Maybe Protestants believe in Transubstantiation after all…

Simon Chan makes the following provocative point:
“The Word proclaimed is truly the Word of God.  As the Second Helvetic Confession (1566) puts it, ‘The preaching of the word of God is the word of God.’ This is the closest that Protestants get to a doctrine of transubstantiation.  Human words do ‘become’ God’s Word in the [...]

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Prayer: It’s No Longer About Me

Simon Chan writes:
“To pray is to turn away from oneself and to be fully attentive to the Other… Initiation into the Christian community means that ‘I’ can longer be the center.  The world no longer revolves around me… Rather, my life revolves around a new Center, Christ, who holds me along with other believers in [...]

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Wisdom from Country Music…

From Billy Currington’s song People Are Crazy:
“God is great.  Beer is good.  People are crazy.”
Sounds like a good sermon title.

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The Paradox of “Stimulus” packages

Thomas Woods writes, 
“‘Stimulus” packages that encourage both private nonproductive consumption and public nonproductive consumption (i.e., federal spending) will only intensify the present crisis and hollow out the economy’s productive capacity still further.  And on top of that, they seek to strengthen the economy by the obviously paradoxical means of building roads and bridges funded by [...]

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The Work of the People in Preaching

Listening to a sermon can sometimes be a dull and even passive event.  Read what the Westminster Larger Catechism says is the duty of those who come under the preaching of the Word:
“It is required of those that hear the word preached, that they attend upon it with diligence, preparation, and prayer; examine what they [...]

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One Degree of Glory to Another

Marva Dawn in A Royal “Waste” of Time writes:
This is one of my favorite verses in the whole Bible, this promise in verse 18: the more we look at God, the more we become like God.  We are transformed into the same image, Paul says, from degree of glory to another.  Oh, the wonder of [...]

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Calvin on Prayer

In his commentary on Psalm 10, John Calvin writes:
“It should always be observed, that the use of praying is, that  God may be the witness of all our affections; not that they would otherwise be hidden from him, but when we pour out our hearts before him, our cares are hereby greatly lightened, and our [...]

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Worship and Mission: A short quote by N.T. Wright

“Worship is nothing more nor less than love on its knees before the beloved; just as mission is love on its feet to serve the beloved” (9). – For All God’s Worth

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Calvin and Use of Language

A large stumbling block for the Church has always been language, especially when discussing the more mysterious doctrines.  In discussing the Trinity, John Calvin humbly submits, “I am not so minutely precise as to fight furiously for mere words” (I.13.5).  Prior to saying this he denounces heretics, and after this he shows how many of [...]

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A Prayer for Mothers

I have borrowed this from the PCUSA’s website:

Mother’s Day Prayer
Eternal God, on this day we lift up mothers to you. You, O Lord, are the one “who, from our mothers’ arms, hath blessed us on our way with countless gifts of love, and still is ours today.”1 Scripture has prepared us to recognize that by [...]

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