Obedience, trembling and embracing

Posted on September 12, 2016 Written by Mark McIntyre Leave a Comment

7s This morning I was reading through the Sermon on the Mount and a phrase from the Westminster Confession of Faith (WCF) came to mind. In response to Scripture, the WCF speaks of “. . . yielding obedience to the commands, trembling at […]

A lesson learned from a genealogy

Posted on October 5, 2012 Written by Mark McIntyre 2 Comments

When reading Matthew 1, it is tempting to skip over the list of names in the genealogy. A lesson was learned as I recently read this chapter.

Numbering our days: a reflection on Psalm 90

Posted on July 14, 2012 Written by Mark McIntyre 1 Comment

In Psalm 90, the psalmist prays that we might learn to number our days. Is this a call to get busy or is there some other meaning? How should we understand this prayer?

Growth in trees or believers

Posted on May 18, 2011 Written by Mark McIntyre 1 Comment

4s The Observation I walked through our yard yesterday to check out the 25 Colorado Blue Spruce trees I planted a few weeks ago. They were bare root seedlings similar to what is shown in the picture to the left. I was loing […]

On delayed answers to prayer

Prayer is an integral part of the Christian life. One cannot be a Christian without prayer. But even for those who have been Christians for a long time, there is mystery in prayer. One form of mystery is why sometimes the answer to prayer doesn’t come in a satisfactory time frame. In his bo, Faith […]

Conformity versus unity in the church

I have observed that in some cases when a pastor or church leader speaks about unity that what they mean is conformity. There is a big difference. Unity is motivated from the inside out, conformity is enforced from the outside.

Did God leave all mankind to die in sin and misery?

We like to think of ourselves as free moral agents with the ability to control our own destinies. We don’t want to have anyone tell us what we can or can’t do. We are taught that such freedom is our birthright and no-one should be able to take this away from us.

This might hurt a little . . .

Any of us that have sat under Biblical preaching for any length of time have felt the sting when Scripture confronts us in areas of idolatry or rebellion. We need to have the discip to find and stay with a church that will faithfully allow us to be confronted by Scripture.

Electricity, Hurricane Sandy and the Feast of Sukkot – Four lessons

After the brute force of Hurricane Sandy subsided, I had some time to reflect on what had just happened. I offer four observations in response to Sandy.

And he marveled at their unbelief

Mark 6 records the events when Jesus returned to his hometown of Nazareth. The townspeople were not quick to recognize the significance of what Jesus was doing. In fact, Mark records that Jesus “could do no mighty work there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and healed them.” Jesus’ response […]