Read Psalm 75 Today, I was reading a unique book that is a great addition to any worshippers library. “The Book of Psalms for Singing” (1973), is a book that takes every psalm in the book of Psalms and puts them into English verse with “musical settings designed for singing in public and private worship. … More When the Name of God is Near
Read Psalm 70 Part of the periodic series, The Poetry Project. Wanting to be Desperate I read the first line and I heard desperation. I heard a heart blead. I heard a spirit that was crushed under the anvil we call life. I heard something through the page, that sounded like anquish mixed with … More Psalm 70: Wanting to be Desperate
Read Psalm 29* * Part of the Poetry Project The Voice There is a TV show, “The Voice” Whose plot line is to find “the voice” —-the voice that everyone recognizes as The One. —-the voice that is cut from a different cloth. —-the voice that stands out against all others. —-the voice whose power … More “The Voice” :: A Poetry Project Update
According to the superscriptions in your Bible, there are nine Psalms that the “sons of Korah” wrote to the “choirmaster”. It sounds like they were a family or tribe of songwriters and worship leaders with a passion for others to learn how to worship the King and God they knew. –Psalm 42 To the choirmaster. A … More The Sons of Korah Know!
The idea in this periodic series is to write a poem of personal reflection for each Psalm in the Psalter. This is the offering for Psalm 116. Don’t think of any as high art. Think of these offerings as one poor man’s desire to draw nearer to Christ. New entries will generally appear on Sunday … More The Importance of Pain to Worship
The poverty of evangelical reflection, the shallowness of our deepest thoughts about God is becoming the achillies heal of our witness in the world. Our deepest thoughts about God barely skim the surface of the reality of who God is and what He has revealed about Himself in His word. And it is killing us. … More “It is God Himself that Nourishes the Soul”
The world owes a great debt to Charles Wesley as a pastor, missionary, theologian and hymn writer. But the much-love hymn, “And Can It Be”, has some very bad theology in the third stanza. He left His Father’s throne above So free, so infinite His grace— Emptied Himself of all but love, And bled for … More Did Christ “Empty Himself” of all But Love?
Preparing for Sunday Helped, along with 4,600,000 others by Fernando Ortega and an old hymn. Maybe all of us preacher types ought to remind ourselves that we need Jesus every hour. Maybe we would be more effective in reminding our congregations that they do too.
This, from an interview with Kevin Vanhoozer on Technology (Discipleship in the Age of Spectacle), [April 2, 2016] “. . . image-making technologies contribute to what the Peruvian novelist and Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa calls a ‘culture of spectacle.’ Llosa observes that, in the past, the purpose of culture was edification: building society by … More Something to Chew on a Wednesday Afternoon
Reading with the Pastor Psalms 64-65 “Hear my voice, O God, in my complaint; Preserve my life from dread of the enemy.” Psalm 64:1 (ESV) I am reading a book written by one of my professors from seminary. For years I have looked upon him as one of the great gifts to the … More Fighting Depression and Anxiety Well
