Blog Archives: January 2020 — December 2020

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 ...