The book of James says that the Bible is intended to be a mirror, and Hebrews treats the Bible as a blade sharp enough to do surgery on the soul. When believers come to hear the Word of God, we ought to come in humble submission. We ought to come with an attitude ready to see our faults in the mirror and be ready to change, or to submit our soul to the knife of God to cut out sinful attitudes and actions that remain in us even though we believe. However, sometimes we come to the Scriptures with the wrong attitudes. What do I mean? If we come to the Scripture to hear a condemnation of “those pe ..read more

At Redeemer, last year we decided we would begin feeding the kids who come to our Wednesday night kids programs. Each week over the last year (during the school year) we have prepared a meal at 6:00 p.m. before the kids went to classes. One thing that we have found is that there are a few adults who started to come as well. They had kids, but the kids weren’t old enough for the classes that existed at the time. So, we expanded the classes. Starting this Fall, we started offering a preschool class on Wednesday nights too. All that to say, we would like to expand yet again. That’s why we change ..read more

I’ve begun my explanation of why I hold to the traditional Christian sexual ethic concerning homosexuality in the last post. If you are interested in exploring the topic more while you wait for me to finish in another post, you can check out these two videos by Kevin DeYoung on the topic. I believe they are very helpful and he can probably speak more clearly than I can on many of the details. Justin Taylor Interviews Kevin DeYoung, author of “What Does the Bible Really Teach About Homosexuality?” from Crossway on Vimeo. What Does the Bible Really Teach about Homosexuality? from Crossway on V ..read more

This is a topic about which I do not believe I can be silent. From time to time as I have visited with people in Panama, I have been asked what I believed about this subject. And I think it’s right that people ask this question. I will also say, I have more to say about this topic than I can answer in one blog post. I mean, I could say it all in one post, but it would be really long, and I’ve found that longer posts are less likely to be read. so I will break up the answer into parts. There has been so much change in our culture over the course of the last few decades, and it has happened at a ..read more

Last week we looked at John 2:1-12 where Jesus turned water into wine. A few of the observations I made were that Jesus used ordinary water to produce extraordinary wine—that is, it was wine that was even better than what could be produced by natural processes. This has some application to our life together in a church. We often want to depend on “natural processes” in the church. We often feel that we will grow when we get the right program, event, or activity to draw in the crowds. However, the growth of the church is not accomplished through natural processes, but supernatural ones. We are ..read more

One of the great needs of churches today is to raise up young leadership. One of the ways this must be done is through intentional mentoring. I’m growing to understand this more all the time, and it is actually quite a paradigm shift. The fact is, almost all of my life and ministry I’ve thought my “job” was the task of ministry in front of me that I was doing. Either teaching, preaching, leading, etc. However, over the last few years I’ve come to realize something new. I shouldn’t think of my “job” as the ministry task in front of me. I should think of my “job” as developing others to do the m ..read more

Click to view slideshow. On June 29 and 30 we took some kids from Panama to the Rehoboth Baptist Campground for the day camp for kids from 5-10 years old. Had a good time. We did get rained on Friday afternoon, but apart from that the camp went very well ..read more

Wow! It has been a very busy couple couple of day. We worked from 8 am to sun down on Monday and Tuesday, and finished up power washing the last house Wednesday around 5 pm. We washed about 20 houses plus 2 church buildings (we washed the United Methodist building as well as our own). We were able to serve our community and express the love of Christ to them. We had many gospel conversations as we went. We were able to serve widows and single moms and other families in our community. This was a great opportunity to share the love of Jesus. Thank you to Ken, Cindy, and Sadie Wilson, Country Ch ..read more

Christian Unity In John 17:20-23, Jesus prayed for the unity of all those who would believe in the preaching of the Apostles. That’s us. Christians today can know that Jesus prayed for them, and specifically, Jesus prayed for unity. Jesus says, I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word,  that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.  The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one ..read more