated Martin Luther’s teaching on the Law-Gospel (Grace) distinction as presented by Dr. Hans Wiersma, a Lutheran theologian. Wiersma followed up their comments with what he called “guidelines” to understanding them. Here they are, word-for-word: “1. Keep in mind that the Word of God is (a) very sharp and (b) is stickin’ it to you.  Yeah, that’s in the Bible:  ‘The word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints…

I began writing this blog in February 2017 and posted it on my newly published web-site. I had realized, after moving to Spokane for medical reasons, my ministry, for the first time, was not formally in and through a local church. So, I put together a web-site and started a blog to give me an identity, a “home base,” and an opportunity to still “preach” weekly. Both would be opportunities to communicate the exciting truths I was learning about my faith. In the past,…

We have spent the last several weeks working on discovering how God thinks about some basic issues, i.e., what He is like (absolutely sovereign), what we are like (absolutely sinful), and how God relates to me (absolutely by grace alone). Today we will explore the fourth and final foundation stone of what I believe God is teaching us—”What do I do now?” The answer lies buried in a seldom-referenced passage of Scripture in Genesis 1: “Let Us make man in Our image, according to…

We have investigated in some detail two of the four foundation stones for learning to “think God’s way:” 1.) God Is Absolutely Sovereign, and 2.) Man Is Absolutely Sinful. Today we will look at God’s mind-blowing solution to our sin problem: 3.) God Relates To Man Absolutely By Grace Alone. We have discovered that it is not just WHAT we think that is crucial for us, but also, even much more so, HOW we think! Once we have had an experience with the living…

In recent blog postings, we have seen that the reality of the person we really are is “as we think in our hearts,” not what we say and do (Proverbs 28:3). Furthermore, we saw that what we are thinking in our hearts bears no resemblance to the One in whose image we were created to reflect, as we live our lives (Genesis 1:26-28)! God tells us in Isaiah 55: 8, 9 that His ways and thoughts are as different from ours as night and…

The backwards, inside-out, upside-down Antioch church we investigated last week is a beautiful picture of Isaiah 55:8, 9:  “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways,” says the LORD. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways, And My thoughts than your thoughts.”  That church was “God’s way,” of thinking and living (natural, spontaneous, unconscious – NSU), writ large in the lives of genuine, experiential believers. We are called to…

Some time ago I was having a conversation with a good friend who is interested in theological ideas. I asked him, “Who was the leader of the church in Antioch, the home church of the Apostle Paul during his missionary journeys?” He didn’t know, because there wasn’t one! In the inscrutable plan of God, Antioch, against all odds, “just happened!” Here’s how. After Jesus’ resurrection, His 120 followers remaining from His earthly ministry were waiting together in Jerusalem, just as Jesus had instructed them,…

Let me get this straight: I am told that we are in the end-times, and Jesus will return at any time for us—first, to rescue us (all true believers) from the evils of the world, at the rapture. Second, He will then, after a few years of violent tribulation here on the earth, chronicled in Revelation, return to the earth with us, to assist Jesus as He Himself then rules the earth, personally and physically, in the “New Jerusalem” of  Revelation 21. To me,…

“I have met the enemy and he is me” – Pogo the Possum (personalized but not edited!). This bit of insight from the famous cartoon character of the 1970’s expresses beautifully what  we have been discussing the past few weeks—living by the grace of God. It is important that Pogo’s wisdom is absorbed by us with ginosko (experiential) knowledge, rather than just eido (intellectual, arms-length) knowledge. This is because we all remain experientially susceptible to our former diet, the fruit of the Tree of…

For the past few weeks we have been looking at the history of mankind’s journey here on the earth—beginning with why God made us in the first place, what life was like in the Garden of Eden, resulting in “The Fall,” and its causes and results.  Last week, we saw that Adam’s fateful lack of leadership brought about a radical change in mankind’s way of life. We went from living by simply hearing what God said and doing it, to living by deciding for…