Any person with the “stand alone” mentality drilled into him may reject wise counsel and stand alone when he shouldn’t. He may utterly disregard what other people think because, after all, isn’t it important to stand alone? So, how do we distinguish between firmly standing for truth and stubbornly insisting on our own way?Read it all
The Cure for Hypocrisy
Since the hypocrite performs solely for a human audience, he needs his heart turned and tuned toward God. When he learns to care about and be aware of God, he will find deliverance from his hypocrisy. Read it all
Is It Time for Christians to Defy the Governor Regarding Public Worship?
Do we truly need to choose between honoring God and honoring the governor?
So is there a point where it’s right to defy our leaders?
If so, where is that point?
If so, where is that point?
The two connected questions dropped into the comments on one of my Facebook posts. To know the context is to better understand the questions, so here you are:
- Broad: Gubernatorial executive orders restricting some normal freedoms during a pandemic.
- Narrow: Restrictions on a variety of public assemblies, including church services.
I gave two brief answers (“Yes” and “Not yet”) in a follow-up comment and promised a more thorough answer later. This is it.
Heroes of the Resistance? Relevant Bible History
Love God and Delight in Him
And God will put in your heart the desires He wants you to have!
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the societal upheaval brought on by political decisions in its wake, most churches still do not meet for public worship services. Our congregation (Hopewell Mennonite Church, Hubbard, Oregon) offers our members a Sunday morning devotional and message via links to audio recorded specifically for that purpose. Read it all
The Lord’s Prayer and COVID-19
How to pray about the coronavirus pandemic
Peter Turner shares some of his thoughts about the Lord’s prayer and covid-19: This morning, I was thinking about how to pray in a general sense about the current novel coronavirus pandemic facing the entire world.
At first, I thought to ask God to kill off, remove, eliminate the virus so that we would see new cases drop and stop, and those in leadership would give the all-clear for us to get back to our ‘normal’ lives and begin repairing the economic damage. But then I remembered that God is able to bring good out of, or somehow through, the evils that come as a result of our fall, our sin, the curse, and this world’s brokenness. Perhaps it is part of His master plan — not that He caused this, but is using to His ends — that the world experience this crisis. Read it all