Applied Theology

“For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it.” That’s a high standard. Break only the slightest part of it (in this passage in James, the context is partiality), and you’re guilty of breaking it all. So I found it even more surprising that God was willing to let Judah off the hook if they just keep the Sabbath!

For a while, I was doing really well. I woke up at 4:30, made tea, and read my Bible. I prayed for the day. I prayed through our church directory and emailed the brothers and sisters with encouragement. I refreshed my memory verses and spend some time writing articles for this blog. And I was ready for work at 6:00. And then it all collapsed and all I could do on a good day was manage a quiet time.

Earlier this year I had the honor of interviewing Ron Kubsch of the Evangelium21 network in Germany. It’s a network of churches that focuses on the Scriptures and Reformed theology. As a German, I am immensely encouraged by this! I was also blessed by Ron’s answers to my questions. Here is the original German interview. I am working on translating it into English and will publish the translation when it’s done, but I wanted to get the original out there to honor Ron and the time he spent on it.

The Desert Springs Institute is our teaching and equipping ministry at DSC. Our current class is a Systematic Theology over two semesters. I taught this week’s session on the topic of sin; maybe it is helpful to you. Here’s the video, and here’s a link to the whole playlist so far.

In my Bible reading plan I just got to 2 Corinthians 5. Verses 18-20 say: All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.

I don’t like repetitive work: it sucks the joy out of otherwise fun tasks. So when I started creating discussion guides for our small groups (we call them Community Groups, or CGs), I set out to eliminate as much of the tedium as possible by applying technology I also use at work. Here’s a little glimpse.

It has been two months since my last article. What happened? Unfortunately, our summer got unpredictably busy, but not with fun trips or extended family time, but work. It drained me to the point of burnout, so writing took a backseat. I guess I benefit from a stable routine and its absence created a bit of chaos. The good news is that it looks like that is changing right now. Last week was fairly normal again: Early mornings with extended time in the Scriptures (I am trying to catch up to my reading plan again; only a few days behind now!) and even a bit of writing.

I sometimes struggle with the fear of man, so reminders like these from Spurgeon’s Faith Checkbook are most welcome to me. Maybe to you, too.

I am an engineer. My job is to solve difficult problems, the kind that sometimes make you want to bang your head against a wall. But I’ve noticed in the last year or two that I have significantly greater success with those problems when I take them to God in prayer first.

Several times a year, my wife gets in the car and meets up with one of her childhood friends for a girls’ weekend somewhere. Her most recent trip took her to Denver, which—conveniently—has an Ikea (we needed some furniture). Before she left in the early morning, we prayed together to ask God for a safe, fun, edifying trip. I went back to bed and, as I was falling asleep, thought: I wonder if Satan heard that prayer.