Dr Paul Allen

Serve the LORD with gladness! Come into his presence with singing! —Psalm 100:2 As spring draws near, it is as though all creation bursts into life. Flowers bloom, trees blossom, grass grows, and weeds shoot up like they have been fertilized. Thus, it is time to break out the weed-eater, which soon leads to firing up the blower. However, these gas-powered instruments for beautifying the yard cannot crank with just one tug on the pull cord. The engine requires priming, which involves pushing a small pump to deliver fuel, making the engine ready for combustion. Our hearts are like those cold engines. To be ready for worship, fired in our souls to give God the praise due His name, we need shots of truth, heart-focusing facts about the greatness of the Lord and His grace, so that our cold hearts would be roused to action. Psalm 100 can be such a primer for us. Psalm 100 is the climax of a collection of psalms focused on the Lord as King. From the declaration of Psalm 93:1, “The Lord reigns...

It’s never been easier to step into the role of a would-be prophet, to stand in the long line of men and women over the ages called to “speak truth to power.” Social media has amplified the ability to speak out on any number of issues—to expose the hidden corners of injustice, to rail against the abuses of the strong against the weak, and to point out the flaws in institutions and the people who lead them. Much of this prophetic sensibility is good. As a result of people expressing critique or concern, we’ve seen institutions and individuals move toward health. We’ve seen rot exposed and expunged. We’ve seen repentance and restitution. The ability of more people to speak out can lead to greater awareness and accountability in the church. Heartless Prophet But there’s always the danger of having a prophetic voice without a prophet’s heart. When this happens, we sound less and less like Jeremiah, passing on the Lord’s command through tears (“Return, you faithless children!”) alongside th...

In recent years, it’s become commonplace for employers to put underperforming employees on a performance improvement plan (PIP). Though the employee often interprets them as a sign that termination is inevitable, PIPs crystallize job expectations and highlight how a worker is falling short. This covers the employer in the event of termination and removes cause for accusation on the employee’s part. I considered this modern practice when I read Old Testament scholar Stephen Dempster’s observation about God’s law in his book Dominion and Dynasty:  “Israel is treated differently after [receiving the Ten Commandments at] Sinai. Pre-Sinai violations lead to reprimand; post-Sinai trespass[es] lead to death.” Dempster wouldn’t call the law a PIP, but he observes one sense in which it functions similarly: it clearly reveals where Israel has fallen short of God’s standard. It shows them where they haven’t lived up to God's required performance. But we’re in trouble if that’s our entire pers...

Thaddeus Williams Apple co-founder, black-turtleneck enthusiast, and former Pixar chairman Steve Jobs once remarked, “There is no reason not to follow your heart.” For most of human history, feelings could be embraced, resisted, ignored, celebrated, chastened, silenced, trained, or challenged. Our ancestors could do a whole lot with their emotions. The “freedom” of our day is far more limiting. You have one option when it comes to your heart—follow it. The ‘freedom’ of our day is far more limiting. You have one option when it comes to your heart—follow it. Under the trendy orthodoxy of expressive individualism, life is no longer about bringing our inner selves into the tempo and key of beauty, goodness, and truth. It’s about finding our inner tune, marching to our beat, and conducting those around us to play along with our anthems of autonomy. The truth is, to answer Steve Jobs, there are plenty of good reasons not to follow your heart. Here are five. 1. Our hearts are too dull. Valida...

Dr David E. Briones One of the things I love most about Paul is the way he frequently brings out a particularly simple truth in his writings: because the gospel is countercultural, Christians ought to be countercultural people. After all, the gospel is not just something that we think about. It’s something we live out. We are conformed to the message of the gospel. More specifically, we are conformed to the person of Jesus Christ in the gospel (Rom. 8:29).  This gospel message is at odds with the messages of the world. The way of the cross diametrically opposes the way of this world. Why? Because the very content of the gospel of the cross goes against the grain of culture. But this raises a question: The message of the gospel may be countercultural, but are God’s people? The answer to this question must be, “Yes, but not always.” By virtue of believing in and confessing the glorious truth of our crucified and risen Savior, the church is innately countercultural.  It is contra...

Two weeks before Christmas, my heart stopped. Seated next to me in a congregational meeting, my wife sees me close my eyes and slump. After a few seconds, the old ticker providentially revives “on its own.” It happens four times during that meeting. Maybe I’m just too inactive, I think. Perhaps if I get up and walk around a bit, I can get the juices flowing, and whatever is going on will clear up. While I’m pacing in the church lobby, one of the elders says he doesn’t think I look quite right. I call my physician, and he recommends that I get to the emergency room for an evaluation. I’m not to drive myself. In the emergency room, the surgeon hooks me up to a bunch of wires and asks a whole battery of questions to diagnose what’s going on. “Are there heart problems in your family?” “Yes, my dad died of a heart attack at 60. So did his dad.” “But do you feel pain?” “None.” “Did you feel dizzy?” “Not really. The room wasn’t spinning. I wasn’t nauseous.” “Did you pass out?” “Not really. I ...

If you’ve ever played a Bible trivia game, you likely know that “Do not fear” is a frequent command found throughout Scripture. I haven’t personally counted, but some say it can be found hundreds of times. Yet there’s also another frequent command. This command stands in stark contrast: “Fear the Lord.” Oh, fear the Lord, you his saints, for those who fear him have no lack! (Ps. 34:9) “And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.” (Matt. 10:28) Just what does this command mean? Are we called to fear the Lord in the same way that we fear harm or loss or some great evil? Are we called to feel terror before the Lord? Does this fear make us want to run and flee? Or might it mean something else? It depends. The Bible describes two different types of this fear. And as we’ll see, the main difference between the two is love. SERVILE FEAR The first type of fear is what theologians refer to as servile fear. This fea...

We have all heard evangelists quote from Revelation:  "Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come into him and dine with him, and he with Me" (Rev. 3:20).  Usually the evangelist applies this text as an appeal to the unconverted, saying: "Jesus is knocking at the door of your heart. If you open the door, then He will come in."   In the original saying, however, Jesus directed His remarks to the church. It was not an evangelistic appeal. So what? The point is that seeking is something that unbelievers do not do on their own. The unbeliever will not seek. The unbeliever will not knock. Seeking is the business of believers.  Jonathan Edwards said, "The seeking of the Kingdom of God is the chief business of the Christian life." Seeking is the result of faith, not the cause of it. When we are converted to Christ, we use language of discovery to express our conversion. We speak of finding Christ .  We may hav...

Of all the spiritual dangers to which Christ alerted His disciples, few of them outweigh His warnings concerning hypocrisy.   And our Lord left little room for confusion about what He meant. One need only read the Sermon on the Mount, where Christ calls out the dangers of hypocrisy when it invades prayer, fasting, giving to the poor, or practices of righteousness (Matt. 6:1–6, 16). He is even more explicit in the Seven Woes, where He hammers the hypocrisy of the Pharisees who “preach but do not practice”; do their religious deeds “to be seen”; love seats and titles of honour; are blind to worldlines, justice, and mercy; strain out gnats while swallowing camels, and appear clean without but are unclean within (Matt. 23:1–36).  This is the spiritual hazard that Christ described as “leaven,” which spreads invisibly and thoroughly (Luke 12:1). By talking about hypocrisy, Christ was invoking a familiar and graphic image to illustrate when you and I pretend to be something that we a...

God’s moral laws have been written on the heart of every human – giving all people a conscience to aid them in determining wrong from right ( Romans 2:14-15 ). When a person becomes a follower of Christ, he not only has God’s laws in his heart, but he also has the indwelling Holy Spirit to compel him toward living righteously ( Romans 8:11 ). This in no way means the Christian will stop sinning, but it does mean the Christian will become more aware of his own personal sin and have a genuine desire to do what is pleasing to Christ ( Romans 8:14-16 ). In many ways, it is after a person is saved that the struggle against sin really heats up in his life. All people are born with a nature that is bent toward sin, which is why children do not need to be taught how to misbehave – that comes naturally. When a person is converted, the sin nature does not disappear – and so the internal conflict begins in the life of every believer. The apostle Paul, who called himself a “bondservant to Chr...

In Deuteronomy 6:5, Moses admonishes the Israelites to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might” (ESV). But how well does the English translation “soul” in this verse convey the meaning of the underlying Hebrew word? The Merriam-Webster Dictionary offers eight definitions for the word. Since we can be certain Moses did not have a copy of this dictionary in hand, we must delve into the Hebrew text in hope of gaining fresh insight into this ancient verse. We can do this in four easy steps. Step 1: Make the Switch to Hebrew and Establish a Preliminary Definition Locating the Hebrew word behind the English word “soul” is made easy with The ESV English-Hebrew Reverse Interlinear Old Testament . In this resource, each word of the English translation is aligned with its corresponding Hebrew word. When we look directly below “soul” in Deut 6:5 we see that nephesh is the Hebrew word behind the translation. Now that we have this Hebrew ...

When Jesus walked upon the earth, multitudes of people were touched by His life and ministry. His Name became a household word because of the reputation of His miraculous deeds. Everyone was clamoring to be in His meetings because miracles and healings were happening everywhere He went. Like everyone else, they had heard the stories about Jesus. They had heard of the miracles that followed Him everywhere He went, and they had heard about other lepers that had been cleansed by His touch. They had no other hope for a cure as there was no medicine that could help their terrible plight. They knew if they had any chance at all of having a future it would only come through an encounter with Jesus. Jesus was on His way to Jerusalem and was passing through a village in the regions of Samaria and Galilee. The ten lepers heard that He was coming. Here was a potential source of healing, but could it happen for them? Or would it happen for them? Was this going to be a great testimony of vic...

First, let me admit to Paul that there are scholars who understand the law written on the heart in  Romans 2:15  and the law written on the heart in these new covenant passages like  Hebrews 10:14  as referring to the same experience of transformation by the Holy Spirit in the heart of the Christian . That view is more common today. Very few took that view historically. It is not my view. So, let me read those texts, say what my view is, try to explain what the implications are, and hopefully be of some help to Micah. Let’s start with  Romans 2:14 : “For when Gentiles , who do not have the law,  by nature ” — and I emphasize that phrase because it ties this passage in to Romans 1  where Paul was not dealing with redeemed people and what they do by virtue of the Holy Spirit in their heart, but things that they do by virtue of being created in a human nature or a male and female nature. So, let’s start over: “For when Gentiles, who do not h...