A number of years ago, I took a preaching course with Haddon Robinson. One of the most helpful things he taught us was a way to take some pressure off sermon preparation and wind up with a better sermon. The…
Read More Preachers: Here’s a one-hour change that will improve your sermons (and lower your stress)
What are your expectations in ministry? Would you say they are high or low? Optimistic, realistic, or even pessimistic? How can we right-size our expectations? That's the focus of this post.
One week ago, on Tuesday, August 26th, Dr. Stan Fowler, long-time theology professor at Heritage Theological Seminary, graduated from earth to heaven. I had the privilege of working with Stan during my years at Heritage. Stan was a “scholar in…
Ezra 10 Chapter 10 continues the narrative, picking up what happened as Ezra prays a prayer of deep contrition and confession. As he was “weeping and casting himself down before the house of God”, a great assembly of Jews—men, women,…
Ezra 9 Ezra doesn’t get long to savour the amazing goodness of God in granting him favour before the Persian king and bringing the exiles safely back to Jerusalem. Four months after the sacrifices are offered (compare 7:8 and 10:9),…
Ezra 8 Chapter 8 reads like an entry from Ezra’s personal journal; in vivid detail he chronicles the actions he took to gather and lead the company of exiles back to Jerusalem in the seventh year of king Artaxerxes. Ezra…
Ezra 7 Almost 80 years after Zerubbabel’s return, and 60 years after the completion and dedication of the Temple, in the seventh year of king Artaxerxes (7:7), we are introduced to Ezra and his part of God’s story. Ezra, whose…
Ezra 6 The opening words of chapter 6, pick up where chapter 5 left off. Tattenai and his fellow governors had requested King Darius to order a search of the royal archives and issue a ruling on the legitimacy of…
Ezra 5 The opening verse of chapter 5 introduces us to two prophets who God uses to jump start the rebuilding project after it had languished for years—from the early years of Cyrus’ reign (a twenty-year period: 550 – 530…
Ezra 4 The beginning of the reconstruction of the Temple, signaled by loud shouts “heard far away” (3:13), garners the attention of “the peoples of the lands” (3:3). Some of these neighbouring peoples, who are “adversaries of Judah and Benjamin”…
Rick and Linda Reed 