PJ's Journal

This Sunday I will be preaching from Romans 16.  In this chapter, Paul is commending a lady name Phoebe to the church and then proceeds to send greetings to many others.  Paul writes that Phoebe is a servant (deaconess) of the church in Cenchreae, which is a small city right next to Corinth.  This mention of her brings up an interesting topic and that is the role of women in ministry.   I know this is a very sensitive topic and my aim is to wrestle with the Scriptures relative to this issue.  There are those who believe that women should not hold any leadership position in a local church and there are those who believe that women have no restrictions at all relative to leadership in the church.  Most people that I have had conversations with in ministry circles fit somewhere between those two views.  My goal is to deal honestly with the Scriptures relative to this topic without writing a book.   First of all, I believe the mention of Phoebe by Paul does make this an issue worthy of exp

 As we read through the Old Testament, I have been struck by the extend that God goes to dwell with His people.  This is actually part of the Covenant God made with His people on Sinai.  He will dwell with them in a chamber set apart for Him alone called the Most Holy Place.  He would dwell behind a curtain, which was crossed only one time a year on the Day of Atonement by the High Priest.  God dwells with his people, but is still separated from them.  Leviticus 26:11-12 is a record of God telling His people, "I will make my dwelling among you and my soul shall not abhor you.  And I will walk among you and will be your God, and you shall be my people."   This really is the first time since the Garden that God is reaching out to dwell with His creation.  However, His dwelling, though limited and not fully realized, seems to be based on Israel's obedience to the covenant made on Sinai.  No sooner is the covenant made when Israel rebels, turns to idolatry, and God's dwel

 Over the past few months one of the issues that I have been thinking about is how so many in our world are sucked in by a narrative of events either spun to paint a false understanding of reality or simply made up to propagate something that is false.  I have watched as the media will commentate with a blatant double standard to spin a story or events in such a way that fits a narrative that they what to sell.  This is especially true when it comes to politics.  I have watched it happen on main stream media outlets as well as cable news outlets.  I have also experienced people get sucked into conspiracy theories that have no basis for truth.  This is true of QAnon theories propagated by a person who is known as Q.  However, this past week I encountered this in a more personal way.  Someone who I love dearly and know to have a heart of gold was researching something that caught their attention, and clicked on a video that was couched as secure about a pizza place in Washington DC that

 I recently had a conversation with a pastor in Grand Rapids who told me about an illustration one of his elders used in a sermon, and like any good illustration, it has stuck with me.  This elder stood before the congregation with a cup in his hand and asked, "If this cup gets bumped, what comes out of it?"  Certainly, some were over thinking the question and trying to come up with some clever answer to what they may  have taken as a trick question, but the answer was simple... whatever was in it.  Of course the answer was so obvious, but then the elder asked the congregation, "When you get bumped, what comes out of you?"  I was struck by the simplicity of the illustration and the powerful truth it was illustrating.  When we get bumped, what comes out is whatever is in us.  It is manageable to keep hidden what is inside you when things are going ok and you don't get bumped too badly.  However, when you are "bumped" what  is on the inside spills out.  

 Our church has been reading through the entire narrative of Scripture and we currently find ourselves near the end of Moses' life.  He has been leading the Israelite people for nearly 40 years.  In that 40 years, the people have experienced their God destroy the most powerful army in the known world at the time.  He parted a huge body of water in such a way that over a million and a half people crossed to the other side on dry ground, and then watch, from the safety of the other side, while the waters collapsed, destroying the mighty Egyptian army.  These people saw the glory of the Lord in the form of a pillar of smoke by day and fire by night.  They tasted manna and meat that God provided for them during their journey.  They witnessed God's confirmation of Moses' leadership over and over again.  However, none of this was enough.  I was reading in Numbers 20 and was struck with a thought I would like to unpack. 3 And the people quarreled with Moses and said, "Would t