Disciples Who Hear God's Voice

This week, we will begin reading through the Psalms together. Like I wrote last week, we are not reading every Psalm together, but we have a selection of favorite Psalms from Elders and staff. Next week, we will spend time on just two: Psalm 1 and 2. Wait? We're spending a whole week just reading two Psalms? Won't that be boring and repetitive?  If you've never spent multiple days reading and re-reading the same passage over and over, it might seem like the passage will get stale, but I think you'll find that's not the case. On day one, it's just an introduction. You'll probably get the main point, and maybe you'll research a question or two about something you didn't understand in the text. On day two, you'll probably notice things you missed the first time. You may have MORE questions as you start to notice certain word choices and sentence structures.  You may find yourself looking up other translations to see how the Psalm sounds in them. You...

  We are gearing up for another season of scripture reading and memorization. This year, we will be going through a few selected Psalms. I pulled together a list of the Staff and Elders' favorite Psalms, which we will go through two at a time each week. We selected them a bit randomly (by favorite), but we will go through them in the order they appear in the scripture.  Before we get started in the series, you should watch/listen to this insightful overview of The Book of Psalms from the Bible Project . When I first listened to this overview, I was shocked at how much I DIDN'T know about the Psalms. Don't be surprised if you hear some of the details from this video in a future sermon or two. Another great resource to download a head of time is an app called Through the Word . I am pretty new to this app, but they take the time to give a 10 to 15 minute run-down of every Psalm. This will come in handy as we spend time each week reading, studying, memorizing, and praying thro...

This week, I talked with a friend about the family devotionals that we do with our kids, or at least that we try to do. I pulled back the curtain and let him peak inside the family devotional time at the Aguilar house, which is not very impressive. On Saturday mornings, we read a short passage, and I try to ask some basic comprehension questions. Then we share what we are grateful for and what we are struggling with (prayer requests). Then we pray for each other, and Tina and I usually end up leading each kid in the prayers that they are trying to pray. We try to walk the fine line of forcing them to do something they don’t want to do without making Bible time something they hate. It doesn’t feel magical or even meaningful most times. I realize, however, that the majority of our discipleship happens in other real-world scenarios that I try to take advantage of. For example, our kids will often say they are afraid of one thing or another at bed time. That’s when I teach them how to deal...

My kids are at the age where they understand just enough to NOT understand why we call it Good Friday. I've been swimming in Christian lingo and mindset for so long that the utter strangeness of the cross starts to "make sense" in ways that it really doesn't from a merely human perspective. I say it "makes sense" because we talk about it so much that it starts to feel normal: that our God would die on a cross. We sing songs about the cross. We wear them around our necks, and we talk effortlessly about Jesus dying on the cross for our sins. It has begun to feel almost obvious--as though the one through whom all things were created would obviously  die on a cross for us.  In my seminary class, we're looking at the works of Paul as he helped the early church deal with the newness of faith in Jesus. One of the big hangups was the idea that anyone of any importance could possibly have been crucified. It was, likewise, strange to think of a multinational grou...