Weekly Updates
Each week, our teaching pastor Bob Lepine offers his thoughts and perspective on how we live for Jesus in our world. In addition, the blog has updates on upcoming activities at Redeemer. You can receive the weekly blog as an email. Send us your email address to subscribe.
SEPTEMBER 13, 2023
Dear Friends, I’m pretty sure I spend more time reading these days than I did 10 or 15 years ago. Some of that is a function of my season of life. There is more time available once your children are gone. And over the past couple of years, I’ve had increased flexibility in my schedule that has given me more available time to read. So I do. But I’m also pretty sure I’m now reading fewer books than I used to read. …
SEPTEMBER 6, 2023
Dear Friends, I have spent this week being reminded of how great a gift music is. God has created us to be people who worship Him. And He gave us music as a way to engage our hearts and minds in expressing our love and devotion for Him. Along with others form our worship team at Redeemer, I’ve been in Nashville with more than 6,000 people thinking about how music is also a tool we use for fulfilling the Great Commission. You’ve probably…
AUGUST 30, 2023
Dear Friends, You recognize a false dichotomy when you see one, right? I’ll give you an example. “Which does God care more about in our lives: Our knowledge and understanding of Him (theology) or how we live our lives and love others (orthopraxy)?” If you ask the average person today to pick A or B, most people will tell you that how we live our lives is higher on God’s priority list than whether we have our doctrinal ducks in a row. Even…
AUGUST 23, 2023
Dear Friends, Many times people are concerned with if the church is heading in the right direction and who is in charge of the church. Those questions arise from time to time and it is always good to go back to Scripture and be reminded of what is really true about the church. One of the things that makes Redeemer so beautiful to me is knowing that this is how Jesus sees us as a body: beautiful! Because we are individually…
AUGUST 16, 2023
Dear Friends, Please keep your thoughts and prayers with those on the island of Maui as they manage the devastation from the wildfires. I am sure it is a very trying time for everyone dealing with such pain and loss, especially those those who have lost loved ones. This has become deadliest natural disaster in modern U.S. history. Pray for God’s comfort to visit those who have been afflicted with such pain. Pray for the church there in Maui to care for those individuals…
AUGUST 10, 2023
Dear Friends, As I sit here and am thinking about you, I wonder, do you wonder? Do you wonder at the Gospel and Jesus’ great love for you, His people? Are you in awe that God would allow you to be part of his kingdom and what he doing in the world? It made me think of Paul Tripp’s book from almost 10 years ago, Awe. It reminds me that we are not to worship created things even if we deeply enjoy…
AUGUST 2, 2023
Dear Friends, Can you think back to the time where you were a sophomore in high school, or perhaps even college? The etymology of word “sophomore” is broken down like this: sophos is the greek word for “wise or clever” and moros means “foolish”. So, literally, when you are a sophomore, you are “a wise fool.” If you were anything like me as a 16-year-old sophomore, you may have been a little more fool than you were wise. However, according to 1 Corinthians 4:10, being…
JULY 26, 2023
Dear Friends, Ever wonder what real community is about? Ever heard the word koinonia and wondered what the heck people were talking about? If you are anything like me you might have in the past or even today wondered what the New Testament really teaches about it. I know in my early days as a new believer, I didn’t have a clue as to what God intended for me to know and to be shaped by and for.The word koinonia…
JULY 19, 2023
Hi everyone! In many of our Christian circles, we have all probably heard the phrase “established church”. “Oh! That church on that side of town is great. It’s an ESTABLISHED church.” Have you ever wondered what people meant by using this phrase to describe a church? What does the church in question have to be or have to have in order to be considered “established”? Does it need to have engaging preaching? Dynamic worship? Thriving small groups? Does it need…
JULY 12, 2023
Hi all! Many of you might have wondered, after I shared this past Sunday about growing up with pseudo faith, how I actually came to real faith in Jesus. If you grew up like me (which you probably didn’t do particularly, but maybe more so generally), you had no idea who Jesus was or how much God really loved you. I went to church most Sundays, was very involved in serving and then helping lead our youth group. But I was…
JULY 5, 2023
Hi all! Last week, I had the joy and privilege of leading some students on a 5-day mission trip to Memphis, TN. While we were there, we put on an outdoor Bible club for the children in the city’s most impoverished neighborhoods. Our Bible club offered games, crafts, songs, and Bible teaching that the students were heavily involved in. While we did this in the mornings, we participated in several afternoon projects as well. For example, we went on neighborhood…
JUNE 28, 2023
Dear Friends, I sat across the table from Pastor Tommy Nelson who has for years served as the Pastor at Denton Bible Church as he told me about the day his body shut down. He was still breathing. He could still see and hear everything that was happening around him. He simply couldn’t respond. Couldn’t move. When his wife spoke to him, he could hear her questions just fine. And he had answers. But his mouth wouldn’t work. All signs pointed to a…
JUNE 21, 2023
Dear Friends, “I try to be a good person.” That’s how most people will respond if you ask them why they believe they will go to heaven when they die. It is, of course, a disastrous way to think. It’s akin to thinking that you can arrive at the gates to Disneyland and suggesting that they should let you in because you try to be a good person. They will smile at you and tell you “that’s nice, but that’s not how it works here.” The…
JUNE 14, 2023
Dear Friends, Some of you have asked about our recent trip to Israel. There were 32 of us who traveled together for seven days seeing amazing sites and thinking together about the events that happened thousands of years ago in the exact spots where we were standing. As I’ve told people many times, visiting Israel changes how you read your Bible. When you’ve been on a boat on the Sea of Galilee and stood along the banks of the Jordan…
JUNE 7, 2023
Dear Friends, It was in early June, about five years ago, when I first realized that Pride Month had become a thing. Mary Ann and I were in Plano Texas where we were attending a weekend marriage conference. We had arrived a day ahead of the event, and our hotel was adjacent to a nearby shopping and entertainment venue. So we decided to stroll through the area and find a place for dinner. It seemed that every shop in the area had…
MAY 24, 2023
Dear Friends, Have you ever stopped to think about what you’re really praying when you pray “forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors?” You might want to pause for a minute and ask yourself if you really want to pray that familiar petition from the Lord’s Prayer. When you do, you’re asking God to forgive you in the same way that you forgive everyone who has sinned against you. Augustine called this “the terrible petition.” He said if we pray this…
MAY 17, 2023
Dear Friends, In June of 2020, Tim Keller announced that he had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He faced the diagnosis with characteristic honesty and resolve. He knew that 80% of the people who receive that diagnosis are dead with a year. He has battled and beaten those odds. But he has also been aware that like all of us, his condition is terminal. That’s why when he received the diagnosis, he quoted Psalm 90. “Teach us to number our days.” I…
MAY 10, 2023
Dear Friends, In 1956, Johnny Cash was backstage waiting to perform at a concert in Gladewater, Texas, when he picked up his guitar and started picking out the chords to a new song. These now familiar lyrics began to wrap their way around those chords. I keep a close watch on this heart of mine,I keep my eyes wide open all the time,I keep the ends out for the tie that binds,Because you’re mine, I walk the line. I find it very,…
MAY 3, 2023
Dear Friends, Are Christians called to be bold? Before you jump right to the “sometimes” answer, let’s think about this for a minute. It’s not that “sometimes” is the wrong answer. But maybe we need to think this through a little more carefully. I think we may have a caricature in our minds about what it means to be bold. What comes to mind for me is the speech given by President Thomas J. Whitmore, played by Bill Pullman, in the 1996 movie…
APRIL 26, 2023
Dear Friends, Instead of something deep, profound and meaningful, I decided you could use a laugh. Maybe you’ll find one in here somewhere. I had been teaching my three-year old daughter, Caitlin, the Lord’s Prayer. For several evenings at bedtime, she would repeat after me the lines from the prayer. Finally, she decided to go solo. I listened with pride as she carefully enunciated each word, right up to the end of the prayer: “Lead us not into temptation,” she prayed,…