Bible Study Conversations

Over the years, I’ve had occasion to read through the Bible—in part or in whole—with several folks. And, especially for people who are new to it, one of the concerns they have is an understandable one: how can I understand this great big book? Christianity has been around for two thousand years, and people who claim to be Christian, and claim to value the Bible, disagree over all kinds of issues.

And I don’t want to minimize any of that—those disagreements are present, they are real, and sometimes they’re of a sort where even as Christians we functionally can’t worship in the same church.

The Plain Things Are the Main Things

Nonetheless, there is a profound level of agreement across Christianity on some really big issues. It’s worth considering here the Apostles’ Creed, the Nicene Creed, etc.

But when it comes to simply reading your Bible at home and trying to understand what it’s saying, here is a simple maxim (not original to me): the main things are the plain things, and the plain things are the main things.

When you’re looking at the Bible, yes, there are things that can be confusing, there are things that are hard to understand—and it all matters. God wouldn’t have recorded it for us if it didn't matter. But the most important things are really, really clear.

One such verse, that very plainly and very clearly captures the message of the Bible is John chapter 3 and verse 16. It says, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”

The Reality of God

I think one of the things that's most interesting to me is where this verse starts— it starts in the same place the whole Bible starts: the reality of God. It’s so easy in our thinking and the way that we perceive the world, even if we’re people who believe in God, to begin our thought process with our experiences. Our feelings. We start with the things that we think we know from our life and from what we have learned throughout the course of our life. But the Bible starts with the reality of God.

Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning, God created in the heavens and the earth.” Before anything else exists, God exists. He is the ultimate defining reality that stands behind and over everything else that exists. The book of John itself is the same way. Speaking specifically of the second person of the Trinity, the Son, says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.” And so God is the starting point of the whole Bible's message.

God is assumed as the Creator and the Maker and the Ruler of every one and every thing. And as such, he also is the Judge.

God's Love for the World

But here in our text, it says that he does something. It says, “For God so loved the world.” He loved the world. He loved the cosmos—the whole world, everyone and everything in it, the world itself, even the literal earth—dirt and rocks and trees and raindrops—is loved by God. And we know this again from the beginning of the Bible in Genesis chapter 1: God made the world and over and over again it says “and God saw that it was good.” And after he makes the man and the woman on day six of creation it says “and God saw that it was very good.” God loves his creation and he most of all loves the people, the human beings, who are the pinnacle of his creation.

But I still think it’s remarkable that it says he loved the world after Genesis 1. Sure, God made the world and it was very good. Two chapters later, though, man and woman are tempted by the serpent, and they sin. And in Adam’s fall, the old children’s reader tells us, we sinned all. The Apostle Paul says in the book of Romans that the wages of sin is death. So Adam and Eve were a death sentence—and we, as their descendants, are under a death sentence because of our sin. Further, even creation, the earth itself, is condemned by God because of human sin. Adam is told by God in Genesis 3 that “cursed is the ground because of you.” Romans 8 says that “all of creation groans under the weight of our curse.”

It would seem that God would be within his rights as Creator and Judge to look at the the sinful world and zap it and make it—and everyone on it—disappear. Yet it says he loved the world. Even in the Genesis narrative, there with Adam and Eve, he doesn't instantly give them death. Instead of instantly giving them death, he gives them temporary consequences that would lead up to death. There’s a pause, and with that pause there’s also a promise that One would come who would crush that serpent who had tempted them. One would come, who would take care of sin so that they could be reconciled to God. And the Bible’s story afterward is the story of God bringing reconciliation, bringing about a plan of reconciliation between sinful humanity and the Holy Creator God.

God Gave His Only Son

And here in this verse it tells us how that plan culminates. It says he so loved the world, in this way he loved the world—that he gave his only Son. His only Son.

As Christians, we believe in the God of Scripture who reveals himself as a Triune God: Father, Son, and Spirit. And God the Father sent the Son into the world. The eternal Word of the Father entered the world. John 1:14 says, “He took on flesh and dwelt among us.” Back in Genesis 3, God himself offered a sacrifice for human sin. He killed an animal and from its skin clothed the man and the woman to cover their shame, their nakedness, there in the garden after they had sinned. And all through the Old Testament there were animal sacrifices which God commanded for the people to offer as an expression of faith in his forgiveness. But while that blood symbolically covers their sins, the blood of those sacrifices—according to Hebrews 10:4—could never take away sin. God allowed it as a temporary covering, an expression of faith, a recognition that sin requires death.

But it couldn't actually solve the problem. For our sin to actually be atoned for someone who was actually human—and perfect—had to stand in our place. And so the eternal Son of God became Incarnate. He took on a human nature in the womb of the Virgin Mary so that there would be a man, a human being who could stand in our place, who was also God and sufficient to stand not just in the place of one person, but in the place of everyone. So God sent his Son into the world so that when Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God, went to the cross, he could be a fitting substitute as a man and a sufficient substitute as the God-man.

Salvation Through Faith

And he did this so that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life. And the next verse for 17 says, “God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” God desires to save the whole world, to save everyone who believes. This salvation is free and open to anyone. Though we deserve God's judgment, he judged his Son in our place so that if we trust in him, we could have life. And that’s the last piece here that we see: while Christ’s sacrifice is sufficient for everyone, it must be received by faith. You must believe in order to not perish, but instead have eternal life.

Friends, you must repent of your sins—agree with God about your fallen condition and willful rebellion against his ways—and humbly trust in the gift of grace he has given in Christ: Jesus bore the weight of your rebellion and sin, and freely offers life if you will trust in him. Place your life—your earthly life and eternal destiny—in the nail scarred hands of Jesus Christ.

The Central Message of Scripture

What is the plainest thing in all the Bible? Well, Jesus says in John chapter 5 that all of the Old Testament Scriptures—three -quarters of the Bible—is pointing to him. And then, in the gospels, we see four pictures of him coming. Jesus is the central point of the Book, and his work on the cross in our place is the central point of his coming. The central message of the Bible is that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.

Prefer to print and read? Here is this article in pdf form.

The Fakeness of the Machine

The other day I was scrolling though substack—which feels different than scrolling through other parts of the social internet, but frankly, I’m not convinced it’s any more productive—when I came across this gem of a note by Griffin Gooch:

This made me laugh—because it was 1) boring, 2) insipid, and 3) very clearly not the sort of thing Griffin would write.

But it did get me to thinking: what would happen if I asked it the same thing? I don’t use ChatGPT, preferring Claude, but I gave it basically the same prompt: write a substack note in the voice of Will Dole. Now, given that I don’t write for Christianity Today or have 4,000 plus substack subscribers, I had to give it a little help by providing links to this site and to our church substack, which has most of the sermons I’ve preached over the past few years. That ought to give an LLM the info it needed on my writing.

It still wanted a prompt in terms of topic, and so I decided to be meta and give it the prompt of “thoughts on AI.” And after it combed through my writing and then received this prompt it proceeded to spit out not a substack note-length piece of “writing”, but a full substack article-length piece [this is not that product].

I was surprised by how well it reproduced my style, in the sense of presenting an issue, attempting to come at it from an unexpected angle, and seeking to resolve the issue with principles based on Scripture. It even did some of the Eugene Peterson-inspired allusions to Scripture that don’t directly bear on the topic but that do shed light from a slantwise angle that I try to include in my writing. That was, frankly, impressive. It even was able to predict that the guy who writes Stopping to Think would be more than a little concerned about how we might end up using AI to short circuit thinking. Again, I consider that impressive.

But, this much was also clear: anyone who has read more than two pieces of my work, with any level of attention, would surely be able to tell that what Claude had churned out was not my voice. It hit the right topics. Included a lot of the same ingredients. And still felt, basically, soulless. Because it was.

What is Writing For?

If you asked me, “what is writing for”, my short answer would be: thinking.

The use of language to move ideas, concepts, and images from one mind to another is the most human thing possible. Made in the image of the speaking God of Genesis 1, Psalm 33, Isaiah 55, and John 1, human beings are creatures who think and speak.

And, though evolutionary biologists disagree, the Biblical record would indicate that, perhaps not from the very beginning, but at least very early in human existence, human beings write. Writing and reading are not natural in the same way speech is. They are skills that must by learned, honed, and developed over time. Though some folks are born with more aptitude than others (as is true with any skill), no one is born reading and writing. The capacity to communicate with words that can go beyond your presence—further than the limits of your voice and ears—is a further extension of this human gift of language. Reading and writing are uniquely human activities.

This is part of what makes the outsourcing of reading and writing—be it “content” on a blog, an essay for your school paper, or the idiotic suggestion I read on substack for people to talk to ChatGPT to get summaries of classic books instead of reading them for themselves—so concerning. When the LLM summarizes the data for you, you haven’t had to think and wrestle and chew through it yourself. When you have ChatGPT write the paper, you fail to gain anything from the actual process of reading, meditating, agreeing, disagreeing, articulating, or changing your thoughts.

When I’m writing, I’m exploring ideas as much as I am trying to communicate them. In the process of writing, I am gaining clarity on what I think about this subject or that. Even in my sermon writing process, though I prefer to preach without a written manuscript, I will often till write the sermon (or at least key parts of it) in order to make sure I have thought the issue or the statement or the transition through. There are an awful lot of ideas that feel great in your head, until the start coming out of your mouth. Or pouring out before you on the screen or the page.

If you outsource that work—and yes, it is work—you’re also outsourcing the clarity and growth that come with it.

How I Use AI

So, all of that to say, I’m rabidly anti-AI, right? No, not exactly. I’m still grappling with how best to use (or not use) the various AI tools out there. Here is where I’ve landed for now, though.

I’m not a Luddite—I’m not completely opposed to all technology invented after some randomly selected date. But I am deeply skeptical. It has often been noted that technologies don’t just give abilities, they actually shape us. They shape the way we think and the way we act. In the case of AI, based on what I wrote above, I would argue that the way many people are using AI is actually reducing their capacity to think clearly at all.

The most important thing I do is think. If a tool is functioning to bypass or short-circuit that process, what good is it doing? If the drive to be more “impactful”, more “efficient”, or “more” whatever robs me of the opportunity to be more human, and therefore, more fully imaging my Creator, then is it really moving the ball forward for my life? Is it truly doing my congregation any good if I used ChatGPT to draft a better conclusion to a sermon if that conclusion wasn’t the result of my labor in study and thinking and growth? I would argue that, even if the paragraph is better than what I could have written on my own, we are all worse off (see 1 Timothy 4:14-16).

If the whole idea of this newsletter is to ask you to stop and think—how could I, with any sense of honesty, do that if I haven’t first done so? I would rather not post than post and have it feel like a shortcut or a lie.

But I still do, sometimes, utilize AI. Here is the line I have drawn: I use AI tools to capture, not create.

Here are two examples of what I mean by that.

* Very often I have an idea or set of thoughts which I don’t have time to work out in writing. But I want to get them spit out into some usable form or fashion. So I pull out my phone and record a voice note. I then upload that voice note into some form of (AI-powered) voice transcription software. And then, because those software (at least the free ones) often do a marginal job of formatting what they’ve transcribed, I will upload a .txt file of the transcript to an LLM—usually Claude—and give it a prompt something along these lines: “format to paragraph. remove timestamps. retain original wording.” I then treat what it gives me back as a first draft which I go over and rework, reformat, and refine until it’s where I feel comfortable publishing it.

In this process, AI has not done any of the creative work for me. It has essentially served as an unpaid amanuensis. I suppose, hypothetically, that some folks would consider the use of an amanuensis to not be real writing. However, if luminaries such as Thomas Aquinas and the Apostle Paul (Romans 16:22) used such scribes in their writing, I don’t really feel out of bounds to call such speaking a form of writing. Further, when I sit down then to edit, I am not simply going over the work of a LLM-generated piece of copy. I’m working over my own thoughts, my own ideas, and—crucially—my own words.

Occasionally I have written pieces for this newsletter that way.

* The other way I have used AI is very similar to what I wrote above, but with something closer to a finished product. As I noted earlier in this piece, I prefer to preach with either an outline or with no notes—not always, but usually. However, one of the main drawbacks to this is the lack of a manuscript for future reference and use.

So, when I upload the sermon audio here to substack (remsenbible.substack.com), I will often then follow the process I outlined above: download the .txt file from substack, upload it to Claude, and then prompt with “format to paragraph. remove timestamps. retain original wording.” If I have time to go over that manuscript and make sure everything is correct, I will post it no differently than if I had written the manuscript prior to preaching. However, I usually don’t have that time available on Sunday afternoon when I’m doing this, and so I put a little notice at the top along the lines of: “this transcript was generated by AI: please let me know if you notice any errors.”

I think there is a crucial distinction to be made before an after-the-fact transcript and a before-you-preach manuscript. If my manuscript were AI generated, again, I think I would be cheating myself of growth, my church of spiritual nourishment they would receive as a result of my personal study and growth, and I would feel pretty Acts 5:1-11, Ananias and Saphhira-y about the whole thing. But to record what has already been said? And put it in a readable format? That seems, at least to me at this point, like a blessing of our current technological age.

Concern

That final point is what makes me concerned when I see posts urging places like substack to add “AI free” badges to the work of writers and artists. I agree with the motivation and thought process behind those desires—writers want it to be clear that they aren’t dependent upon machines for their ideas, that their work is, in fact, human. I’m here for that all day long.

I also couldn’t put that label on all my work, for the reasons outlined above. And as a result, I think it could create confusion. In the same way that “organic” came to describe a government certification which was expensive and difficult to maintain, rather than a set of practices possible for any farmer to exercise, I worry that “AI free” could come to describe a certain set of writers whose work is substantially the same as mine, but my first draft got on paper differently.

Having said that—I’d rather live in that world than in one where my kids and their peers are allowed to outsource their thinking to engineers in Silicon Valley. That’s not a world we want to live in.

Psalm 77:1, I cry aloud to God, aloud to God, and he will hear me. In the day of my trouble I seek the Lord. In the night my hand is stretched out without wearying. My soul refuses to be comforted. When I remember God, I moan. When I meditate, my spirit faints. Selah.

In this psalm, the author is crying out to God. He feels abandoned by the Lord. He continues in verses 7 through 9,

Will the Lord spurn forever and never again be favorable? Has his steadfast love forever ceased? Are his promises at an end for all time? Has God forgotten to be gracious? Has he in anger shut up his compassion? Selah.

Do you ever feel like God has forgotten about you? Like he's abandoned you? Like he doesn't know that you're even there anymore—or that he does know you're there, and he simply doesn't care?

I recently had someone ask me if it’s okay to doubt. To have doubts in your faith. To question the Bible—to even question the character of God. And the response I gave is basically how I always answer those questions: look at the Psalms. Look at how the psalmists speak to and about God. They had doubts. They had questions. They had uncertainties.

But they knew where to go with their uncertainties. They went to the Lord.

Psalm 77:10, Then I said, I will appeal to this, to the years of the right hand of the Most High.

The psalmist is going to go to God and he's going to appeal to the works of God across the years: across the decades of his own life and the centuries of his people’s existence.

Is this where you go with your doubts? Do you go interior and ruminate, turning the doubts around in your head over and over and over again? Or do you fix your gaze elsewhere? Friends, the only way doubts resolve is for you to get outside your own head. You must fix your gaze outward—upon God and upon His works.

Psalm 77:11, I will remember the deeds of the Lord. Yes, I will remember your wonders of old. I will ponder all your work and meditate on your mighty deeds.

The psalmist resolves to think about that which is not inside his own head. He is going to remember the things that God has done. Remember his works from of old and ponder all his works.

Do you ponder God’s work—his mighty deeds—in creation? Do you, like David in Psalm 8, look up at the sky and wonder, “when I look at the heavens, the work of your fingers, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?” Do you look at the butterfly and consider the God who designed that marvelous creature cares about me?

I was just recently on a hiking trip in the Black Hills of South Dakota, and some of the scenery there is simply staggering. I was walking around and thinking—the God who fashioned and formed this magnificent and grandiose landscape is the same God who considers the ant. Whole feeds the fieldmouse. And who cares for me.

And what about the good things that God has done in your life? The blessings he has poured your way? Have you considered those, my friend?

Think of the words of the old hymn, “Count Your Blessings”, by Johnson Oatman:

When upon life's billows you are tempest-tossed, when you are discouraged, thinking all is lost, count your many blessings, name them one by one, and it will surprise you what the Lord has done.

Have you ever sat and counted God’s blessings when you face doubts?

And what about considering the works of the Lord from of old? Do you remember his wonders? Do you consider his works in the book of Exodus: leading the people out of bondage and slavery in Egypt and into the promised land? Do you remember his deliverance of the people of Israel by the hand of a shepherd boy with a sling and a stone? Do you remember the work of Christ on the cross for you?

Psalm 77:13 continues,

Your way, O God, is holy. What god is great like our God?You are the God who works wonders; you have made known your might among the peoples.You with your arm redeemed your people, the children of Jacob and Joseph. Selah

He goes on to recount the way that God delivered his people from Egypt.

Is it okay to have doubts? Of course it is. But do not linger in your doubts, nor should you wallow in them. Too many today glory in doubt as if it were some sort of a badge of honor. Doubt is a reality of our human weakness, frailty, and lack of sight. God does not hold these things against us—he remembers our frame, he knows that we are dust (Psalm 103:14). But he does expect us to do something with those doubts. And that something is to bring them to him.

The way the psalmist regains his spiritual footing is to reestablished in his confidence in God: to remember—to meditate—on who God is and what he has done.

May we go and do likewise.

This post is part of a series of communion mediations working through the Apostles’ Creed. You can read the creed here. And the previous post here.

We believe that Jesus “ascended into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of God the Father Almighty.” Why is it important to believe that Jesus ascended and then—wonder of wonders—sat down?

The ascension is, of course, simply the plain teaching of Acts 1:9: “as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight.” Jesus physical body—the one which had died on the cross, and been raised on the third day, and in which he had appeared before the disciples for the previous 40 days was lifted up, up, and away. Jesus had told his disciples that this day was coming and that, though it was going to cause them sorrow, it was a necessary prerequisite to his sending the Holy Spirit upon them, and thus it was ultimately for both their good and their joy that he would leave (John 16:6-7).

So we believe that he ascended, because he said he would and the text tells us he did. And this is good news for us, because it was necessary for him to do so before pouring out the Holy Spirit on his followers—which includes those of us gathered here today in Jesus’ name. We are, Paul says, the Temple of the Holy Spirit. This, one of the key features of the New Covenant, could only be true after Jesus’ physical body departed the earth and ascended to heaven.

The second part of that statement is perhaps less clear. Why does it matter that Jesus sat down?

The book of Hebrews connects this to the exaltation of the Son. Though the Son is coeternal and coequal with the Father, in his Incarnation the Son accomplished our redemption, and is now exalted above heaven and earth—not simply as God, but as the God-Man.

Hebrews 1:3b-4,

“After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs.”

Ten verses later, the writer to the Hebrews quotes from Psalm 110, “Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool under your feet.”

The author of Hebrews clearly sees that the seated-ness, or session as it has classically been called, of Christ is an indicator of at least two things:

* the finished nature of his work. This action of our Lord came after he made purification for sins. He is seated at the Father’s right hand because he, the Word, accomplished the purpose for which the Father had sent him out (Isaiah 55:11).

* he has been given the seat of authority. The is the point of the quote from Psalm 110—the place where the Son is seated is the Father’s right hand. (The author of Hebrews will quote Psalm 8 to the same effect in the following chapter).

These things are good news for us, and right preparation as we come to the table. Because Jesus is ascended and seated, we can be confident that his work is finished, his Spirit is poured out on all who believe, and we can trust that the One whose death we remember is the One who even now rules and reigns over heaven and earth.

Familiar Words, Fresh Conviction

Matthew chapter 7 contains many familiar words, but when I read them recently, I found them convicting afresh. Here, towards the end of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says, ‏

“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.” (Matthew 7:7-8)

I found these words convicting because very rarely do I find myself asking, seeking, or knocking.

Anemic

My prayer life could best be described as anemic. This is something many of you—though hopefully not all of you—will sympathize with. I find myself saying, “I wish I prayed more.”

And part of the problem is what you just read: the passive voice. Rather than purposefully pursuing prayer, I instead wait for a moment that feels like I should pray, or I wait until it strikes me that, oh, now would be a good time to pray. But that falls pretty far short of what Jesus shows us in these three word pictures: intentional pursuit. I shouldn’t be waiting for a prayer life to fall on my like a lighting bolt from the sky. Instead, the picture Jesus gives is to intentionally pursue a pattern of consistent prayer.

God's Character

Part of this has to do with motivation. You see that in how Jesus continues with his sermon. Jesus illustrates for his hearers from their own experience. He says,

“9 Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? 10 Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? 11 If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!” (Matthew 7:9-11)

What motivation for prayer can we discern in these words?

Jesus is pointing his disciples to the character of God. He does this by holding a mirror up—do you give your kids rocks when they ask for bread? Or snakes when they ask for fish? I didn’t think so. Don’t you think God is more loving than you are?

We can and we should approach approach our Heavenly Father with confidence because he is a kind and loving Father whose heart is set on giving us good gifts.

However, in his divine wisdom, he often does not give those gifts to us when we fail to ask for them.

Why Keep Asking?

Okay. So we need to ask. But why do we have to keep asking, seeking, knocking? Why isn't one time good enough? Why should I have to keep asking, seeking, and knocking? If God is a kind and loving Heavenly Father, is he also forgetful? Is he busy and needs to be reminded?

I mean, that’s the kind of father I am. I have a lot of irons in the fire. My kids ask me something, and I may genuinely have a desire to do good things for them or provide good things for them—but I'm busy. I often have other things on my mind. So, is God like that—you know, he loves us, he cares about us, but he's got a lot on his mind, and so we have to just keep bringing it before him so that he doesn't forget. Is God forgetful like us?

It's About Our Memory, Not God's

No, he is not forgetful. God is not an absent-minded Father. God is not a distracted Father.

God is omniscient. He knows all. And he's omnipotent. He is able to handle any and every circumstance. But he also has a perspective that is different than ours. His thoughts are not our thoughts. His ways are not our ways. His timing is not our timing. His timing is perfect.

On the other hand, we are forgetful. Our minds are prone to wander away from contemplating the kindness of the Lord. And so I think part of the reason that he wants us to keep asking, keep seeking, keep knocking, is so that we recognize when he answers our prayers, when we do receive, when we do find, when the door is opened. It is only if we have continued to pray that we will understand that this is happening as an answer to prayer.

A Personal Example

A number of years ago, our church was going through some struggles. We were an older church, in terms of attendance demographics. We were going through what turned into a church split. Church split may seem like an exaggeration considering the small number of people who left, but when you're a church of 17 people, it doesn’t take much to feel like a split.

In the midst of that, I went back home to visit family. As I was having lunch with my spiritual mentor, a man I consider my older brother in the faith (I mean, I suppose that is a literal description of our relationship, but it really feels that way with Wayne in a way it doesn’t with other people). At that time I told him that one of my main prayer requests was for God to bring one young family to our church.

At that time, there was no one in our congregation younger than us. We had one other couple with a kid in high school and a kid in college, but no one else with small children. And I told my mentor I would love to see one other family in church.

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The Forgotten Answer

Fast forward a year: God had brought a young couple into our church. They both came from varyingly difficult upbringings and were working to get established in their own life as a Christian couple. They were seeking to grow in maturity and conformity to the Lord.

As I was again talking again with my mentor, almost exactly a year after our previous conversation, I was expressing to him some of my difficulties in figuring out how best to minister to the church as a whole and this couple in particular. And he paused me and said, “Do you remember that a year ago you were asking God to bring a young couple into your church?”

My response was both honest and embarrassing—“Well, now that you mention it, I do remember that conversation and I remember those prayers. But I had stopped praying about it, and until now I’d completely forgotten.” Thankfully, I was able to have a conversation with someone who had not forgotten my prayer. But I had forgotten. I had stopped asking, seeking, knocking. And so I was missing the blessing of God that was directly in front of my face.

Friends, we need to keep asking, seeking, knocking. Lest we miss his answers.

A Practical Step

So practically, what do you do with this? What do you do with this information?

I don’t have any kind of cure all, but I will share with you what I have been doing recently. This has not solved all of my prayer problems. But it has helped me immensely as I seek to pursue an intentional prayer life where I am coming before the Lord regularly.

Earlier in out marriage, my wife kept a series of names on 3x5 index cards on a ring. And she would flip through those cards and pray for people. I was contemplating that, but it felt a little too abstract to work for me. So, okay, I've got this person's name in front of me. What do I do with it?

What I decided to try was to incorporate that practice with my Bible reading and Scripture memory. And so I have those same 3x5 note cards on a ring, and I have the name of the person that I'm praying for at the top. Then, as I'm either working through my Scripture memory or my daily Bible reading with that series of index cards in front of me, I will write the date and the text of Scripture that I was praying over as I thought about that person.

And then I flip to the next one.

If I'm trying to memorize a verse, I may pray that same verse over numerous individuals. Or if I'm doing my daily Bible reading, I'll just look at who is up next and as I come across a verse that seems to speak to my understanding of their situation or our last conversation or in some other way seems appropriate to pray over that person, again, I will write down the date and the text of Scripture that I prayed over that person, the reference for that text, and then I flip to the next person.

I am still playing with how I organize this, but here is what it looks like at the moment: at the front I have my immediate family—my wife and my children. And the next concentric circle out is our church family. And then I have my extended family, parents, siblings, my grandmother, et cetera, along with some close friends. And then the next layer out is employees in our business, then community members, ministry colleagues, other friends and family, supporters of our ministry, and a few churches.

In this, what I’m seeking to do is to consistently pray through the people who I have the most contact with in my life. That doesn’t mean this is the only time I'm praying. This doesn't mean that praying for people is the only thing I'm praying about. But what this practice had done is provide some structure and a way for me to reference, back. To say, “here’s what I was praying over this person on this date”, and to think back over what has God done in response to those prayers.

Ask, Seek, Knock

I don’t think this is a perfect solution. It may not be a universally applicable one, but it is a practical step that I’m taking to try to put into practice this principle of asking, seeking, knocking.

Whatever it looks like for you, whether it be 3x5 note cards, or an app on your phone, or a journal that you keep, I want to encourage you to be consistently pleading with the Lord to provide for all of your needs according to His glorious riches in Christ Jesus. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.

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There’s another lesson here about the value of Christian friendship. Another article for another day.

The One and the Three

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* Give your children work to do

* It needs to be real work, not just busy work.

* Don’t make excuses for them

* That just teaches them to make excuses for themselves

* You don’t want that.

* Make sure they have enough activities

* Idle hands are the Devil’s workshop

* And they need to be able to handle adult responsibilities when they get older

* Which will be impossible if they spend half their time whining about “adulting.”

* Don’t overload their schedule and set a poor, restless, example

* Because they also need to realize they aren’t the center of the universe

* So if they pause in obedience to God, that is a good thing.

* Read together (bet you weren’t expecting that one here, ha!)

* Pray together

* Laugh together

* Be outside together

* Listen together to the music you thought was cool when you were young

* Then they will grow to love it as well

* And you’ll rediscover why you loved it to start with.

* Unless it was bad, then scratch that advice.

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This post is part of a series of communion mediations working through the Apostles’ Creed. You can read the creed here.

He Rose Again

We believe that on the third day Jesus rose from the dead. Having just finished the Easter season, wherein we celebrated Resurrection Sunday, we remember that this is the central confession of all of Christianity. Yes, Jesus died in our place. Yes, he bore our sins. But this is only good news because of what came next. Three days after his death, Jesus rose again from the dead.

In the book of Romans, the Apostle Paul tells us that it is by virtue of this resurrection that Jesus was shown to be the Son of God in power. Jesus is the Son who saves.

His sacrifice was sufficient. When he cried out from the cross, “it is finished,” he was not joking, he was not mistaken, he was not overstating the case.

He drank the cup of the wrath of God down to the dregs. He emptied it, and God proved that by raising the physical body of Jesus from the dead. This is good news because all of those who are united to Christ by faith will receive a resurrection like his. This is the point the Apostle Paul made in 1 Corinthians 15, which we read two Sundays ago.

Christianity is the religion of Resurrection. We live in a world of sin, we live a life marred and broken and ultimately ended because of sin. But as believers, we have hope for a resurrection. We have hope that one day a perfect sinless body will be reunited with a cleansed spirit, and we as living souls, body and spirit united forever, will live in the presence of the Lord. We know that this is our fate, this is our destiny, this is our future, if we have trusted in the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ in our place.

This death and this resurrection are what we remember—and what we proclaim—as we corporately join at the Lord’s table, sharing in these symbols of his body and blood.

If you don’t know Jesus as your Lord, let the elements pass by. There is no magic here which brings salvation. But there is spiritual nourishment for the child of God who has received the gift of the Spirit through faith in Jesus. And so if you know this hope, then this table is for you. It's where we remember.

This post is part of a series of communion mediations working through the Apostles’ Creed. You can read the creed here.

He Descended Into Hell

 As we have been for the past several months, today we continue moving phrase by phrase through the Apostles’ Creed. Today we come to a sticky one: he descended into hell.

That is a weird phrase.

It’s also worth noting that it’s not in the earliest versions of the Apostles Creed. The creed, which began as what we call the old Roman standard, became pretty well standardized in Christian churches by the mid second century. It did not come directly from the Apostles, despite the name. But it did form within a couple generations after the disciples were off the scene, and is a very early summary of the Apostles’ teaching; specifically about Jesus and his life.

But that phrase, “he descended into hell,” didn't start appearing with regularity in the Creed until about the fourth and fifth century. But that's still a long time ago, right? For 1500 years Christians have been confessing this, so we should think about what it is driving at. We shouldn't jettison it simply because it seems weird to us.

We should ask: what they were talking about? This has been debated since the start.

Further Punished?

One possible view is that when Christ descended, he spent the time between his crucifixion and his resurrection in hell being punished more for sin.

I think we can reject that as flatly false on its face. Jesus says on the cross, “it is finished.” His work was done. I would say we can even go so far as to call this view heretical. It’s not only incorrect, but anti-Christian teaching. It’s in Christian garb, but it contradicts that central element of the gospel: the sufficient nature of Christ’s work on Calvary.

Golgotha

The second opinion became popular with the teaching of John Calvin in 16th century Geneva. Calvin, author of the famous Institutes, was one of the prominent reformers in that century. And he taught the hell referred to in the creed is the hell that Jesus endured on the cross. As recorded in the gospels, we find there was a period when the noonday sun went black, and the wrath of the Father against the sin of the world was poured out on Jesus. On the cross, Jesus faced the hell of God's wrath.

I get where Calvin is going with that. I think what he's saying is true. Jesus did, on the cross, experience what we would call hell. But I doubt that's what the early church meant by it.

The Place of Departed Spirits

Another option would be to consider this as Jesus descending to the place where departed spirits live. The departed spirits of deceased people, as well as those fallen angels who are no longer allowed to roam the earth.

This is a quick—but hopefully not too sloppy—description, but here goes: in the Hebrew understanding you had Sheol, the place of the dead. This was carried over into Greek as Hades. And in Hades or Sheol, there is a place of torment and there is a place of blessing.

The place torment is not Hell in the full sense you find in the book of Revelation. Nor is the place of blessing “heaven” as we think of it, it’s not the immediate presence of God. Rather, it's a place where the departed who are righteous go—Abraham's bosom is how they would've thought about it. And so you have these two places. But they're all grouped together in the term Sheol. And, based on 1 Peter chapter three and Ephesians chapter four, many Christians throughout history have thought that Christ descended here to proclaim his victory over those who are in torment—or at least to the evil spirits there.

In this view, he’s also proclaiming his victory and he's leading out the captives who had been in a blessed state, but had not previously been in the presence of God. After his death, he takes them to heaven, to be with God, to be in the presence of Christ: to paradise. This, of course, is the very place he had promised to meet the thief on the cross.

The Grave

The fourth option is that it's just a reference to the place of the dead. As I said earlier, the Creed doesn't get this line added to it until the fourth and fifth centuries, and it's added in Latin as inferno. Now inferno, to our ears, sounds like a place of punishment. That sounds like hell.

But that’s over-reading our modern perception of those words into an ancient text. The inferno is the place where dead people are. This is where dead bodies are. Inferno is the place beneath. And so the Creed could just be reiterating the fact that Jesus was buried—his real physical body was buried. That’s an important concern.

It was a major concern of the Apostle's Creed, to emphasize the physicality and the humanity of Jesus. That's why it says he suffered under Pius Pilate. There’s a real historical event that his real human body experienced. Likewise, his body was placed in the ground. Again: I think that's true. But it would be kind of redundant when we've just said was crucified, died, and was buried.

Conclusion

I think all three of those last options are actually within the scope of orthodox Christianity.

If I had to pick one, I would say I leaned towards that third option: that Christ descended into the place of the dead and led forth the captives of death who were at Abraham’s bosom. He led forth those who are now able to be in the presence of God because Christ has paid authoritatively for their sins that God had passed over their sins in the past.

They were not suffering for their sins post-mortem, but after three years of living in perfect human obedience, the Lord Jesus now leads the captives into the presence of God. This marks a fundamental shift in the intermediate state for those who have trusted in God for salvation. We might call it a heavenly transition where sinners who have been forgiven are now not only passed over, but are now welcomed into the presence of God.

I won’t go to the mat for this distinction. Again, I think options two, three, and four are all within the scope of historic Christianity. But I think option three is probably what was meant by the early church when they said he descended to the dead. And I think it lines up with the broader biblical teaching on the afterlife.

All of these things should bring our mind to this: the stunning reality that the Lord of glory set aside his throne and he did endure hell at the cross. His body was buried and souls were brought into the presence of God. This includes those of us who trust in Christ today: at death our spirit departs to be with Christ, which is better by far—because Christ Jesus’ blood was shed on our account.

His body was broken for us, and he is resurrected from the dead. Sealing the promise that those things were accepted by God. His sacrifice was an effective and sufficient sacrifice. And for that we should be grateful.

This unites us to him—and to one another, as those who are blood kin. Let us celebrate the Lord, who endured hell for us—and who liberates us by his love.

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I occasionally like to do a little run-down on those things I’m reading and enjoying…or maybe not enjoying. And in this case, I’ll touch on a little beyond reading as well.

Reading

Last year I read Matthew Crawford’s Shop Class as Soulcraft. Sitting with that book was one of the most enjoyable reading experiences I’ve ever had. So for Christmas I put his other books on my wish list.

I finally just started reading The World Beyond Your Head, which is part epistemology, part political philosophy, part social theory. Now, I realize I just lost a whole bunch of you, so let me put it in more compelling terms: in this book, Crawford is calling into question whether we really ought to view ourselves as choice-making machines, and whether the shortest route to immediate gratification is actually the route to living a good—or even happy—life. I’m about half-way through, but so far this is the best book I’ve read all year.

Come June, I’ll be taking a class on faith communication in a town and country context. One of the assigned books for that course is Tex Samples’ book Ministry in an Oral Culture: Living with Will Rogers, Uncle Remus, and Minnie Pearl. This book was both laugh-out-loud funny and frustrating almost to the point of infuriating. When describing rural people and oral cultures, Samples is great. When telling stories, he’s brilliant. When then turning his gaze to the liberal academics and ministers who are his target audience, he starts speaking is DEI talk that was 30 years ahead of his time. It essentially reads: “you need to understand and be more sympathetic toward oral-culture folks…and then learn to speak their language and use those techniques to show them how backward they are, all in the name of Justice.” Hm. Yuck.

Concise Theology has long been a favorite of mine, but I had always just read on a screen with my Logos version. However, when a young man in our church and I started to read through, I purchased the beautiful hardcover edition put out by Crossway in 2020 (linked above).

J.I. Packer has an astounding ability to pack enormous truths into small packages—his economy of words is instructive for me both a a pastor and a writer. These chapters are from 1-4 pages long, and cover the gamut of what you would expect from a systematic theology.

To grab a representative example, here is how Packer tackles the historically fraught question of human responsibility and it’s relationship to the sovereignty of God in salvation:

“It is worth observing that will is an abstraction. My will is not a part of me that I choose to move or not move, like my hand or my foot; it is precisely me choosing to act and then going into action. The truth about free agency, and about Christ’s freeing sin’s slave from sin’s dominion, can be expressed more clearly if the word will is dropped and each person says: I am the morally responsible free agent; I am the slave of sin whom Christ must liberate; I am the fallen being who has it in me only to choose against God till God renews my heart.” (Concise Theology, 102)

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Listening

I listen to a number of podcasts on a regular basis, and try to make audiobooks a steady part of my travel diet, as well.

I recently finished listening to Christianity & Liberalism, by J. Gresham Machen. Machen, the founder of Westminster Theological Seminary and the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, wrote this book over 100 years ago. But friend, let me tell you: it feels as relevant today as I’m sure it must have to his contemporaries. His main argument is this: the “liberal Christianity” of the early 20th century was not a new type of Christianity, but was, in fact, a different religion altogether. He was right then, and he’s right now.

I’ll link the Youtube version below, but I’ve been listening on Apple Podcasts to Andrew Huberman’s six-part series with Matt Walker on the subject of sleep.

I’ve been trying to get my sleep figured out this year, in an effort to be more alert and productive during my waking hours—and to hopefully be less disruptive to Andie’s sleep…

Huberman and Walker’s discussion is really helpful (though I only listened to about 45 minutes of the final session, on dreams…that failed to hold my interest). The biggest takeaway for me has been to work toward a consistent go-to-sleep and wake-up time, as well as establishing an evening pre-bed routine to help myself wind-down. Which is to say, I’ve been drinking more tea in the evening and reading more by lamplight.

Watching

I don’t watch a lot of TV or movies. But I did recently watch a documentary, as well a Russel Crowe movie, that I have a few thoughts about.

Some generous friends purchase an annual subscription Canon+. There is a lot of great stuff on there, but my favorite thing we have watched lately is a documentary on the self-proclaimed “lunatic farmer”, Joel Salatin.

Salatin has long been someone I’ve found interesting, as my political and life proclivities veer distinctly toward what Rod Dreher once termed “Crunchy-Con.” Watching the story of how, using regenerative agriculture techniques that are often associated with the “nutty” left, this evangelical Christian farmer has restored health to a landscape in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley is truly inspiring to me. It seems like a logical and beautiful example of Genesis 1:26-28 at work.

It’s available on Canon, but also on Angel, to which I’ll link here.

It had been a hot minute—by which, I mean way over a decade—since I had watched Master and Commander. I thought my boys were going to really enjoy it; however, I think the realistic war imagery was a little much for them yet—it’s different to watch boys not much older than them fighting against men than it is to watch elves fighting orcs, I suppose. Nonetheless, I enjoyed it more than any movie I have watched in a really long time. Here are three quick reasons:

* Well-shot. This movie is beautiful and sweeping in it’s presentation. It also makes you feel like you are aboard HMS Surprise.

* Patriotic tension. There is a palpable tension between the two main characters: Captain Jack Aubrey (played by Russell Crowe) and the ship’s surgeon, Stephen Maturin (played by Paul Bettany). Crowe is patriotic in the classic sense—duty toward king and country. Maturin is idealistic (I do not mean this in a negative sense), and cares about the how and why of what they do—though one sometimes wonders if his ideals are completely realistic with the early 19th century. But it seems to fit. (As an aside, I couldn’t help but think of a similar dynamic between the characters played by John Wayne and William Holden in John Ford’s 1959 movie, The Horse Soldiers.)

There often seems to be an implicit paradox when it comes to executing a mission—are the methods we’re using compromising the character of the mission itself? This movie does a great job of helping you feel and consider that tension.

* A picture of leadership. As implied in the name of the movie, Aubrey truly is master and commander of his ship. He is in command of every scene he enters. Crowe’s presence as an actor fills the screen, and that is symbolic of Aubrey’s filling the room or the deck. But this isn’t a command that is merely based on hierarchy and rank. As is seen in one tragic subplot (which I will not spoil), this authority is achieved via competence.

Also, and again this may seem a paradox, but that authoritative competence is also the basis of true rapport. How many leaders (or parents) seek to build rapport by being buddies with those in their charge? But that is not the model here. Rather, we see excellence in the given task—in this case, fighting naval battles—building trust. And the men will love a man they trust, to the point of following him to the far edges of the world.

His leadership is also, notably, one of words. I just listened to a fascinating conversation between Aaron Renn and Tanner Greer, in which one of the topics of conversation was how well-trained in elocution were the leaders of past centuries. Which is to say, if you were a public leader, or someone who aspired to such a role, you learned how to use words. Specifically, you learned to speak clearly and persuasively in public. This truth is on full display at multiple points in this film, when the Aubrey character leads through the words he speaks. Not in long or flowery discourses: but in clear, direct, and rousing words.

And that last point reiterates a point the Aubrey character makes in one discussion toward the latter part of the film: men must be led. That truth is illustrated beautifully as we spend time aboard the HMS Surprise. And it’s one our world desperately needs to embrace today.

So, that’s that. A little window into a few of the books, podcasts, and movies that are helping me to stop and think here in this spring of 2025.

And if you’re still reading, let me add one more book for you to consider:

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