Dr Paul Allen

In his second missionary journey, Paul made a sudden detour to Berea after the fledgling Christian church in Thessalonica was violently threatened. While Paul’s plan may have been disrupted, his pattern of ministry was not: in Berea, he continued his established method of reasoning from the Scriptures in the synagogues with Jews and other God-fearers.  There is not a lot told to us about the people of Berea except that they were “nobler than those in Thessalonica; they received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so” (Acts 17:11). Luke clearly admired their enthusiasm for the Word, and Christians for centuries after have admired the same. To this day, it is not odd to find their name adopted by congregations. In my own city, we have a Berean Baptist Church.  Colleges have taken on these Berean Jews as their namesake, and settlers in Kentucky hundreds of years ago named their small village Berea—now it’s the fastest-growing ci...

Christian worship takes place in the context of a covenant relationship between us and God. It is vital that we remember the roles we each take in that relationship: He is the Lord, and we are the servants. Therefore, worship should be an extremely humbling act, reminding us of our own creatureliness. After all, the god we are most tempted to worship besides the living and true God is the god of self. But real worship reorients us and corrects that idolatrous impulse by making it primarily about God and what He desires. Does the corporate worship we engage in on a weekly basis impress on us our status as servants of the living God? Or do we implicitly think that we are in control, that we can call the shots in this meeting with God? I think there are at least three things that we should ask to evaluate if our worship meets the biblical criteria of asserting the supremacy of our covenant King. WHO TALKS FIRST? The first question is simply this: Who talks first? Is it us or God? It ought...

If you’ve seen the classic 1987 movie The Princess Bride, you can’t fail to remember the word inconceivable. The brainy Sicilian, Vizzini, overuses the word as he, Fezzik, and Inigo Montoya, stealing away with Princess Buttercup, find themselves pursued by a mysterious Man in Black.  Time and again, the Man in Black overcomes obstacles to close the distance, and each time Vizzini exclaims to himself, “Inconceivable!” Eventually, Inigo Montoya objects in his heavy accent: “You keep on using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” I worry that the same could be said of the present generation of Christians who use three altogether different words—to glorify God. “To glorify God and to enjoy Him forever,” answers the child, the class, or the congregation, reciting the answer to the first question of the Westminster Shorter Catechism. “ This ministry exists to glorify God,” writes a group of founders crafting their mission statement. “I just wanted to glorify God,” ...

On May 14th, Pope Francis joined with Muslims to encourage all people on earth who believe in God, to pray to their God to end the Coronavirus. I think that when we hear of things like this an obvious question comes up in our minds, does God listen to every type of prayer or does he only listen to a specific type of person? Does He listen to people who are part of false religions? Psalm 145:18 says this, The Lord is near to all who call upon Him, To all who call upon Him in truth Psalm 145:18 In a section of this psalm devoted to pondering the grace of God in our lives, the psalmist declares the nearness of God to those who call upon Him. This pondering clearly propels David towards praise. The sheer notion of the nearness of God should cause our hearts to exult in praise to Him for stooping down towards sinful man. There is nothing more comforting than knowing that the Lord is near to us when we call out to Him. That no matter what we are facing and no matter how di...

So when we read the Bible we have the sense that we are actually listening to the voice of God. He's speaking to us, and so we say as you remember Samuel was taught to say, "Speak Lord, because your servant is listening." In some ways, that's the most difficult thing in the world for us and it's becoming more difficult because we're living in a world where young people are educated to have opinions. I've noticed over the years that I've taught in Bible College there has been a tremendous shift in people's ability to write because they're not encouraged to write. They are encouraged to have opinions, and the more they are able to articulate themselves and have opinions, the more impressive they become. And hardly anybody notices that what that transformation in society is doing is producing a nation of people who talk but hardly ever listen and you see that in ordinary life, don't you? People want to talk to you, but if they say as t...

It’s possible to hear what is being said but not listen, to watch but not see, to be present and yet absent. In such a condition, we may miss important messages meant for us. As Ezra read God ’s instructions to the people of Judah, “All the people listened attentively to the Book of the Law” (Neh. 8:3). Their attention to the explanation produced understanding (v. 8), which resulted in their repentance and revival. In another situation in Samaria , Philip, after the persecution of the believers broke out in Jerusalem (Acts 8:1), reached out to the Samaritan people . The crowd not only observed the miraculous signs he did, but they also “paid close attention to what he said” (v. 6). “So there was great joy in that city” (v. 8). The mind can be like a wandering adventurer that misses a lot of excitement close by. Nothing deserves more attention than words that help us discover the joy and wonder of our Father in heaven. —Lawrence Darmani Lord, our minds are so prone to di...