The fifth psalm brings with it some familiar themes from the preceding four: God not answering prayer, lament, crying out to God, and struggle against bloodthirsty adversaries. Whenever Scripture repeats itself, this is a flashing red light to take notice, God is trying to make sure we really understand something. It’s ironic then, how these themes have been lost or minimized in much of modern day Western Christianity. We seem to have crafted a religion around comfort and God making you feel good. Like we are selling a product and we need to convince those in the pew that it works. In order to do so, we have to hide these more uncomfortable truths and only emphasize the happy ones.
Psalm 4 Devotional – Answer me God!
Verse 1 implies that God has not been answering the psalmist’s prayer. I love the honesty we can go to God with. The psalmist is basically saying, “Hey God! Answer me! I know you can! But you haven’t been! I am suffering! I am struggling! Have mercy on me! Hear my prayer!” With full use of exclamation points in the emotion behind this prayer.
Psalm 3 Devotional – Who sustains you?
Psalm 3 is one of David’s prayers while fleeing for his life from his beloved son, after seeing his family fall into complete ruin. We find raw, honest emotion in this Psalm.
Ep. 19: The Flip Side is BACK! Topic: The Right Kind of Blindness
After a brief hiatus, “real” episodes of the Flip Side are back! After catching up on the mailbag, the topic of the day is the right kind of blindness, and of course, the moment you’ve all been waiting for: Noah’s Rant finally chimes in on the “real people, not actors” Chevy commercials.
Ep. 11 (or 73) Interview with Kevin Butcher on shame, suicide, when God doesn’t heal us, suffering, ministry burnout, & the Father’s love
Listen below or subscribe on iTunes or Google Play In episode 11 (73), Noah interviews Kevin Butcher, Noah’s identical twin, give or take 30 years. Noah and Kevin are both 8’s on the Enneagram, ENFP’s, D’s on the DISC, church planters in the inner city, entrepreneurs, authors, and podcasters… look out! (And they both have 3 daughters…that’s just […]
Podcast Ep. 10 (or 72) (Looking at all the facets of…) David Platt Prays for Donald Trump on the stage of a worship service
Episode 10 discusses the June 2nd scenario of Pastor David Platt praying for President Donald Trump from the stage of a McLean Bible Church worship service. You probably already have lots of predetermined feelings about this, so rather that write something that will make you listen (if you agree), or dismiss this (if you disagree), go ahead and listen and see if there’s a different way to approach topics like this than you are used to.