Word Servant

My child, may you keep your father’s instruction, and do not reject your mother’s teachings, for they are a garland of favor for your head, and pendants for your neck. My child, if sinners entice you, do not consent. If they say, “Come with us! We shall lie in wait for blood; we shall ambush the innocent without cause. Like Sheol, we will swallow them alive and whole, like those who descend to the pit. We shall find all precious wealth, we shall fill our houses with booty, keep your foot from their paths, for their feet run to evil, and they hurry to shed blood, for “in vain is the net scattered, in the sight of any winged bird.” They lie in wait for their own blood. They ambush their own lives. Thus, are the ways of all who are greedy for gain—it will take the life of its possessors. Proverbs 1:8-19 LEB

     This is a big chunk of Scripture. There is a lot of us who have heard the very beginning of this exhortation against following the crowd but have never had the entire section pu…

“Proverbs of Solomon, son of David, King of Israel: to know wisdom and instruction, to understand sayings of understanding, to gain insightful instruction, righteousness, justice, and equity, to give shrewdness to the simple, knowledge and purpose to the young, may the wise hear and increase learning, and the one who understands gain direction, to understand a proverb and an expression, words of wisdom and their riddles. Fear of Yahweh is the beginning of knowledge; wisdom and instruction, fools despise.”—Proverbs 1:1-7 LEB
     In praying and preparing for the upcoming year, it hit me: what better way to get ready for it than by kicking it off with Proverbs? Personally, I long for understanding and wisdom. I yearn for instruction and insight; and I crave knowledge, purpose and an increase in my own learning. I find that my soul longs for direction and knowing what God wills for my life in all its areas. Yet, I know that while I may pray all day, I will only come to understand God’s …

As 2020 approaches and I reflect on 2019, I can’t help but take my own spiritual inventory. Where have I missed the mark? What do I need to work on as a believer in Christ? How can I allow Christ to embolden me? Where do I need to step out in my faith? As I pray on these things and hand them over to God so I can be attuned to His will in the coming year, I have been struck by the people that serve as examples in the Scripture. We are so blessed that the Bible gives us repeated illustrations of what being an imperfect human while serving a perfect God looks like. Their faults, their flaws, and their struggles are not that different from our own when we really look at them.
     However, there’s one person in the Bible I struggle with more than anyone else. He has managed to become synonymous with the worst kind of friend that you could possibly be. He’s depicted as evil and presented as sinister. He comes across as kind of greasy, greedy and just the epitome of two-faced. He make…

In the next blog post, I’ll be returning to the previous style of going through a book of the Bible and looking at each verse one post at a time. However, today, I am excited about Christmas coming up, I am delighted that my university is on winter break and I am grateful to be in this place of transition where there is so much on the horizon!
     During Thanksgiving break, I got an address for a guy whom I have never met, nor do I know. He is incarcerated and doesn’t believe in Jesus. I have written letters to others before and have even written anonymous cards of encouragement to people I felt led to encourage. However, this opportunity means something to me in a way that I can’t properly explain. After doing 13 years myself, I know what it is like to get mail, I also know that out here in the day to day bustle of life it is hard to keep up with appointments and the chores and everything else that we have going on, much less try to write and witness to people who are incarcer…

Things have been hectic in my family’s life these past couple weeks. We took off for our holiday Thanksgiving jaunt up north to visit family and with a five-year-old—well, it makes travel interesting. I never realized how often one person could ask: are we there, yet? Yeah. It starts off as: are we there yet? But, about an hour ½ on the interstate, that snarky pause slides in warranting the comma. Three hours into the drive and I was starting to turn into the Chris Farley meme “FOR THE LOVE OF…” I love my kid, though. He usually tuckers out around the 6 ½ hour mark, which gives me and my wife about thirty minutes to get our minds right before we arrive at our destination.
      Speaking of traveling, we are pushing toward Christmas when we celebrate our Savior’s birth, which we all know had a bit of travel involved in it. It’s funny, my wife and I are doing this Precepts Ministries study on the Book of Luke, which kicked off the week before December 1st. The first week we are r…