A Fresh Start

It has been a long time since I blogged regularly or consistently and, to be honest, I don't care much for blogging even right now. But I am going to start blogging again, not to acquire readers or even to be read, really. I am going to blog because I am going to write. And writing is what I need to be doing.

You can already tell by the above paragraph that my writing needs a lot of work.

I also wanted a place to put my YouTube videos somewhere other than just on my pastor's YouTube page. Where else, I thought, but on my old blog? So if you wander by here know that I am just practicing my writing and using this place as an old storage shed.

What to look for? Hmm. Well, you can look for two things. Look for the videos, one at a time, of our Old Testament Survey Sunday School series. This is Pastor John R. Pflug and I thinking out loud about the Old Testament and hopefully passing along some good information along the way.

And look for my bible study series from the book of Philippians that I deliver in seven different nursing home and assisted living facilities here locally. I'm going to try to break them up and present them in a daily devotional format. But I won't be putting them up daily, you can be sure of that.

From time to time I may also put up something else, if the mood hits me, but it won't be politics or social activism you can be fairly sure.

Oh, and one other thing. I am doing this entirely from my iPad mini. So if things sometimes look a bit quirky, well, now you'll know why. Blessings.

Isaiah and Paul - A Direction and Focus

When I was a pastor the method I used in deciding the course of my teaching and preaching material was simple. I prayed for wisdom and understanding. I chose portions of Scripture which intrigued me most at the time. And I studied them thoroughly so as to be able to teach them as accurately as possible in an expository fashion. Not all of my teaching/preaching was expository, but 80% of it was. This is because I trusted that God's word itself would consistently bring to our attention the most important topics, the topics God thinks are most relevant to our lives.

I find that one does best what he enjoys most. When work is a passion it becomes joy and results in excellence. When it is not enjoyed it is toil and becomes a drudgery. For the Christian, the Scriptures should be his passion. For me as a pastor, they most certainly were. I want to know truth. Jesus said to the Father, "Your word is truth." He also said to his disciples that they would know the truth, and that the truth would set them free.

I have been mulling over ideas for several days now on what direction the theological/devotional writing of this blog should take. It occupied my thoughts last night and this morning. It distracted me in church. What direction I decide to go on this blog will also determine the direction of my own Bible study and reading material, so it is not just the blog at stake, but also my personal devotional life.

Since I have no doubt God makes us who we are, works providentially in our lives, and gives us all our godly wants and desires, then I do believe that whatever direction I go, though my own choice, will ultimately be seen to have been his choice as well. It is He, after all, who does according to his will both in the armies of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth and none can stay his hand nor even question him.

So where shall we go? If our goal is bringing to God the most glory, exalting him in our thoughts, and if the Scripture is the vehicle we will use to take us there, and if all my own godly thoughts and desires come first from Him, then I will choose the "where" from my wants and trust him that this is a good thing.

I am intrigued right now, most of all, by two men in the Bible. They are Isaiah and Paul.

I have always loved the book of Isaiah. To me, it is the most sublime, contains the noblest themes, of all the Old Testament. I have access to tools which will help me to study it more thoroughly than many men who lived in the past. Most of these tools are at my fingertips, but perhaps I will order a book or two as well. Yes, this is where we will go.

And since I am a man of many and varied interests I am also going to tackle the life of Paul. I taught Galatians once before on Wednesday nights over an eight month period and I also spent about the same length of time once on the Acts of the Apostles. These two books contain the majority of Paul's biographical history, but not all. I want to tackle his life in biographical fashion. I have a couple of books this will give me an excuse to read and this will also enable me to get certain events in his life placed in order in my mind.

There, that helps me with some direction and focus.

A Godward Focus

While contemplating what should be the focus and emphasis of this blog it occurred to me that the blog is supposed to reflect my life as it is. This is how I originally viewed it, as sort of a launching ground for whatever happens to be on my mind. What usually occupy my thoughts are ideology, theology, basketball, and my family (in no particular order). Now, what occupies my mind and what should be occupying my mind at any given moment are not necessarily the same thing. How this blog helps me is that it confronts me with what I need to be thinking on and writing about. It helps me to focus on what is important. While not all of life is church, per se, all of life should be Christ. And while not all of life is worship, all of life is worship. In other words, and I should blog on this at some point, our separation of the spiritual from the secular is an artificial distinction. For the Christian, all of life is spiritual, even the most mundane elements.

Which brings me to my point, I think. If all of life is about God, then God should be the focus of my life, and thus God should be the focus of this blog. That doesn't mean I won't be posting about politics or basketball or whatever else. What it means is that in any posts of that nature there will be an attempt made to think and write about them with a Godward focus. It also means that the main thrust of my theological writing will be how to help us think about God and view the world through a God-first mindset.

The purpose of the universe, after all, is to bring glory to God. It is all about Him.