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… holding faith and a good conscience (I Tim 1:19) … the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared … (I Tim 4:2) May I, by your grace, O Lord, have a clean conscience in Christ, for you have taken my guilt and thrown it into the depths of the sea. I bet you have someone in your family like Aunt Georgina. She feels guilty when she dries her hands on the wrong towel in the bathroom at Uncle Bob’s house. She apologizes when she gives Christmas gifts because she wasn’t sure what you wanted. Her conscience troubles her when…

For since the law has but a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities, it can never, by the same sacrifices that are continually offered every year, make perfect those who draw near.  (Heb 10:1) Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.  (Mt 5:17) Many years ago, I heard an interview on the radio in which a secular news reporter was criticizing Christians for being inconsistent and failing to follow their own book. “For…

… a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth. (II Tim 2:15) As you spoke in ancient times to real people in real settings, so, too, do you speak today to real people in real settings, and you use what you said to the ancient people to encourage and challenge us modern people.  Praise your name! We have been talking about how to read the Bible, and I have been saying that, in one sense, we ought to read the Bible in much the same way we read other books. The past couple…

“… a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.”  (II Tim 2:15) I pray, Lord, that you grant me your Spirit as I read to help me grasp the plain sense of what you say. Let’s say you write a simple text that says, “Hi Abdul, We’ll come Saturday.” You write that text because you are in a specific situation and feel the need to communicate specific information to a specific audience. And this is true no matter what you write. The simplest email or a 300-page dissertation both give specific information to…

Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.  (II Tim 2:15)  Father, help me approach your Word with a right head as well as a right heart.  Grant me your common sense. The Bible is not an ordinary book. If you do not have a right heart, you will never understand it, for it is more than words. And yet the Bible is an ordinary book. Its writers were real people writing to a real audience with a real historical setting. Sometimes…