If you have spent any amount of time in church, you have probably heard Matthew 4:19: “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” Jesus said these words to fishermen, so there is an obvious play on their job title, but what does it mean to be “fishers of men”? To find out what Jesus was communicating to these soon-to-be disciples, we need to look at this story as it appears in three of the gospel accounts. In doing so, we will discover a profound reality about the kinds of people who Jesus calls to follow him. Fishers of Men in the Synoptic Gospels Because the accounts are so similar, I w ..read more

As we study the sayings and teachings of Jesus, we are able to understand more about what he was thinking as he taught, but we also get to know the gospel writers as well. Like any writer, they all (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) told their stories with a unique purpose and personal flare. John says the most about Jesus’ earliest days of ministry, so we have spent a lot of time in his account so far. However, in an effort to stay as chronological as possible, we are bouncing around between authors. Our goal is to get a fuller picture of the gospel and of the way Jesus thought and taught. Today ..read more

It was registration day for my senior year of Bible college. My bags were packed, and my car was loaded. As I was walking out the door of my mom’s house, my phone rang. It was the bank. “Mr. Brannon, unfortunately, since you don’t have a credit history, you were not approved for the loan.” My heart sank. For the first three years, my tuition was covered by assistance from my family and my church, as well as some contribution from my meager part-time, minimum-wage summer job at a frozen yogurt shop. This time, however, my mother and my sister (the largest contributors) informed me early on that ..read more

I learned how to grow a pineapple plant from a Tiktok video. A creator on that platform teaches people how to grow food from the produce people already have in their homes. I came across his work, and I was fascinated. He made it look so simple, and I followed his instructions to the letter. Anyone who starts growing plants knows it can be a frustrating process to learn. One important lesson the creator left out of his video is that timing matters. See, pineapple is a tropical fruit, and being that Florida has a tropical climate, it would normally be a great place to grow it. Except that I sta ..read more

Religion is something that can unite us or divide us. It can be a common cause or a cause for contention. This has been the case throughout history, and it was no different among the first-century Semitic people who worshipped the God Yahweh. Among those people were many different sects of Judaism: the Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, Zealots, and possibly more we have yet to discover in the annals of archaeology. There were a few common beliefs among them, chiefly their belief in Yahweh and in Torah, the law of Yahweh. They also all had a perception of proper worship in the temple. They may hav ..read more

We all know what thirst feels like. Your mouth gets dry and sticky. Your body feels weak. All you can think of is chugging more water than your stomach can contain. When you are desperate enough for survival, you will take any source of water. Watch any episode of Naked and Afraid, and you will see this is true. This Discovery Channel show features a man-and-woman team on each episode pairing up for survival, with the goal to last 21 days in some of the most dangerous conditions a human can face. And in every episode I have seen, the duo almost immediately searches for shelter and water. Becau ..read more

As I am writing this post, I am sitting alone in my living room. My lights are off, and my blinds are open. I’m in a dark room with a few sporadic LED lights shining from my internet router and my Keurig. I see the neighbor’s motion detector light come on from time to time, and the street lights are making it so I can navigate the darkness without tripping over my coffee table. I am meditating on what life would be like without electricity. When a house has no power, it is pitch dark until power is restored or until a lantern is lit. Before the invention of the light bulb and the innovation of ..read more

When Jesus was finished clearing the temple on Passover, he was evidently doing a number of miracles. We are told in John 2:23 that “many believed in his name when they saw the signs that he was doing.” Following this scene, John gives us the details of a rare one-on-one conversation with Jesus: “Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. This man came to Jesus by night and said to him, ‘Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him'” (John 3:1-2) Nicodemus was well aware that Jesus’ prophet ..read more

Early in his ministry, Jesus turned water into wine. This was his first miracle, or “sign,” as John likes to call it. We discuss this event in another post. Soon after this event, it came time for Jews to celebrate Passover, so Christ and his followers headed to Jerusalem. But things were not as they should have been. As Jesus approached the house of his Father, his blood began to boil. “In the temple he found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons, and the money-changers sitting there. And making a whip of cords, he drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and oxen. And he ..read more