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August 13, 2013 Tuesday of the Nineteenth Week in Ordinary Time    Reading 1 Dt 31:1-8 When Moses had finished speaking to all Israel, he said to them,“I am now one hundred and twenty years oldand am no longer able to move about freely;besides, the LORD has told me that I shall not cross this Jordan.It is the LORD, your God, who will cross before you;he will destroy these nations before you,that you may supplant them.It is Joshua who will cross before you, as the LORD promised.The LORD will deal with them just as he dealt with Sihon and Og,the...

Unintended Consequences: How the “relevant” church and segregating youth is killing Christianity. I recently spent six-months doing a rotation as a hospital chaplain. One day I received a page (Yes, hospitals actually still use pagers). Chaplains are generally called to the rooms of people who look ill: People gray with kidney disease, or yellow with liver failure, discouraged amputees, nervous cancer patients. In this room, however, was a strikingly attractive 23 year-old young lady sitting up cheerfully in the hospital bed, holding her infant daughter and chatting with family and friends. Confused, I stepped outside and asked her nurse, “Why...

Just Ask Today's Scripture “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” (Matthew 7:7, NIV) Today's Word from Joel and Victoria What do you need from God today? A lot of times, it’s easy to think that we’re not supposed to ask for too much, but scripture encourages us to go to God with all of our needs. He longs to give you the desires of your heart and pour out His favor and blessing on you. In fact, Jesus said, “You have not because...

The Theology of Resting in God "Why are you fearful, O you of little faith?" —Matthew 8:26 When we are afraid, the least we can do is pray to God. But our Lord has a right to expect that those who name His name have an underlying confidence in Him. God expects His children to be so confident in Him that in any crisis they are the ones who are reliable. Yet our trust is only in God up to a certain point, then we turn back to the elementary panic-stricken prayers of those people who do not even...

NASHVILLE (BP) -- The centrality of the doctrine of substitutionary atonement is being emphasized by Southern Baptist leaders after a state newspaper editor wrote that he does not sing certain words of a popular hymn due to its mention of God's wrath. Substitutionary atonement refers to the belief that Jesus died in the place of sinners, taking on Himself the wrath of God that they deserved. Bob Terry, editor of The Alabama Baptist, in an Aug. 8 editorial, paralleled the angst expressed by a Presbyterian Church USA hymnal committee in rejecting the song "In Christ Alone" because of the line...

[ . . . ] . . . Christian authorities need to stop thinking and writing as though the categories of homosexual and Christian can be joined—as though the Church could tolerate or accommodate, or speak gently of, much less bless or sanctify, anything peculiar to the garment stained by the flesh that those who come to Christ throw off in their baptism. In that baptism we become penitents, and as such divided from our sins. St. Paul tells us here that no penitent is to be named by, identified by, what he has abjured. Those injured people who have...

August 12, 2013Monday of the Nineteenth Week in Ordinary Time    Reading 1 Dt 10:12-22 Moses said to the people:“And now, Israel, what does the LORD, your God, ask of youbut to fear the LORD, your God, and follow his ways exactly,to love and serve the LORD, your God,with all your heart and all your soul,to keep the commandments and statutes of the LORDwhich I enjoin on you today for your own good?Think! The heavens, even the highest heavens,belong to the LORD, your God,as well as the earth and everything on it.Yet in his love for your fathers the...