“To pray is to let Jesus glorify his name in the midst of our needs.”—O. Hallesby Dear church family,Two weeks ago in Adult Sunday School, we read through a poem on prayer by George Herbert. Last week we discussed prayer and those present received a copy of Don S. Whitney’s Praying the Bible. Wow! What a class! English metaphysical poetry, free…
“To pray is to let Jesus glorify his name in the midst of our needs.” —O. Hallesby Dear church family, In our last class of Adult Sunday School (all are invited, 9:30 AM, at The Cotillion), we discussed prayer by looking at Luke 11:1-2 and reading through a poem entitled Prayer by George Herbert (1593-1633). Herbert was a priest in the Church…
“There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God,” (Eccl. 2:24) This weekend, we considered the wisdom of Qoheleth (The Teacher) as he meditates on the mysterious vapor that is our lives here under the sun of a cosmos…
Dear church family, The following lengthy story illustrates the power of Ecclesiastes to direct us away from the smoke-like things of this world to the most substantial thing—the gospel. Pastor Philip Graham Ryken relates the following episode in the life of Eutropius and Chrysostom: Eutropius had fallen into disgrace. As the highest-ranking official in the Byzantine Empire (late fourth century),…
“A godly man prefers grace before goods, and wisdom before the world.” –Richard Bernard What is Ecclesiastes? It is a book in the Old Testament. It is part of the Old Testament’s Wisdom Literature. What is Ecclesiastes? It is the fruit of a promise that God made to Solomon. The promise is found in 1 Kings 3: 5 At Gibeon…
“The Christian’s life should put his minister’s sermon in print.” –William Gurnall Dear church family, As I read William Gurnall’s observation, “The Christian’s life should put his minister’s sermon in print,” I am not thinking of my own sermons but rather a recent sermon by Darin. It was in this sermon that he defined discipleship as “the intentional, passionate, and…
“They who will not wear Christ’s yoke will much less bear his burden.” –William Gurnall Dear church family, What is discipleship? And how long of a process is it? For the answer to the first question, we will simply repeat the definition that Darin recently shared, “Discipleship [is] the intentional, passionate, and consistent pursuit of spiritual growth and fruitfulness, not…
“Discipleship without Jesus Christ is a way of our own choosing.” —Dietrich Bonhoeffer Dear church family, We preach discipleship. We discuss it as central to who we are at The Road. We acknowledge its centrality to the life and work of Jesus Christ. After Jesus was tempted by Satan, and after he announced his mission in the synagogue, what did…
Jim Elliot, a missionary who was martyred in 1956 during an attempt to proclaim Christ to the Huaorani people of Ecuador, famously said, “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.” In the story of the rich ruler, we see a man who turns down Christ’s call to sell all that…
Praise the Lord! Praise the Name of the Lord! Love the Lord with all your heart! These kinds of commands are a regular part of the Bible, and there are no passages in the Bible that seem ashamed of this fact. God commands us to praise Him. Psa. 22:23 You who fear the LORD, praise him! All you offspring of Jacob, glorify…
