Audio Transcript Today’s episode is a bit longer than normal because it’s a special episode — a celebration. But before we get to that, we begin with today’s question from an anonymous listener who is putting together a few texts that we will be reading together in the next week ahead in our Bible reading.…
Month: January 2025
Prayer Dies Without Delight
Those two things — glorifying God and enjoying God — do not always coincide in this life, but in the end they must be the same thing. We may pray for the coming of God’s kingdom, but if we don’t enjoy God supremely with all our being, we are not truly honoring him as Lord.…
Pursue Better Pleasures: The Call of Christian Hedonism
My task in our series on the core values of Bethlehem College and Seminary is to unfold the core value of Christian Hedonism, which in turn will reveal that the motto of our school, “Education in Serious Joy,” is not cute but crucial. But let’s begin where Jonathan Parnell left off last week. The core…
American Religions: The Rise of Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses
ABSTRACT: Many American Christians live among Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses, but perhaps few understand what distinguishes them from historic Christianity. The origins of these groups in the religious ferment of nineteenth-century America illumines both their trajectories and the doctrines they came to embrace that place them outside the bounds of orthodox Christianity. For our ongoing…
Living by Faith: Embracing 1 Thessalonians 5:16 Daily
Living by Faith: Embracing 1 Thessalonians 5:16 Daily Posted by appolus on January 6, 2025 Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you (1 Thess 5:16) Imagine living according to this word every day, it would revolutionize your world. Let this year be…
Why Pray for Protection When Suffering Keeps Coming?
Audio Transcript We start this new week off with a tough email. There’s no great way to introduce the topic other than to read the story that came in from a listener, a woman named Belinda. “Good day, Pastor John,” she writes. “I find myself in a place of confusion about life. And my question…
Understanding Salvation vs. Wrath in 1 Thessalonians
Understanding Salvation vs. Wrath in 1 Thessalonians Posted by appolus on January 5, 2025 “For God did not appoint us to wrath.” (1 Thess 5:9) So much has been made of this statement and wrong doctrines have flowed from it. Context always explains the meaning. “For God did not appoint us to wrath but to obtain…
Swing the sword.
Swing the sword. Posted by appolus on January 5, 2025 This has been a year of battles for me, stage four cancer being the main battle. There are times in our walk with the Lord that we simply have to stand and fight. Not as the world fights, but fight in Christ alone and stand…
Never Too Busy to Pray
You can do more than pray after you have prayed, but you cannot do more than pray until you have prayed. —John Bunyan (The Golden Treasury of Puritan Quotations, 235) On a lonely hillside in the dim light before dawn, a man sits by himself, praying. He rehearses the Scriptures, sings lines from the Psalms,…
God’s Word in Your Mouth: Finding Your Voice in Preaching
What does it mean to find your voice in preaching? Many know the experience of being sent to the grocery store to search for some obscure item we’ve never heard of before. A couple of years ago, my wife and I endeavored to improve our diet, and one recipe called for nutritional yeast as a…