Real Life Discipleship–Part 2
Review Last week I wrote about some misconceptions relating to discipleship. I noted how often believers focus on being a disciple without really making a disciple. This is not God’s plan for the church! God’s plan for every single believer is that we be actively involved in the process of making other followers of Jesus. In fact, I would argue that […]
Real Life Discipleship–Part 1
Introduction I have been thinking about discipleship. Discipleship is a word that we hear a lot in “church circles”. Sad to say, many believers do not understand what God intends when it comes to discipleship. Too often we think of discipleship in terms of “us” and what we do for God. “I am a disciple […]
Leadership Lessons From Nehemiah–Part 10
A Brief Summary We have spent the past two months in our Friday updates looking at the life and example of Nehemiah. We have been focusing specifically on leadership lessons which we can learn from Nehemiah as we try to model the type of lifestyle that “stands in the gap” and follows God’s calling despite difficulty and […]
Leadership Lessons From Nehemiah–Part 9
Where We’ve Been We are nearing the end of our evaluation of leadership lessons from the life of Nehemiah. We have seen so many valuable insights from this man who committed himself to following God’s desires and leading God’s people towards growth and change! Today I would like to focus on the opposition that Nehemiah faced. Every […]
Leadership Lessons From Nehemiah–Part 8
Cathching Up We have been walking through excerpts from the book of Nehemiah and making observations regarding lessons in leadership from his example. Last week we focused on how Nehemiah took his plan and made it public as he went before the king to seek permission to return to Israel and rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. We pick […]
Leadership Lessons From Nehemiah–Part 7
Leader’s Lead A pastor friend of mine, one who has been a mentor to me in my own ministry, has told me that “leader’s lead.” The phrase sounds simple and maybe common sense, but the concept truly is profound. We have many “leaders” in our world today, but not all leaders lead. A difference exists […]
Nuggets And Nuances–An Introduction
Introduction For a while now I have been meaning to start a blog series entitled “nuggets and nuances”. In fact, the very motivation for this blog came from my desire to write on topics related to exegesis and to share what I learn as I do my exegetical work in sermon preparation. So much of […]
Leadership Lessons From Nehemiah–Part 6
An Honest Prayer As we continue our study in the beginning of the book of Nehemiah we come to Nehemiah’s prayer. What a completely simple and honest prayer in which God’s servant lays out his heart before God! As we think about the prayer of Nehemiah, I find several significant items in this prayer, and […]
What Seminary Did Not Teach–The Burden of Ministry
Introduction From time to time on this blog I will feature articles under the label of “what they did not teach you in seminary”. Usually these are random or miscellaneous items which I have learned through “on the job training” and not necessarily in the classroom. This is not to fault our seminaries or critique […]
