The Nurse Theologian

Your interpretation is not the word of God, your explanation is not the word of God, your paraphrase is not the word of God;  "So faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ."

A couple of years ago my brother Jeff and I were on our way to Mobile, Alabama. Our father Richard had injured himself and was on the burn ward there. My father has become very debilitated with Parkinson's, which has progressed over the past 8 years to the point were he is now, other than for brief periods, bed ridden. As the disease progressed he became weaker and weaker; at times he would injure himself, this was one of those times. He had gotten into a bath tub in a hotel in Pensacola, FL, and had turned on the hot water; he was unable to turn on the cold water, nor get out of the bath tub, nor turn off the hot water. His feet became badly burned from the near boiling water. My brother Jeff and I met up in Shreveport, LA to take the long drive together to Mobile, AL, in order transport our parents back to Texas. We knew that my father and Phil Robertson had gone to college together, so as we came into West Monroe, LA, we decided to stop by Duck Commander, it was a Sunday, so the

Many of us; myself included make the gospel so difficult that if we had heard ourselves in our unregenerate state would not have come to repentance and faith through what we preach; in many instances we wouldn’t have even understood what we were saying. This has weighed heavily on my heart and mind a lot lately. The gospel is vast and the study of the gospel can go on all of our lives, but what a person needs to know to repent is so simple that a child should be able to understand it. I didn’t come to faith in Christ through the grand preaching of a reformational preacher; I came to the Lord while reading a book many of you probably have spoken against, but have never actually read, “The Purpose Driven Life” by Rick Warren, yes you heard me correctly. Since that time I have grown in the Lord and have seen that many things about the purpose driven church movement are wrong, but the Lord did use this book and the simple gospel message in it to bring me to repentance and faith.

People with guilt will either become religious or say that they don't believe in God, becoming hostile toward God. The one who becomes religious knows that he is guilty, but hopes that his good works will out weigh the bad. The one who is hostile towards God knows that he is guilty as well, but is hoping in his Godless self-delusion. Neither religion nor Godless self-delusion will do away with guilt. The religious man works harder and harder at his sacrifices while the one caught up in Godless self-delusion lashes out at God all the more.  Christ Jesus demonstrated God's own love toward us by taking upon Himself the guilt of His people and dying in our place for our sins. That is good news! His people are all those who give up hope of any other means of justification and put their faith in Jesus alone. "Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." No work required, and the wall of enmity has been torn down; rest from your labors in Jesus.