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My Grandpa, Jerry Osborne, faithfully served the Lord for 46 years as a pastor committed to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. After he passed away, his sermon notes and preaching Bible were stored away in a large old-fashioned trunk in the garage where they remained undisturbed and quiet for nearly 20 years. Then, as providence would have it, on the night of July 4^th (one of Jerry’s favorite holidays), 2015, that garage was set ablaze by the embers of illegal fireworks. I had always intended to s...

My dear grandfather, Pastor Jerry Osborne, hated Greek class and failed to receive his seminary degree because he just could not make the grade. What a difference 70 years or so makes. I am currently taking second-year Greek and I just can’t get enough of it! One might say that I am simply more inclined to languages than he was, but I am not so convinced. While natural ability is certainly helpful, the modern learning strategies for learning Greek are so completely different than they were ...

The Bible confronts us with the following provocation in James 4:14, “For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away.” This can be a discouraging, even depressing thought. A person’s life is like water, slowly boiling away under the heat of daily trials and monotonous tasks, and after all is said and done, there’s not much to show for it. The water is gone, and so is the mist of vapor that once gave evidence to it. Much of human existen...

“And he sat down, and called the twelve, and saith unto them, If any man desire to be first, the same shall be last of all, and servant of all.” Mark 9:35 

Although we as Christians would give assent to the words of Jesus, there is something about His Kingdom which is entirely beyond us, even contrary to us. Contrary to our vision of a kingdom, contrary to our desires, contrary to everything we value and strive for, contrary to our self absorbed and self obsessed Facebooking and tweeting...