Dr Paul Allen

Psalm 23. “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake” (Psalm 23:1–3). I was 22 before I first saw one of the lines in this psalm. Now I’d seen it, but there is seeing and then there is seeing, right? Verse 3, “He leads me in paths of righteousness for his namesake.” I’d never seen “for his namesake” until I went to seminary. Well, yes, I’d seen it. I’d read the words, but you can read over phrases in the Bible a hundred times and they never hit you for what they mean. Open My Eyes to See Psalm 119:18, Deal bountifully with thy servant that I may live and observe thy word, open my eyes that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law. Isn’t it true that one of the best things about having two good eyes is the Bible, being able to read the Bible? But isn’t it true, too, that there is another pair of eyes that God has given us? The apostl...

“For we walk by faith, not by sight.” ( 2 Corinthians 5:7 ) Although this verse appears in parentheses in the King James Bible , it is a most important concept in Scripture and is the summary of an extensive passage that precedes it. Beginning with 2 Corinthians 4:8, Paul continually contrasts the seen and the unseen, finishing up with the admonition to “walk by faith.” “We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; Persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed” (vv. 8-9). Though we have trials on the outside, through faith we have inward triumph. “Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus . . . that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh” (vv. 10-11). Even though “death worketh in us,” that same persecution results in “life in you” (v. 12). Through faith we know “that he which raised up the Lord Jesus shall raise up us also by Jesus” (v. 14). “Though our outward man perish, yet...