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This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.

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September 17, 2024 | Leave a Comment

The PWDL

Let’s talk about the People We Don’t Like. Let’s call them the PWDL for short. 

I’m not talking about enemies, i.e. people who have actually done harm to us or to people we love or to projects or work that matters to us. I’m talking about the PWDL. We just don’t like them. They don’t share our faith, or our politics, or our lifestyles, or our commitment to the Broncos. They’ve made decisions we don’t like: sending their kids out of district or consistently mowing their lawn on Saturday at 6 a.m. They innocently annoy us. They just are not our cup of tea.

“Not my cup of tea” is actually my favorite way to describe these folks. It goes light. It casts no judgment. It declares definitively that the “not liking” part of the situation is my responsibility only. The other cup of tea has done nothing wrong.

Instead of PWDL, perhaps I should call these folks about whom I’m writing today the NMCOTs. Or maybe not. Let’s stick to the PWDL.

The first thing worth noting about thy PWDL is that we can’t avoid them. Oh, we can try. The larger the community in which we live, the easier time we may have segregating ourselves. Here in our small town, though, it’s almost impossible. It’s tough to hide from someone when there are only two grocery stores in town and one post office. We work with them. We sit next to them in the bleachers during the JV volleyball game. We (gulp) go to church with them. [Read more…]

Bible, Discipleship, God, Jesus Christ, Small town, Spiritual maturity Tagged: Hate, Love, Ninevites, Small town


May 6, 2024 | Leave a Comment

The perseverance of the saints; or, how to not read the Bible

Never read a Bible verse (or even few verses together) out of context. Never. Really. I mean it.

Last Thursday, it was a little after 6 a.m. I had a coffee cup in my left hand, a very large dog to my right side, and the Bible open on my lap, as I read from 1 John:

“As for you, see that what you have heard from the beginning remains in you. If it does, you also will remain in the Son and in the Father. And this is what he promised us—eternal life” (2:24-25).

Whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa.  “If”?  What do you mean, “if”?  There’s no “if” about eternal life.  Once in, always in. Otherwise, it’s up to us. Otherwise, my good Calvinist doctrine of the perseverance of the saints is…exaggerated?  Or wrong?  Oh dear.

After all, the perseverance of the saints is right there in Chapter 18 of the Westminster Confession:

“They whom God hath accepted in his Beloved, effectually called and sanctified by his Spirit, can neither totally nor finally fall away from the state of grace; but shall certainly persevere therein to the end, and be eternally saved” (“Of the Perseverance of the Saints,” The Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter 18).

I have friends who disagree with every fiber of their Baptist beings, so I know it’s not settled in the minds of all Christians. Still, I’ve always figured that, if my salvation were up to me, I was in trouble. I rely on God and God alone. 

My devotional guide wasn’t trying to trick me. Its editors had pulled out verses 18-25 for me that morning, in no way intending to shake my faith, but, after only half a cup of coffee, I was shook.  

Sitting in my office that afternoon, I turned to my commentaries.  The verses come in the context of refuting false teaching.  John, the son of Zebedee (or maybe one of his inner circle) was writing to these Christians because some teachers among them were leading them to separate Jesus from Christ. That separation denied the full humanity of Christ. Later, it was a heresy that would get the name docetism. 

More to the point, this separation of Jesus from Christ had separated believers from each other. “Behind the pained rhetoric of 1 John 2:18-25 is a harrowing reality: for the first time in the NT record, a church has fallen apart over a matter of critical importance, a division that must surely have been experienced with shock by those whose tradition accentuated the church’s unity in Christ” [Clifton Black 405 NIB]

I’ve been through a church split. It wasn’t fun. In one of the earliest schisms, it seems that John was trying to get the people to remain in right teaching. Remaining in Christ was still up to God.  Cue the sigh of relief. The perseverance of the saints was not being thrown into question, only my judgment at letting isolated verses so confuse me.

And, really, I didn’t even need the commentaries to straighten me out. All I would have had to do was let my eyes skim a little higher in the same chapter.

“I write to you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God lives in you, and you have overcome the evil one” (2:14b).

“Lives in you” translates from the Greek meno, the very same word used in 2:24 where it’s translated “remain.”  The New Revised Standard conveniently translates it to the same word in English throughout the chapter.

The Word of God “remains in you” (2:14b), so “remain” in it (2:24).  

This seemingly nonsensical marriage of the indicative and the imperative is all over scripture.  It was there in Genesis 12, when Abraham was told he was blessed to be a blessing.  The apostle Paul tells the people in his churches, over and over, “You’re holy, so be holy.”  Jesus joins them.  “You are the light,” he says, “so shine.”  Because of who you are, this is what you’ll do.

“The Christian life is not passive or solitary; it is a life lived before others and before the face of God. Our goodworks never merit a right standing before God, but they inevitably and necessarily demonstrate that this right standing has been imputed to us” (here).

John isn’t making salvation contingent upon anything.  He’s just trying to wrench the people back to right doctrine in hopes it will hold that church together.

So, no, our salvation isn’t up to us “if” we believe the right things. What is up to us is to try our best to take those beliefs seriously and not be led astray by the newest, hippest teacher on TV or TikTok or anywhere else.

And you know what else is up to us? To remember and commit to not taking isolated scripture verses out of context. Even on half a cup of coffee.

Bible, Church, Perseverance Tagged: Bible, coffee, perseverance of the saints


January 4, 2022 | Leave a Comment

Please define “daily”

It’s often said that followers of Jesus should be reading the Bible daily. Our Children’s Minister said it to our kids just this past Sunday. I nodded in agreement. Yes, daily. Bible. Yes.

Well, maybe.

The Word of God is indeed our lifeblood. It tells our Story and draws the path for us to walk as we follow our Savior. To know the Word is to trust the Word and love the Word. Yes. Definitely.

But “daily”? There’s the rub, as Hamlet said.

The hope of daily reading is appropriate. It’s also discouraging to expect. Here’s why–

First, the expectation of daily reading lends itself to verse-ing the Bible. Verse-ing is my word, and it means glancing at a single, isolated verse as we scroll Instagram (or Facebook, TikTok, that little calendar on your desk, whatever).

Scroll. Glance. Bam. “I’ve done my Bible reading for the day!”

No, actually, you haven’t. You’ve taken six to seven words out of a living document of thousands of words, and you’ve made them a justification for everything you’re already planning to do and think and say. Verse-ing distorts the Bible.

“But, if I’m supposed to read the Bible daily, is a verse a day better than nothing?”

Arguably, yes, if it leads you to deeper reading, but it’s simply not enough. Reading must be more. It must encompass whole chapters, over time, repeatedly, as come to understand our own stories as part of God’s story of redemption and grace. It doesn’t happen on Instagram.

“Okay, fine. I’ll read whole chapters a day…but, even when I’m working double shifts? Even on the 4th of July at the lake? Even when I’m sick in bed?”

The second reason why the expectation of daily Bible reading is tough to expect is because it’s just tough. You make a commitment. You grab a Bible and spend the 15-20 minutes a day in the one-year Bible. For a few days, anyway. But, wow, you miss a day. Or two. Or three. Suddenly, you’re behind. Really behind. It’s March 2. Your bookmark is still on January 24, and you give up. A real commitment to reading the Bible as it’s intended becomes a lesson in futility and frustration, and you’re not in the Word at all anymore.

“So, what’s worse? Verse-ing? Or setting myself up for failure?”

It’s a false choice. There are other ways. Followers of Jesus have managed for a very long time to inhale the Word of God without forsaking other commitments (or getting up at 3 a.m.).

Here’s my suggestion:

Commit to a long term reading (or listening) plan. A chapter or two a day. When you miss a day (drumroll please), skip the reading for the day. Yes, that’s what I wrote. Skip it. If you’re committed to reading for the long haul (i.e. the rest of your life), you’re going to come back to it next year. More importantly, you’re a whole lot less likely to get frustrated and give up altogether. 

Just keep going.

I’m on Year 3 with my One Year Bible. I circle and mark and underline with a different colored pen every year, so I know that I missed most of the flood story last year. No blue ink underlining anywhere for about four chapters. But this year, I did read it. Have you ever noticed how long the ark is stuck on top of Mt. Ararat before the flood actually dries up? “The twenty-seventh day of the second month the earth” (Genesis 8:14)? That’s a whole lot of time tottering at the top of a mountain, but Noah and his people persist. It’s a lesson in patience if I ever read one. I missed it last year, but this year I didn’t.

More to the point, I didn’t give up last year when I missed those four days. I kept going, reading most days but not every day, and I discovered all over again how God was working out grace over all of creation and history. It’s such a good story. Really.

Bible, Discipleship, Expectation, Time, Uncategorized Tagged: Daily Bible reading, Genesis 8


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This is the day that
the Lord has made;
let us rejoice
and be glad in it.

– Psalm 118:24
Rev. Dr. MJ Romano

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For no word from God will ever fail.
Luke 1:37
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