Musings of a Seminary Grad

A year ago today, my sister asked me to speak at her wedding and present her and her now-husband with a charge for them as a couple with their God-given responsibilities in a Christian marriage. They are both believers in God and followers of Jesus Christ. They wanted others to know that God stands at the center of their marriage; he is the one who brought them together, he is the one who led them to marry, and knowing and serving him is the goal of their marriage. In that challenge, I made five points about marriage as God has described it in his Word, and how it relates to the good news of salvation that God offers to us in Christ. I present those five points for you here in their fuller form, since I always prepare too much material and what I presented that day had to be shortened (and was still a bit too long). May it be a blessing and a challenge to you. Marriage is created by God This is the foundation of everything I will say today. The Bible does not defend the existence of G...

This is the third post in a seven-part series; see parts 1 and 2 first. The Study Thus Far In my first two posts in this series, I made the case from Scripture that respect is important and even commanded, but also that there are multiple categories of respect: the base is courtesy, loving others as images of God; then comes submission, living out your position before God; and finally, imitation, which will be addressed in a later post. I am writing this blog series because, in spite of the clear teaching of Scripture regarding these categories, they are not clearly understood, and so the word “respect” often becomes a banner for generational values rather than a reference to biblical Christian character. Here, again, are my main proposals for working through each level of the respect pyramid: All respect is ultimately for God Respect has three different forms or levels The different levels have different theological bases The different levels have different requirements In my last ...

This is the second post in a seven-part series; see part 1 here. Review In my last post in this series, I claimed that much of the confusion and angst surrounding the issue of respect is because the terms are not often qualified and different generations have different assumptions about respect. I have begun to make the case from Scripture that respect is important and even commanded, but also that there are multiple categories of respect: the base is courtesy, and then submission, and then imitation. I have again included my diagram, in which courtesy is the broad base of a pyramid, the next level up is submission, and finally the top is imitation; the diagram shows how there are more situations of courtesy than there are situations of submission, and there are more situations of submission than there are of imitation. The levels are increasingly narrow. Here, again, are my main proposals for working through each level of the respect pyramid. I argued for the first poin...

As a student at a Christian university, and then as a teacher at a Christian university, I have heard a lot of talk about the concept of respect. Certainly, respect is a biblical concept (and command), but I have come to realize that we often use this word without defining or analyzing what we mean.With each new generation, the buzzwords and their definitions shift; just as each generation has its own ideas of what is most important, so too each generation defines those important topics according to its own values. I have found this to be the case with the seemingly nebulous concept of “respect.” This seven-part blog post series comes from a student life workshop I presented at Maranatha Baptist University. Stating the Issue If your experience is anything like mine, then you have been told to “respect” many different people and things in your lifetime. We've all heard that we should respect our elders, we've heard that we should respect our parents. We should respect God...

This is an article I wrote for the  May/June  2021 edition of  FrontLine Magazine about my personal experience with grief and the spiritual journey I went through. How should a believer respond to grief?  The topic is a daunting one, for every person experiences their own journey through it; that journey is shaped by an individual’s personality, kind of loss, sin tendencies, and heart idols. In this article, I seek to establish a basis for enduring grief in a godly way so that we do not waste the sovereignly-appointed trials God intends to use for our growth in holiness. Testimony In 2019, when I was twenty-six years old, my wife of almost five years died suddenly and without warning. We had met in Bible college and she helped me to hone my talents and callings in many areas of life as first a close friend, then as a girlfriend and fiancée, and finally as my wife; we married the day after I graduated. We continued to sharpen each other both mentally and spiritua...

TL;DR - Your wife isn't responsible for her being attractive to you, you are. I am so thankful for Karrie and the life and ministry we share together, and as our marriage continues I meditate on different aspects of how marriage is a picture of Christ and the church, and how Christ's role in our salvation sets the pattern husbands are to follow. Our world wants to tell women that they need to constantly work to be attractive for their husbands - that an athletic build, flawless skin, consistent sex, and an uncomplicated emotional life are how you "get a man," and that these things are what keep him satisfied and prevent him from cheating. But what does God say to husbands? "Love your wives as Christ loved the church" (Eph. 5:25a) Now, there are many aspects of this passage on which I have meditated in the past (v.25-33): "[he] gave himself for her" - I must love Karrie self-sacrificially "that he might sanctify her by the washing of water wit...