What I love about Wesley is his ruthless honesty. He essentially spends all of chapter 5 making sure the reader understands he is not presenting a quick fix to the emotional ache that gay / SSA people feel. He wants to make sure gay / SSA Christians, as well as pastors looking for the magic bullet solution to all of this, understand that there is no magic bullet. He wants to make sure people understand if they walk down the path of kinship / covenantal friendship, they will meet pain and disappointment. This is not a good sales pitch! But it is real and it is honest. Us pastors hate this. We want a systematic theology that fixes everything. We want the right answer that grounds us in Scripture and that gives everyone warm fuzzies.
Psalm 5 Devotional – A refuge in a war.
The fifth psalm brings with it some familiar themes from the preceding four: God not answering prayer, lament, crying out to God, and struggle against bloodthirsty adversaries. Whenever Scripture repeats itself, this is a flashing red light to take notice, God is trying to make sure we really understand something. It’s ironic then, how these themes have been lost or minimized in much of modern day Western Christianity. We seem to have crafted a religion around comfort and God making you feel good. Like we are selling a product and we need to convince those in the pew that it works. In order to do so, we have to hide these more uncomfortable truths and only emphasize the happy ones.
Psalm 4 Devotional – Answer me God!
Verse 1 implies that God has not been answering the psalmist’s prayer. I love the honesty we can go to God with. The psalmist is basically saying, “Hey God! Answer me! I know you can! But you haven’t been! I am suffering! I am struggling! Have mercy on me! Hear my prayer!” With full use of exclamation points in the emotion behind this prayer.
2021 Daily Devotions – Psalm 1 – What’s feeding your tree?
It’s a new year and a perfect time to start spending time in Scripture each day. I’m going to post a short devotional on the Psalms every day until we run out of Psalms. You can use the subscribe options at the bottom of this post to if you’d like to receive these devotionals in your email inbox, or you can subscribe to receive all blog categories. If you’re already subscribed to my blog posts, you will not receive these daily devotionals in your inbox unless you subscribe separately to the “Daily Devotions” category below.
Ep. 29: Why do bad things happen to good people?
In Episode 29, we tackle the age old question, “Why do bad things happen to good people?”
And of course there’s a Noah’s Rant to lift your quarantined spirits!
Email the show at podcast@beyondthebattle.net
Ep. 27: Finding Solid Ground in the Midst of a COVID-19 World
Noah pauses to reflect on the unprecedented time of history we are experiencing with COVID-19. As followers of Jesus, can we reflect on where our security really lies? Can we reflect on how busy and hectic we normally live our lives and what we can do with this forced pause?