'Backyard Bible Club' Tagged Posts
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…
JUNE 22, 2022
Dear Friends, First things first. Go Omahogs! Looks like they really want it this year. Game time is 3 PM on Thursday. Now, onto weightier matters. As providence would have it, after three months of reciting the Lord’s Prayer in our Sunday morning worship services, and after looking at the Lord’s Prayer in Luke 11, along with the parable that follows it, this was on my Twitter feed on Monday morning this week. Author and speaker Blair Linne posted it, along with the…
JUNE 15, 2022
Dear Friends, I know who you are. Assuming you are in Christ, you are a saint. According to James Montgomery Boice, Dr. Harry Ironside, who was pastor at Moody church in the 1920’s, used to travel many miles by train. On one of these trips, a four-day ride from the West Coast to his home in Chicago, Ironside found himself in the company of a party of nuns. They saw him reading his Bible and began to have conversations with him, learning that…
JUNE 8, 2022
Dear Friends, I want you to think for a minute about how you view the Bible. In our culture, there is an erosion of confidence in the Bible. People outside the church typically see it as a book of inspired wisdom, with some flaws that they can easily recognize and reject. In the church, there is also an erosion of confidence in the Bible. Holding to the idea that the scriptures are the infallible, inerrant, authoritative word of the Living God is increasingly…
MAY 25, 2022
Dear Friends, When I heard the news almost two weeks ago now that an 18 year old had walked into a grocery store in Buffalo, New York and senselessly murdered 10 people, I closed my eyes and shook my head. “O Lord…” I thought. “How long…” Then the news came of the even more horrific shooting this week in Uvalde, Texas. Again, a troubled young man walked into an elementary school and ended the lives of 18 children and two adults. When…
MAY 18, 2022
Dear Friends, When I was growing up, I remember seeing a two book set sitting next to my dad’s chair in the living room. They were actually the first two volumes in a 12 volume set. The author of these books, Arnold Toynbee, was a British historian and author. He was the research professor of international history at the London School of Economics. In these books, Toynbee suggested that as we review the rise and fall of great human civilizations throughout history,…
May 11, 2022
Dear Friends, Is it possible to have fellowship with God and live a sinful life? When the Apostle John wrote his first letter, he found himself addressing this issue head on. Some in the church had found themselves confused by false teachers who had told them that they needed to worry about keeping their spirits pure, but that whatever they did with their bodies didn’t really count, since our bodies are material and matter is inherently evil. That’s the heresy John was…