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by Ted Georgian The Lord’s Prayer is very familiar; many of us memorized it as children. I must admit,though, that on more than one occasion I’ve stood up leading a worship service, andfound myself thinking, “… as we forgive our debtors – what comes next??” But thenagain, I still find myself humming the ABC song while I alphabetize student papers,especially around J and K. What Jesus has given us is a model prayer: he’s not telling us to use these exact words whenever we pray, althoughthere’s nothing wrong with that. We’re told to pray like ...

The Lord’s Prayer is recorded twice in the Gospels, in Matthew 6 and Luke 11. In Matthew’s account the Lord’s Prayer is part of a section in which Jesus teaches about core spiritual disciplines: giving to the poor, prayer, and fasting. He begins by warning his disciples not to pray as hypocrites or as the Gentiles do. Instead, pray as children of a heavenly Father. I’m approaching this text in a rather odd way, using three negatives. But I’m counting on you to turn them into positive lessons on prayer. “When you pray,” Jesus told his ...

These are the first words that Jesus utters at the very beginning of His crucifixion. He has already been mocked with false worship, and flogged to within an inch of his life, and now Christ hangs on a Roman cross with nails through his hands and feet. The agonizing pain has begun, an unparalleled injustice is being carried out against Jesus, and yet rather than lashing out at these people for what they are doing to Him…Jesus offers a prayer to His heavenly Father on their behalf! It’s not a prayer for God the Father to “smite” His enemies – ...

In mid-February, our family spent a little over a week in St. Elizabeth Parish, Jamaica.  We were invited to come by Don & Elaine Schiffer who work with Follow the Source. They live in Jamaica full-time, but come back to this area for a month each summer to visit family and churches and have their yearly check-ups with J.R. Prior to moving to Jamaica, they had been going on short term trips to Jamaica for many years. When it came time for them to retire, it was around the time that a full-time missionary they used to work with needed to ...

On the first Sunday of this new year, I preached a sermon entitled “2020 Vision: A Path for Discipleship.” Whether you heard that sermon or not, I think it would helpful for us to briefly revisit the first two parts of that message and then expand upon the third part that was cut short due to time constraints. The Gospel calls us not only to believe Jesus as our Savior, but also to submit ourselves to Him as our Lord. The latter is a call to discipleship, i.e. living as followers of Christ.  Scripture often uses the metaphor of walking to ...

The above is often quoted out of context, when someone has noted a particularly wise statement made by a small child. However, when we consider this quotation from Psalm 8, we should be awed and amazed at the value God places on children and on their understanding and faith. The Psalm says: O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens. From the lips of children and infants you have ordained praise, because of your enemies, to silence the foe and the avenger. Christ quoted ...

Elizabeth and I (Isaac) actually met rather awkwardly through an online dating application. We had both struggled to find suitable partners for marriage within our own circle of friends as well as the churches that we attended. When we were matched, Elizabeth almost chose not to start a conversation with me due to my being in the Army as her career didn’t lend well to moving a lot. I also had reservations about her, namely that she was a Southern Baptist. Once we both got over these issues, we discovered how clearly God had intended us to ...

Laura and I (Joshua) began attending the Presbyterian Church of Wellsville about one year ago. We were enjoying the Labor Day weekend at a local campground and were hoping to find a faithful church that was close by. Upon arriving, we found the people of Wellsville PCA to be very welcoming, and the preaching to be thoroughly themed with Christ and His work of redemption. A refreshing reminder of God’s faithfulness to His people marked our first impression of Wellsville PCA. We decided to become members shortly thereafter. Neither Laura nor ...

I hope this last year has gone well for you. This year has been good to me and I have seen God's faithfulness in my life. I guess I just wanted you to tell you a little bit of what has happened in the last year. My first year at Dallas International University (which was formerly called GIAL when I applied to the school) went really well and I am preparing to start my next year there, which will hopefully end with me completing my Master's Degree in World Arts with a concentration in Linguistics next May. I have had the privilege of serving ...

On every Sunday that an infant in our church is baptized, Pastor Tom prays that God blesses the infant “so they will never be able to remember a time that they did not know the LORD.” I can say with all honesty that I feel my wife and I have been blessed in such a way. There certainly have been times of immaturity in both of our lives, as well as our fair share of disobedience. Overall however, God has been guiding us in His providence. I was originally baptized into a PC-USA church, Cassie into a United Methodist one. By middle school, my ...

This verse was one that God brought to my heart during my missions trip to the Dominican Republic. Ever since then, I have been able to see how this truth has tied together different aspects of my life to reflect God’s grace. The first part of the verse talks about letting my roots grow down into Him. I had grown up in a non-denominational church, where facilitating connections and having a servant’s heart were instilled into me for as long as I could remember. My parents were always so hospitable to everyone we had come to know, especially ...

Barbara: John was born in the Netherlands and immigrated with his family to the US in 1948. His family lived in Minnesota for five years and then moved to New Jersey. I was born in New Jersey. We met in 1964 and we were married in 1966. We became members of the Christian Reformed Church in Newton, New Jersey. John has been a deacon and elder in our former church. He also worked with the young people’s group and taught catechism to high school students. He served as president of the Christian school board. I was involved in the ladies school ...

I am a fourth-generation missionary. I grew up in rural northern Bangladesh with my parents, grandparents, and two younger siblings. I say rural, but the region has a population density higher than that of Toronto. The country contains a population half the size of the United States’ in a land area about equal to that of Illinois. About eighty percent of those people are Muslim, twenty Hindu, and less than one percent are either Christian or Buddhist. This upbringing hewed out the rough contours of my life. My aim since I was about ten has ...

  P&R Publishing (Presbyterian and Reformed) is in the process of printing a series of books on influential movers and shakers, called the Great Thinkers series. Some of the volumes include Thomas Aquinas, Karl Marx, David Hume, and Karl Barth. I was approached to contribute a volume on a modern scientific thinker, and suggested Richard Dawkins. Dawkins might be considered the founder and chief proponent of what has come to be known as the New Atheist movement. Launched in the early 2000s, the movement was characterized by a ...

Congrats to Ransom Poythress on the publication of his book – Richard Dawkins – in the Series Great Thinkers: Critical Studies of Minds That Shape Us. Writing from a Reformed perspective, authors in this series identify the most influential cultural features of each great thinker and the most apologetically effective ways to address them. “Richard Dawkins, one of the foremost proponents of gene-centered, atheistic approaches to evolutionary science, has leveled intense criticism against those who accept the existence of a supernatural ...

My life is in a state of transition; new job, new living arrangements, new responsibilities. I’m excited and many of the first steps have already been taken. The job has begun and despite some early mistakes (to which I must tell my perfectionistic and prideful side to chill out) and the continually new aspects of my job that I’m introduced to (which I am learning to take in stride…breathe, Amanda) things are going well. During this particular phase in life I’ve been feeling rather upended. The jobs that I’ve held for over half a decade ...

“He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all, how will he not also along with him, graciously give us all things?” (Romans 8:32) Sometimes (often) one runs out of ideas and material for the church Newsletter, hence the bit of a lapse since the publication of the April edition of the Newsletter. The obvious thought that has come to mind is to share some photographs and reflections from Marvin’s and my recent trip to Ireland. The following pictures from the north coast of Northern Ireland show White Park Bay –one of the most ...

Walt’s Story - In the Spring of 1970, at the age of 20 years, I became a Christian after a long protracted spiritual struggle. About a year before my conversion to Christ, during the summer of 1969, preceding the beginning of my sophomore year at Rutgers University, I was introduced to the Watch Tower Society by a friend of my brother’s. Joe had been a Jehovah’s Witness for a couple of years and talked with me about God, gave me literature and introduced me to some other of his JW friends. This was all a part of a seven-step methodology which ...

We were both granted the sweet gift of being raised by strong Christian families with a strong Christian heritage. Ransom grew up with his parents and younger brother in Glenside, Pennsylvania. Ransom’s father is a well-known Reformed theologian teaching at Westminster Theological Seminary and so Ransom had a rare upbringing—discussing theology and other weighty Biblical matters from a very young age. When his parents discovered a lack of “coming of age” traditions for Christian men, they instituted the “Bar Yeshua” in their family. Similar ...