“Pastor, I was really touched when you said…”
One of my favorite parts of pastoral ministry is hearing how Scripture, sermons, Bible studies, and blog posts are shaping the lives of people in the congregation.
A common occurrence in these conversations is when someone tells me I said something in a sermon that I did not actually say. What happened? Usually, it’s not because the person was inattentive.
Two ways to worry about AI: Alan Noble begins, “If you’ve followed some of the news in AI recently, you might be feeling scared. Concerning stories have been coming from two leading AI companies this summer.”
What gratitude was never meant to do: Tracy Harper says, “We run into problems with gratitude, though, when we use it as a countermeasure to avoid the thoughts and emotions that disappointment brings to the surface. God was prompting me to sit with the deeper question of why this mattered so much to me, and I couldn’t use my list of blessings to avoid going there with him.”
You’re running a day care center that closes at 5pm. You notice a handful of parents pick up their children late. Every time a parent arrives late it impacts you: you must stay late—family dinners and events are lost. What do you do? Realizing that your honor system isn’t cutting it, you start charging a fine for arriving late.
And then the unexpected happens: the number of late-arriving parents doubles.
This experiment was run by economists trying to help an Israeli daycare. The results confounded the researchers.
Three things stress reveals: Michael Kelley says, “And maybe you, too, know what that bursting feels like – it’s when something small that ordinarily shouldn’t have bothered you as much as it did just sets you off. And you find yourself overreacting to that single incident because of the accumulated pressure from the other circumstances.”
Seraphim may be flying serpentine creatures: Wyatt Graham challenges how we envision these angelic beings, “The word saraph occurs only seven times in the Hebrew Bible. Its verbal form means “to burn,”
I was fourteen years old, 5’9” and 130 pounds. My backpack hung loosely over my shoulders and butterflies filled my stomach. It was the first day of high school. I navigated the path from my fourth period class toward the cafeteria in a sea of three thousand mostly new faces. Who would I sit with? I saw the group of guys I had hung around with in middle school: jocks who had made those three years fairly miserable for me.
I scanned the grass and picked out the groups: band kids, several kids playing chess, kids playing pick-up basketball. I saw one gathering playing Dungeons and Dragons.
“Pastor, I was really touched when you said…”
One of my favorite parts of pastoral ministry is hearing how Scripture, sermons, Bible studies, and blog posts are shaping the lives of people in the congregation.
A common occurrence in these conversations is when someone tells me I said something in a sermon that I did not actually say. What happened? Usually, it’s not because the person was inattentive.
You’re running a day care center that closes at 5pm. You notice a handful of parents pick up their children late. Every time a parent arrives late it impacts you: you must stay late—family dinners and events are lost. What do you do? Realizing that your honor system isn’t cutting it, you start charging a fine for arriving late.
And then the unexpected happens: the number of late-arriving parents doubles.
This experiment was run by economists trying to help an Israeli daycare. The results confounded the researchers.
I was fourteen years old, 5’9” and 130 pounds. My backpack hung loosely over my shoulders and butterflies filled my stomach. It was the first day of high school. I navigated the path from my fourth period class toward the cafeteria in a sea of three thousand mostly new faces. Who would I sit with? I saw the group of guys I had hung around with in middle school: jocks who had made those three years fairly miserable for me.
I scanned the grass and picked out the groups: band kids, several kids playing chess, kids playing pick-up basketball. I saw one gathering playing Dungeons and Dragons.
We are all familiar with the mark of the beast. Fear and confusion surrounding it seem to swirl around it. As a child, I remember hearing a preacher declare that the birthmark on Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev’s head was the mark of the beast. We were warned that Visa cards or barcodes might be the mark. Today, rumors abound that the mark is a QR code, a vaccine, or something connected to artificial intelligence.
Such speculation dramatically misunderstands John’s explanation of the mark of the beast in the book of Revelation.
As a young man, I dreamed of being called to lead a revival for God. I was inspired by my pastor, who had led a church that had multiplied from a medium-sized congregation to a congregation of over 6,000. I read stories of heroes of the faith who had led revivals: Jonathan Edwards, Charles Spurgeon, DL Moody, and Billy Graham.
I prayed God would use me to lead. I dreamed of preaching to crowds and seeing many come to faith. I had the opportunity to lead Bible studies on my high school campus and was excited to try to figure out how to lead others in studying the Bible.
The grief we learn to carry: Stacy MacLaren says, “Grief research has given us language for something grieving people have known in their bones forever: losing someone you deeply love isn't like sustaining an injury that eventually disappears once you've healed correctly. Grief is, in part, a massive act of learning.”
Some of the strangest Old Testament laws and what they mean: Christine Palmer explains, ““You shall not eat any flesh with the blood in it. You shall not interpret omens or tell fortunes” (Lev. 19:26). To remain in right standing with the Lord, under no circumstances may the covenant people eat meat with its blood,
Do ghosts exist? Do we have access to the spirit world? If so, what does that mean for our spiritual life? The bizarre story of Saul and the Medium at En-Dor, while challenging, addresses these questions.
At the heart of this text is a critical question: will you obey God?
Here is the story:
The Philistines assembled and came and encamped at Shunem. And Saul gathered all Israel, and they encamped at Gilboa. When Saul saw the army of the Philistines, he was afraid, and his heart trembled greatly. And when Saul inquired of the Lord, the Lord did not answer him,
You are on a date night with your wife, observing the people around you.
“First date?” you ask. “For sure!” she says, noticing the telltale signs. The young lady carries a single rose. The young man is a little nervous. They are slightly overdressed for the restaurant. Eyes locked, their attention is rapt on one another. Cell phones never make an appearance.
Young love.
A mom and dad in their late thirties burst into the restaurant with three boisterous children guffawing at a joke. They divide and conquer: dad takes the two boys to the bathroom while mom settles herself and their daughter into the chair.
There is more going on around us than we can see. The physical world is surrounded by the spiritual realm. A spiritual battle rages around us.
I grew up during a time of heightened awareness of the spiritual realm. I remember lying in bed as a high school student, heart pounding and eyes glued to Frank Peretti’s This Present Darkness. I recall driving past Hindu temples in Trinidad overwhelmed by a feeling of spiritual darkness. Our church hosted workshops based on Neil Anderson’s The Bondage Breaker. We were taught to put on the armor of God piece by piece and to claim the blood of Jesus when confronting dark spiritual forces.
The next day, the extended family hosted a party for us. As we drove up to the farm, the pressure of meeting a whole group of strangers began to mount. I felt like the boyfriend from the city visiting his girlfriend’s family farm in a Hallmark movie. To quote Megamind (voiced by Will Ferrell), I was “shaking in my custom baby-seal leather boots.”
The men headed outside to lawn chairs while the women stayed inside. I drifted outside with a group of men I had never met and sat down. I had a beer in my left hand like the rest of the guys, but unlike everyone else…
Sign up to get The Bee Hive delivered to your inbox and receive a free 50 Books That Changed My Life (and Might Change Yours, Too) download!
