The apostle Paul, missionary to the pagans, had high hopes of one day being able to share the good news of Jesus and salvation in his name in the very center of the Roman Empire. He decided to forward to the believers in Rome a summary of his gospel, which was a good idea for several reasons. For example, what if he didn't make it? He would have at least been able to give them the core of what he had hoped to tell them face-to-face. Thankfully, this summary of Paul's gospel has been preserved for us and this morning we have read from its 6th chapter. Chapter 6 is part of the section of Paul's letter, chapters 5-8, which contain absolutely critical information for a full experience of the Christian life this side of heaven. Roughly, one could say that chapter 5 deals with our justification - how we are made right with God, ch. 6, our sanctification - or how to live a righteous life, ch. 7, our relationship to God's law, and chapter 8, our relationship to the Holy...

http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/kevindeyoung/2013/06/19/interview-with-henry-luke-orombi/

In case you are interested: The Lord's Prayer The Author of History and the Story of Our Lives

Trinity Sunday, 2013 Romans 5, Beckmann The news in our country over the last couple of months or so has been very rough.  We were not yet over the Newtown school shooting when we hear of the bombing in Boston - and children being killed and dismembered - and then we had the Benghazi hearings and learned what really happened this past 9/11 and how much the WH has tried to cover up for political reasons - which is simply horrible - and most recently, as the scandals continue to flow like a torrent out of the Federal Administration, I could say, our whole country was hit by a tornado in Oklahoma, and again our minds picture children dead in a school.  It's just all so horrible.  And in the face of it all, the hearts of people everywhere cry out to God - Why?  Why did these things happen?  Couldn't you have stopped this, God?  Couldn't you have done something to keep the shooter from getting to the school, the bombs from working, and the tornado from blowin...

My title refers to that common saying, "He is so heavenly minded that he is of no earthly good."  It can be turned around to, "Only the heavenly minded are of earthly good" - rightly understood, of course. Yesterday, I posted a link to an Ascension Day sermon by Bishop Wright.  What he has to say is quite good.  However, in the second paragraph, when he says the collect for Ascension, and the whole vision of the Christian faith that he thinks the collect encourages, is "profoundly unbiblical," I think his concern that we believers be of "earthly good" misleads him.  The collect mirrors Paul's words in Colossians iii:   1 If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. 2 Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth.3 For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. I think what the bishop did was read the collect through the lens of his good sen...

On Earth as in Heaven Acts 16.16–34; John 17.20–end a sermon at the Eucharist on the Sunday after Ascension Day York Minster, 20 May 2007 by the Bishop of Durham, Dr N. T. Wright You can read it here.

It has been almost a year since I quit posting here. It's been exactly two years to the day since I posted the Moule article below. I started another blog, and then decided to close that one down. With all I have had to do in the last year with teaching, I've just not had the time, the leisure, the energy to keep up a blog. Plus, I'm more interested in publishing something in print. Yet, today - poking around - I find this blog is being accessed quite a bit - apparently by people searching topics and looking up some of the older articles. Well, I'm glad to see it. Perhaps I ought to keep dropping things in now and then - a recent sermon or something. I'll see. In the meantime, I'm rather up-in-the-air vocationally. I've been cut back to part-time at Chattanooga Christian for next year. I plan to start tutoring homeschool students in Latin again to help make ends meet and I hope to use my extra time to finish my Th.M. But I'll also be networki...