Dear FCBC family, As we prepare for Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday, it is a new experience to do so in the midst of our stay at home orders. As an attempt to work with the situation at hand, we will need to do more of our celebration for these events in our own homes. We...

How do we view this coronavirus from a biblical-theological worldview? In the last post, we looked at how the coronavirus, disease and death are a result of the fall. The fall isn’t limited to the evils in the world, but also include all the evils within the human heart that...

How do we view this coronavirus from a biblical-theological world view? As we encounter what for us is a new and probably once in a lifetime experience of a worldwide epidemic, we find that people including ourselves tend to respond from pole to pole.  Some fear the...

Over the next few months we will be going through a new sermon series on selected Psalms.  The psalms have always been one of the favorite books throughout history.  Jesus quoted the psalms frequently and naturally as if He had the psalter memorized.  The...

Recently I have been reading the book Side by Side by Ed Welch and it is fast becoming one of my favorites.  I could probably list a number of reasons why that's so and how it has impacted me but I'd like to just focus on one which aligns with last week's sermon....

As I was reading over the accounts of the crucifixion in Mark during this past Passion week, a few thoughts of reflection from Mark's ending.  (maybe we will put up another blog entry regarding the case for the shorter ending of Mark, this post will be more on the...

Follow up to:  http://files.fcbcfv.org/media/sermons/2013_12_01_2.mp3 Since the last couple of messages from Mark 11 have been on prayer, I thought I'd share an excerpt from a book I read - from Richard Foster's book, Prayer and the chapter on Simple Prayer.  ...

Singleness was one of the topics that I had never heard a sermon on before and yet it seems to affect so many so deeply these days.  I've sermons on how to have a biblical marriage or how to shepherd your children, but not many on how to do singleness well.  Some...

" I have declared that which I did not understand, Things too wonderful for me, which I did not know."  Job 42:3 As I was reflecting on Pastor Godfrey's message on Job 40 & 42, Why Don't I Just Be Quiet, it reminded me of Psalm 46:10 - Cease striving and...

This was a quote from Joan Didion's book, The Year of Magical Thinkin.  I do not know if she is a Christian or not, but the statement evokes in me the question - how do you communicate God's care to someone who has just lost it all?  In Job 39, God is...

In yesterday's sermon on the Search For Wisdom, my wife told me that I focused quite a bit on the limitations of human wisdom, and I sensed that I didn't really talk about the positive side of the Wisdom of God.  The context was Job 28 where we find in man's search for...

  Listening to yesterday’s sermon from Romans 8 regarding the greater weight of glory awaiting believers in Christ was an encouragement for us in suffering.  Putting on a scale the present sufferings, and the future glory – Paul says it isn’t even worth...

  Blog Entry – Dark Night of the Soul St John of the Cross back in the 1500s wrote about a paradigmatic experience he calls the dark night of the soul in which we cannot sense God but used by God in a purposeful manner nonetheless.  While some may debate whether...

For the despairing man there should be kindness from his friend;  So that he does not forsake the fear of the Almighty.  (Job 6:14) When it comes to friends in the midst of suffering, there can be two extremes.  One is to expect...

    I think one of the hardest aspects regarding suffering is the lack of answers.   When it will end, why is it happening, what am I supposed to get from it, am I that bad of a monster to deserve this?  And sometimes there is silence.  C.S....

One of the main "weapons" listed for spiritual warfare is prayer.  In fact, in Clint Arnold's commentary on this subject he thinks it is the principle weapon in spiritual warfare, especially as we gather in small groups to pray.  How do we go about making it a...

 As I was feeding the other night one verse came to mind.  1 Peter 2:2 "like newborn babies, long for the pure milk of the word, so that by it you may grow in respect to salvation" (I had to throw in a baby picture)  Why was this metaphor chosen outside of its...

One of the challenges of blogs is that I always want to rewrite what has been written because I don't think enough thought has been put into the words.  But when that happens, I never end up putting anything down.  Some thoughts to help you in your reading of...

I had an interesting conversation with Terry the other day regarding family as one of the main themes (if not the guiding structure) of the Scriptures.  Certainly in the book of Genesis, family comes in very prominent from the get go.  There is a term in Hebrew that...