On May 19, 2001, I stood on the platform of FBC Owensboro, Kentucky, with a handful of other men and watched as every head in the audience pivoted on cue as soon as they heard a series of distinct notes play over the organ. The doors in the back of the sanctuary opened, and Tara, my bride, entered the...

The passage for our study this week, John 6, contains a nugget regarding Jesus’ deity and His supernatural knowledge: Jesus saw the hungry crowd, and already He knew how He would feed them. Yet Jesus took this opportunity to test Philip with a question, not for His sake but for Philip’s. A test shows something about the person being tested. The...

This week, we look at Jesus feeding a large crowd of people, often known as the feeding of the 5,000. While that is a common way to describe this story, we preferred to make it more vague because it was actually many more than 5,000 fed that day—that was just the number of men. When you add in the...

In His brief conversation with the demon-possessed man in Luke 8, Jesus asked for the demon’s name, perhaps to highlight the complexity of the scenario for His disciples who were with Him. He certainly did not do this as a means to gain power over the demon. He already had the power. No, this was not an example of...

COVID-19. Unemployment. Murder hornets. Injustices. Civil unrest. The year 2020 has provided many reasons and opportunities for us to be afraid, hasn’t it? I know that over the last four months, waves of fear have felt like they were crashing over me at times. I would imagine our kids have felt that too. Which is why this week’s session...

As we will learn in this session, Jesus in John 10 painted a picture of two voices calling out to sheep: one is the good shepherd and the other is a sheep thief, and they are both calling the sheep to follow them. The sheep respond to and follow the voice of the shepherd but run away from the...