Posts by Liberty Church of Christ (Page 2)

This article was written by Wes McAdams and published on his blog, “Radically Christian,” earlier this week. I thought it was timely on a couple of levels. For one, as we study through OT history in our Sunday morning Bible class, we encounter Israel making idols and worshipping false gods; this helps to clarify why even those graven images that ostensibly represented YHWH, like the golden bulls of Jeroboam, were forbidden. More importantly, for all of us, it gives practical…

And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.” (Luke 2:13- 14) Joseph Mohr was born in Salzburg, Austria in 1792. In 1815, he was ordained to the priesthood in the Roman Catholic Church and served in a number of parishes in the Salzburg area. As of Christmas 1818, he was the assistant priest at St. Nicholas church…

The Apostle Paul encountered opposition to Ephesus. The silversmiths, who made trinkets to honor the pagan goddess Diana, were concerned that the growth of the Christian Faith would cut into the profits of their trade. Bringing some of the leading Christians before the civil magistrates, they delivered the charge: “These men who have turned the world upside down have come here also” (Acts 17:6). While intended as a rebuke, in one sense, this charge was a great compliment. The pagans…

It has been my practice every year now in this space to print a historical Thanksgiving Proclamation. Though we typically associate the origin of this practice with the Pilgrims, special times for giving thanks for blessings as well as celebrations of bountiful harvests are ancient traditions in a number of cultures. In the New World, both the Spanish and French conducted thanksgivings in the 16th century. English settlers in Jamestown held a thanksgiving in 1610. By comparison, the celebration in…

We are drawing near to the end of the book of Ecclesiastes in our Sunday morning sermon series. In our text today, we will see the Preacher famously urge us to Remember your Creator in the days of your youth. But there is a flipside to that which we will not have time to explore in detail in our lesson, but is absolutely worthy of our consideration: even if we do not always remember Him, our Creator remembers us. He…

A lot of folks walk around with guilt and insecurity for things they’ve done in the past. In a world that tells us to love ourselves and embrace who we are, many of us immediately run into a conundrum: why should I “love myself” when I’m guilty of (fill in the blank)? The world’s response to that? “Forgive yourself.” I hate this term. By definition, it doesn’t work. Among the definitions given by dictionary.com we find “to grant pardon for…

The following article is by Carroll Ellis and appeared in the Gospel Advocate January 1960. I have printed it in this space before, back in May of 2019; that was BC, “Before COVID.” It not only remains relevant, but is perhaps even more pressing now than it ever has been in living memory. I strongly encourage you to really consider it. -BP A man has just received a kind invitation. It was not an all-expense paid, deep sea fishing trip,…

In our Wednesday evening study of Proverbs, we encountered 14:31 this week: “Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people.” There was discussion over what it means for a nation to be righteous, because it is hard to define. It made me think of this recent article by Wes McAdams on Radically Christian for a good perspective related to the issue. It has been slightly modified in format, but not content. -BP Should Christians rule the…

My friend Bruce Ligon passed away this week. Some of you might recognize that name; he has been on our prayer list on Facebook in the past. I have known Bruce basically my entire life, at least as long as I can remember. His first job out of Freed-Hardeman University was as the Youth Minister at Eastern Hills in Marshall, where I grew up, in 1986. Afterward, he preached at several congregations across Texas, Louisiana, and Oklahoma. For the last…

Sometimes we reprint articles in this space; normally, I go a few years without doing that. But we are about to kickoff our small groups program again for 2023-24 next week, and this relates so directly to what they are all about, that I felt it was worth it to revisit it again already—plus, the article itself was reprinted by the author after only a few months because it proved so popular, so I figure what’s sauce for the goose…

We have been writing here for the last few weeks about some of the everyday problems that we all deal with, prompted by the practical focus of James that we are studying together on Sunday mornings. One of the struggles that lies close to his concern with wealth is discontentment. Would you consider yourself to be a content? Are you satisfied with your life? It seems that so many of us never are. There is a little ditty attributed to…

This is an article I ran across this week by Ken Weliever, a gospel preacher for more than a half century. He evidently published it back in May, but reprinted it this week because it was his 2nd most read post of the year. It touches on many of the themes we have been talking about over the last couple of weeks and especially relates to our lesson this morning. What’s more, the elders had asked what we are going…