You better check yo self before you wreck yo self – Ice Cube (1993)   Not that long ago a conversation with a friend that brought these song lyrics up as an explanation for a section of scripture in the book of Psalms.   “Be still and know that I am God.” — Psalm 46:10   This in one of the very well known (as well as misapplied) sections of scripture. Very often, this verse of scripture is used as a source of encouragement of hope. It is likely that a walk-through Hobby Lobby will spot this phrase or verse somewhere. But unfortunately, it is another verse that have been pulled as Voddie Baucham has said, “kicking and screaming out of its context”. It often tends to find itself shoved onto church signs, bulletins, and social media posts If we are going to take the Word of God as an actual word from God, we must read the bible how it is written. “Be still” is not an encouragement to Christians, it is an intense warning to the nations, to ...

I ’m not going to lie. I hated English class. Being home-schooled  by a grammar Nazi pretty much instilled this disdain  in me from an early age. I mean really, who cares about verb-tense, or prepositional phrases? Well, all this changed around 10 th grade for me. I began to gain an appreciation for the things I had been taught and the way I had been taught them. English became enjoyable (except diagramming , ugh) to study and understand. Grammatically speaking every sentence should have a noun and a verb. For example, the word Christian is a noun. A Christian is a person who follows Jesus. Follow is a verb. Jesus used verbs all the time. Verbs like love, come, rest, learn, hear, etc. But somewhere along the line, we tried to make Christian an adjective instead of being about verbs. “There is no such thing a Christian Democrat” “I love Christian comedy!” “There is no such thing as Christian *Insert Noun*” These are all phases that we have heard at some point, ...

My kids have recently become astonished with rainbows. Not that they are drawing them or that they are collecting them, but they are amazed when they see them in the sky. They have also been determined to find out what was at the end of a rainbow (which was an interesting and frustrating conversation with a three-year-old). Many will know the story of the rainbow. Chapter 9 of the book of Genesis, a conclusion to the narration of the flood, gives us this promise. Starting from verse 8, He says, ”And God spake unto Noah, and to his sons with him, saying, And I, behold, I establish my covenant with you, and with your seed after you;” However, in verse 13 we see the sign of this covenant. The Bible says, “I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth.” This gives us the understanding that we have been given the rainbow, as a sign that God would never again pour out his wrath on the world in the form of water. What we need t...

We all read our Bibles with admiration and respect for it's characters, but if you met a man like Jacob today, odds are you probably would not like him. Jacob was a backstabbing, conniving, opportunist if there ever was one. He was all about Jacob, all of the time. The bad news is that we are all much like Jacob in this way. We tend to be selfish and self-serving every day in every way. The good news is that even though this was the case with Jacob, we can see from the scripture that Jacob is the one that God had chosen to bless.   If we were to start in the Genesis account of Jacob, would find a man that had tricked his brother, and was running away from the family drama that he just had created. On his skedaddle from his brother, Jacob stops to rest, laying his head on a rock near a place that would later be called Bethel.  Now keep in mind, Jacob was not running towards God, or even looking for God, but (SPOILER ALERT) God was looking for Jacob. Jacob saw a visi...

“SIX INCHES!” This was the standard rule for members of the opposite sex through most of my childhood and into my teenage years. Touching was prohibited, which left even a handshake or high five with a girl seem oddly inappropriate. The basis for this was from a passage of scripture in 1 Corinthians chapter seven, and as far as verses that were to be memorized, it ranked right up there with John 3:16. This verse reads, “Now concerning the things whereof ye wrote unto me: It is good for a man not to touch a woman.  Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband.” (1 Corinthians 7:1,2) The reasoning that was given for this statement was that since committing fornication requires touching, Paul is saying that the best way to avoid fornication is unmarried people to keep from touching each other. But the question that a study of the text, in context, brings is, “Did Paul really say that it is good for a man not to touch a w...