Pastor's Blog

Melinda and I have had the privilege of attending 3 or 4 of Christ Church's Sunday evening Psalm Sings. Christ Church is a member congregation of the Confederation of Reformed Evangelical Churches, located in Moscow, Idaho and pastored by Doug Wilson. A couple of times each month the congregation gathers on Sunday evening to sing Psalms and hymns. People sit in different parts of the auditorium depending on whether they sing soprano, alto, tenor, or bass, and they learn how to sing their respective parts. Each Psalm Sing consists of singing familiar Psalms and hymns, as well as learning new ones that will be used in Sunday morning worship. The singing is glorious! One of our favorites is Psalm 98, "O Sing a New Song to the Lord." Watch and enjoy. Also, please note the corporate "AMEN!" at the end of the song .

What is meant by a “carnal” Christian? This language (“carnal” Christian) comes from the old King Jimmie Version of the Bible. We find it places like 1 Corinthians 3, where Paul says, And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal (1 Cor. 3:1-4) This word, “carnal”, comes from a Latin word that means “meat” or “flesh.” You might recognize it from the Spanish in chili con carne —chili with meat; or carne asada —roasted meat. The word carnal is used in the King Jimmie several times, mostly in Romans and First and Second Corinthians (i.e., Rom. 7:14; 8:7; 15:27; 1 Cor. 3:1-4; 9:11; 2 Cor. 10:4; Heb. 7:6; 9:10). Most modern translations use some variant of the word “flesh,” which is the meaning of the underlying Greek word. The concept of “the flesh” is a very important one in the Bible, and stands in contrast to “the Spirit.” “The flesh” refers to that which is natural, earthly, and human, as opposed to that which is supernatural, heavenly, and divine. The...

Thomas Sowell explains why it is stupidity of the highest order to try terrorists in federal court.

We competed in the Wichita Warriors Preseason Tournament last weekend, and finished in a misleading 5th place. I say misleading because we were matched in our first game against Manhattan, which ended up taking first. We were clearly the two best teams in the tournament. We should have been the number 1 and 2 seeds, but we ended up playing each other in the first round because the tournament organizer tried to do both teams a favor by scheduling our games in two days rather than three so we wouldn't have to spring for two nights in a motel. All the other teams were from the Wichita area and played one game each on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Since we were coming from out of town he scheduled our two teams to play our first round game on Thursday, which required us to play each other. A fifth place a finish was the best a team could do after losing in the first round. After being down 12 at half time we roared back and cut the defict to only 1 at the at end of the third quarter....

A half-time show like this makes you forget about the game.

Here's a picture of the basketball team I have the privilege of coaching this year, the South Central Wildcats varsity girls. Front row: Breann Pope, Kristin Schmidt, Candice Rawlings. Back row: yours truly, Suzanna Enick, Shie Eck, Hannah Eck, Elizabeth Enick, Melinda Enick (my lovely assistant coach). We had our first game last Saturday against the Ponca City Saints. We had four players score in double figures and came out with a 45-23 victory.

Question:  What does Paul mean when he says to “continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling” (Phil. 2:12)? I am trying to understand his meaning of “work” and “fear and trembling.” Answer:  The difficulty you may be having in understanding the apostle’s meaning may be due to the fact that we often conceive of salvation too narrowly. “Salvation” is a comprehensive term. We tend to think of only one aspect of salvation as if it were the whole of it. We tend to use the term exclusively of the moment of our conversion. We tell people, “I was saved when I was 12 years old.” Or, “I was saved when I lived in Wichita.” When we say things like this, we are thinking of the  moment  of our conversion and equating it with “salvation.” There is nothing wrong with this as long as we remember that there is more to our salvation than this initial conversion experience. The Bible uses the word “salvation” to refer, not only to conversion, but also to al...

Andrew Klavan has a new humorous video poking fun at athiests over at PJTV.

Question: Why did God put the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the garden if he didn’t want Adam and Eve to eat of it? In other words, why make something that is not allowed in the first place? We are told that God does not tempt man to sin, so we know that’s not why. It appears that God placed the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the garden to serve as a test of simple obedience. This does not contradict what we read in the epistle of James: “Let no one say when he is tempted, ‘I am being tempted by God’; for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one” (Jas. 1:13). Testing is something quite different from tempting. God tested Adam and Eve, but he did not tempt them. He put the sincerity of their faith and obedience to the test, but he did not allure them to do evil—which is the essence of temptation. They were tempted by Satan, as well as by their own desires. James tells us, “Each one is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire...

Mark Steyn, always an insightful read, had this to say almost as an aside in his NRO column this week. Twenty years ago this Fall, the Iron Curtain was coming down in Europe. Across the Warsaw Pact, the jailers of the Communist prison states lost their nerve, and the cell walls crumbled. Matt Welch, the editor of Reason, wonders why the anniversary is going all but unobserved: Why aren’t we making more of the biggest mass liberation in history?Well, because to celebrate it would involve recognizing it as a victory over Communism. And, after the Left’s long march through the institutions of the West, most are not willing to do that. There’s the bad totalitarianism (Nazism) and the good totalitarianism (Communism), whose apologists and, indeed, fetishists can still be found everywhere, even unto the White House.