Today's post is by guest writer Lucas Ward.

Unlike 1&2 Corinthians, which are two separate letters written at different times about different topics to the same group of people, 1&2 Samuel was originally just one cohesive book which got chopped in two for reasons that are lost to history.  The same holds true for the books of Kings and Chronicles.  It's pretty clear that one of the major themes of Samuel is the contrast between the two men anointed by Samuel, at the command of God, to be king over Israel.  One was chosen according to man's criteria, since Israel wanted a king to be like the nations.  Really, the only description given of Saul in 1 Sam. 9 is that he was the most handsome man in Israel and he was the tallest man in Israel.  In 10:24 Samuel asks the people, "Do you see him whom the LORD has chosen?  There is none like him among all the people."  But this man who looked the part did not have the courage, leadership, or moral character to be a good king, as his story shows us through the rest of 1 Samuel.  Then there was the man whom God chose by His criteria, looking into his heart (1 Sam. 16:7).  While David was far from perfect, his purpose in life was to serve God.  When he needed to repent, he modeled for all future generations of believers what true repentance was.  His reign was a golden age and became a symbol for the Messiah who was coming. 
 
So, clearly, one of the themes of this book is the enormous difference between how man would choose versus how God chooses.  In essence, it is a historical illustration of Isa. 55:9  "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts."
 
Now, take that dichotomy, played out between two of God's anointed, and add to it the fact that nearly 28% of the times the words anoint and anointed are used in the OT, they are found in the book of Samuel.  By page count in my Bible, Samuel is less than 7% of the OT.  So, anointed is used four times as often as one might expect in this book.  Now remember that Messiah just means The Anointed One.  Could it be that Samuel was meant not just as an illustration of Is. 55:9, but as a reminder to the Jews during the time of Daniel's fourth kingdom (Rome, during which God would create His kingdom) that the Messiah might not look like they expected?  Instead of an earthly, physical king ruling on a physical throne and ruling the world, Samuel reminds that God's plans might encompass more.  It was to remind them that things are always better when we let God choose our kings, rather than when we choose them.  Perhaps a study of this theme could help us convince Premillennialists of their errors.  For me, the lesson is a reminder to let God choose and follow His plan.  It is bound to be better than my meanderings.
 
Jer. 10:23  "I know, O LORD, that the way of man is not in himself, that it is not in man who walks to direct his steps."      
 
Lucas Ward           

I just finished another field vision test—the one where you put your head in a bowl and press the clicker every time you see a light.  Although I don’t do as well as I used to, the fact that I see any one of those little pinprick lights at all is excellent.
            If you’ve had one of these tests, you know that the patient focuses on a central orange light while white lights of various sizes and brightness blink in different places around the bowl.  In spite of my optic nerve being over half destroyed, I still see at least some light in most areas with only two large blind spots.  For me it is more about how large the lights are and how bright.  Most of what I miss are smaller and fainter.  The damage from nearly thirty surgeries of various kinds with bright lights shining down over the operating table for hours, chronic follicular conjunctivitis caused by strong medications needed for much worse maladies than that, pressure spikes, and iris bombe makes those things difficult. 
            We must be careful not to damage our spiritual vision in a similar way.  When you’ve been hurt, especially more than once by people you have been taught to trust, it’s easy to view the world with something we call “a jaundiced eye.”  Innocence gives way to cynicism, but instead of fighting it we call it “maturity” or “hard-won wisdom.”  That makes it okay to expect the worst, assume the worst, and judge the worst.  It gives us permission to snap with sarcasm, snort with disdain, and view with contempt.  It makes a lack of trust not only justifiable but preferable.  After all, who wants to be called a fool for trusting the wrong person?
            Certainly God does not want us to be “children tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine,” Eph 4:14.  He doesn’t want us to lack common sense, 1 Cor 14:20.  He expects us to “grow up in all things,” Eph 4:15.  He expects us to be “wise as serpents,” Matt 10:16.  But none of that means he wants a people who are skeptical, suspicious and misanthropic by nature.  Does any of that describe the Savior we follow?  Like him, we are also to be “harmless as doves.”
            Do a field vision test on yourself this morning.  Do some situations raise your hackles?  Do certain topics push your buttons?  Do you find yourself unable to see anything good in certain people?  Maybe your vision has been damaged in those areas. 
            I cannot regain any of my lost vision—once it’s gone, it’s gone.  But all of us can regain our spiritual vision.  If you are blind when you view certain people and issues around you, you are probably blind to other more important things as well.  A man once said of Jesus, Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a man born blind, John 9:32.  That blind man had his eyes opened to more than just the world around him.  Suddenly he knew even better than his religious superiors that this man was truly the Messiah.  Why here is the amazing thing, he said to those men, you don’t know where he came from yet he opened my eyes, v 30.
            If you believe in him, as you have so often said you do, he can open your eyes too, no matter how many times you have been hurt, no matter how many times you have closed them against the light of his word.  All you have to do is let him.
 
Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the LORD his God, who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, who keeps faith forever; who executes justice for the oppressed, who gives food to the hungry. The LORD sets the prisoners free; the LORD opens the eyes of the blind. The LORD lifts up those who are bowed down; the LORD loves the righteous. Psa 146:5-8
 
Dene Ward

Scripture recognizes both our ignorance ("they do not know what they are doing") and our weakness ("he remembers that we are dust"), but it dignifies us by holding us accountable for our thoughts and actions. 

John Stott, Authentic Christianity

In our old place, we had an 80 x 80 garden.  We purposefully planted over a dozen different kinds of seeds and that is the only reason those particular things grew.  But not everything works that way.  We didn’t plant the grass or the dandelions or the oak trees.  We didn’t plant the dollar weed or the stinging nettles or the slash pines.  Yet somehow, whether the wind scattering puff balls or the squirrels burying pine nuts and acorns, or the coats of furry animals grabbing onto burrs and pods as sticky as Velcro and depositing them yards or even miles from the original plants, those seeds were sown.  Planting is not always on purpose.  Sometimes it’s accidental.
            God expects us to plant the seed of the Word, recycling what was put into us.  “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations,” Jesus said in Matt 28:20, followed immediately by, “teaching them to observe all things I have commanded you,” the first of which was to “Go make disciples.”  I am afraid we wait for personal evangelism systems to come our way before we even try; not realizing that we plant something every day, sometimes in spite of ourselves. 
            God has expected his people to teach the succeeding generations since the beginning.  Noah preached for 120 years while he built that ark, and achieved nothing, right?  No, he saved his family.  I have known preachers who were so busy preaching and holding personal Bible studies that they completely ignored the prospects in their own homes.  I have known Christians who expected the church to do their work for them, and then wondered what happened when their children fell away.  “Fathers raise your children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord” (Eph 6:4), not churches, not Bible class teachers, not even mothers—FATHERS.  That’s where the buck stops with God.
            Churches are taught to pass the gospel along. If we behave ourselves as we ought, even our mere existence “makes known the manifold wisdom of God” to the world (Eph 3:10).  The teaching is internal as well. The older women are to train the younger, and the older men the younger men (Titus 2:2-8).  Preachers are told to train others to preach (2 Tim 2:2).  God expects his people to be farmers, planting the seed year after year, on purpose.  Yet we plant accidentally too.
            You plant it in your children every time they see you make an important decision.  You plant it in them every time they see you study your Bible and pray.  You plant it in them with home Bible studies, with family prayers, and even with your comments as you live your life.  Do they see thanksgiving or griping?  Do they hear love and appreciation of other Christians or backbiting and gossip?
            You plant it in your friends and neighbors when they see you in the car every Sunday morning without fail.  You plant it in them when they see how you handle the trials of life, or even the small nuisances.  You plant it in them when you lend a hand, even unasked.  You plant it in them when you say good things about your church family.  You plant it in them when you invite them to a Bible study or a group service.  What kinds of things do you bother to invite your friends to except the things that matter most to you?  . 
            Even when we think we aren’t, we are always planting.  Even fallow fields do not stay empty.  Grass, weeds, and even volunteer vegetables spring up untended.  “Fallow” doesn’t mean bare, it means unused or idle.  A fallow heart simply doesn’t care what comes up.  Sowing the seed is a little bit like setting an example—you do it whether you intend to or not.  You are planting something with every word and action.  Make sure it’s the gospel.
 
Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life. And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up. Gal 6:7-9
 
Dene Ward

Shortly after we bought our new home, our son's apartment reached the end of its lease, forcing him to decide whether to renew the lease or try to find a more economical place to live.  When he first got there, the rent was more than reasonable, especially for a beach town, but thirteen years and a ton of inflation later, it has tripled.  As a bachelor working a full time job and preaching full time as well, he has no time for the lawn care, home maintenance and repair that a homeowner must take care of.  Instead he signs a one year lease and lets the landlord handle all of that, and is able to move as it suits him.  We, on the other hand, signed a thirty year mortgage and take care of it all.
            Some people view Christianity that way.  They sign a lease when times get tough, expecting the Landlord to fix the broken things.  When times are better, their lack of complete commitment shows in less devotion and service or even a complete failure to renew the lease. 
God expects, not a thirty year mortgage, but a lifetime commitment.  He demands all of you—your deeds (Col 3:17), your thoughts (Phil 4:8), your very being (Gal 2:20).  Nothing less will do.
          Does that happen the minute you come out of the water?  No.  But it cannot happen if you have not made that ritual commitment, any more than you are a homeowner until you sign the papers.  That is your commitment and for the rest of your life you strive to live up to it, growing stronger as the days pass, giving more and more of yourself every day.
          If you haven't made that commitment at all, maybe today is the day to start again, not by being baptized again, for we are all still learning and growing at that point, but by better recognizing what God requires and getting on with it.  It is never too late as long as you can draw breath.
          God is not your landlord.  He holds the lien on you, a lien you will never be able to pay back.  Thank him for his grace and give him your life in gratitude.
 
We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin (Rom 6:4-7).
 
Dene Ward

Of all the disappointments in our new home, the range had to be one of the biggest.  I am a cook.  Not necessarily a good cook, but someone who likes to cook.  An adventurous cook who will try things that no one else will either because it is too complicated, takes too long, or has strange ingredients or procedures.  So I walked into this house and found a 21 year old glass top econo-model that didn't even have a light in the oven.  Despite being that old, it still had the new "safety feature" that automatically turned off the elements when it decided it was on too high.  Do you know how hard it is to boil water with those things?  And I nearly ruined the Christmas fudge because it wouldn't come to boil in a timely fashion and I wound up having to judge it by looks alone, long after I would have been finished with my old electric coil-top.  It turned out edible but too soft.
            And the oven?  I put a thermometer in there and told it to heat up to 220.  It preheated up to 278, and then dropped to 176 before it turned back on, heating itself back up to 260 before kicking off again!  No wonder my Thanksgiving dinner was a bit off.  The apple pie, which looked gorgeous on top, had a completely raw bottom crust. That has never happened to me in nearly 50 years!  This thing had to go!
            So we talked to our wonderful appliance store brothers (church family, that is) and were told that even the new coil tops had that awful "safety feature" and they no longer recommended them.  It seemed that the only choice that was really a choice was either gas or induction.  Down here in Florida, gas stoves heat up the kitchen way too much.  And then there is all that political nonsense going on about them too.  So we opted for the induction.
            The first thing we found out when they gave us a magnet to take home to test all of our cookware, was that we had to chuck practically every item in the cabinet and buy a completely new set—which raised the already too expensive price of the range even more. 
            Then the oven came—three weeks later!  (The microwave still hasn't shown up.)  The young men who delivered it, gave a quick rundown of how it worked and I thought, "Well, that's not bad."  Then I sat down and read the manual and nearly cried I was so overwhelmed.  I would have to learn to cook all over again, and a lot of hard-earned knowledge would be useless.  Well, it's been a few weeks now and I am doing better, but it's not easy to have to cook with a user's manual in one hand and a recipe in the other.  Then after dinner I must make copious notes on each recipe.  But maybe by next Thanksgiving I will be able to bake a decent apple pie again.
            My husband has been very patient as I learn.  No complaints if something is a little over done or takes longer than expected.  He knows what I am dealing with and he knows that at our ages, change and learning new things is much more difficult.
            Sometimes we forget that with our new brothers and sisters.  It seems the baptistery waters have hardly stopped sloshing when we expect them to know things automatically.  Too many times a Bible class teacher will say something like, "We won't go over that part because we all know it."   (I have had new converts complain about this—they feel purposely left in the dark.)  And we expect their usual behavior to change immediately as if a switch has been turned on.  It doesn't work like that.  How long did it take me to learn what I know?  And if I hadn't been raised to know what not to do, how long would it take me to break a bad habit?    Even Heb 5:12 says that these things are learned by "constant practice."  Just how long is "constant?"  Longer than some of us seem to think.
            Let no man despise your youth, 1 Tim 4:12, Paul told Timothy.  He might have meant his chronological age in that passage, but tell me it cannot apply to a Christian age too.  Think about all those passages about children in the gospels.  See that you despise not one of these little ones…, Matt 18:18.  When Jesus spoke these words, he also said, But whoever shall cause one of these little ones that believe on me to stumble, it is profitable for him that a great millstone should be hanged about his neck, and that he should be sunk in the depth of the sea (Matt 18:6).  Did you notice that"  "One of these little ones who believe."   "Children" is simply a metaphor for newer believers.
            Sometimes new Christians catch on easily.  Maybe they had a good family with good morals when they were growing up.  But some did not.  Some are making changes as large as night and day.  Some never held a Bible in their lives until they ran into a Christian who taught them.  Remember the last time you had to learn something brand new.  Be as patient as you expected others to be with you.  Computers, smart phones, and now this induction range are all big changes for me, things I am not a natural at and have to work hard to use.  But my children and my husband are patiently teaching and helping. 
Don't give up on the babes.  If you find it difficult to be patient, just think about that millstone.  While they are learning the basics, you can learn a little longsuffering.  Perhaps that is a brand new concept for you!
 
Now we that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak, and not to please ourselves. Let each one of us please his neighbor for that which is good, unto edifying. For Christ also pleased not himself; but, as it is written, The reproaches of them that reproached thee fell upon me (Rom 15:1-3).
 
Dene Ward

While the boys were still at home, we raised pigs and chickens.  The chickens we kept mainly for their eggs, but when one stopped producing well, it was time for chicken and dumplings.  The pigs were meant for meat from the time they were piglets.  We named the males Hamlet and the females Baconette to remind us.  You don’t want to get close to an animal destined for the dining table, but then adult pigs are so disgusting there isn’t much danger of that anyway.
            Slaughtering chickens is not quite as traumatic as slaughtering pigs.  They are birds instead of mammals, and they are small and don’t bleed as much.  We never shielded the boys from these things.  They needed to understand where our food came from.  I think there are some city people who must think meat is left in the meat markets in the night by elves the way they go on about the cruelty of ranchers and hunters.  When you understand where it comes from, you respect the animals and appreciate them much more than you would otherwise.  Both of our boys love animals and treat them kindly but they are strong-minded enough to understand necessity too.
            Lucas learned that respect in a more difficult way than we intended.  When it was time to put down a pig, Keith got up early, killed the animal and bled him as quickly as possible, and then loaded it on the trailer for the trip to the butcher.  Three hundred pounds of dead weight meant he needed help. 
            When Lucas was finally big enough to actually help load, he went out with his dad to the pigpen and soberly watched the proceedings.  Mindful of the effect it might have on him, Keith quickly poured sand on the blood.  Then he backed the truck and trailer over to the pigpen gate and Lucas crawled in on the other side to help load the pig—stepping right into that camouflaged pool of blood.  It rose around his ankles, warm and sticky.  After his dad left for the butcher, he came in to wash his feet, a little green around the gills and pale as a ghost.  He really understood the sacrifice that pig had made to feed our family.
            I suppose that is why the Lord intended for us to have a weekly reminder of the sacrifice he made for us, in all its gore.  Too often in asking forgiveness we are like the city folks buying meat at the grocery store, not really understanding all that made that purchase possible.  We need to come to grips with the fact that our actions caused a death, a particularly horrible death.  Even more than that, we are the reason for it yet again every time we sin.  The way we treat our failings as something to laugh about or shrug off as trivial, we probably need to stand beneath that cross and step ankle deep in the still warm blood of Jesus to jolt us back into reality. 
            Sin is just as horrible as slaughter.  In fact, it caused a slaughter which will prevent another one, but not if we don’t have enough appreciation for it to make ourselves do better.
 
He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and Jehovah has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed, yet when he was afflicted he opened not his mouth; as a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and as a sheep that before its shearers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth…Yet it pleased Jehovah to bruise him; he has put him to grief: when you shall make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of Jehovah shall prosper in his hand. Isa 53:5-7,10
 
Dene Ward

My jogging time has been cut drastically.  What happened?  My music studio began a boom that resulted in two dozen lessons a week with the associated paperwork, bookkeeping, lesson prep, and concerto and art song accompaniment practice, often as much as 90 pages—I couldn’t even get through it all once in an hour of playing time.  I no longer had 8-10 hours a week to spend jogging and exercising. So I adjusted the five mile jog down to three, and the exercise to thirty minutes a day instead of 45. But I was still exercising, wasn’t I?  The Lord understands if life gets a little busy.  Maybe, but He won’t alter the formula of calories in/calories out just for me.
            Then foot injuries with the corrective surgeries that followed slowed me down to a walk, and now a chronic illness brings along with it activity restrictions—no exertion, no lifting, no bending over among others.  Suddenly jogging and heavy exercise is a thing of the past, but it wasn’t my fault.  I was doing the best I could.  Yes, but…
            You can look at me and see the results.  It’s pretty obvious.  Returning from one of the many surgeries I have had, I walked into the ladies room and nearly ran over a sixty-something lady with gray hair, all bent over as if the weight of the world were on her.  “Excuse me, ma’am,” I said, then nearly fainted when I realized it was a mirror and I was talking to myself.  At that point I was barely over fifty.
            But it didn’t happen overnight.  Gradually I had to cut back on the exercise time and gradually the weight piled back on.  Gradually the nearly constant pain put lines in my face and grayed my hair.  Suddenly, I am not only back where I thought I would never be again, but even worse.
            When my problem became apparent, we looked around for a way to fix it.  I now have an elliptical machine in the middle of my kitchen.  I can set the resistance to something my body can handle without harm, and there is no danger of stepping in a hole or tripping over a limb or vine when I “walk,” as often happens these days.  It isn’t quite the same thing, but it is far better than sitting in a chair all day.  My fitness, which will never again be like it was during those years of jogging, is increasing, probably less than one fencepost at a time, but increasing nevertheless.
            Losing your spiritual fitness happens the same way.  It can start when you are suddenly satisfied with your progress and think you have arrived.  You can think that while still saying the words I have heard out of so many mouths, “I know I am not perfect.”  It isn’t just Satan who excels at fooling us. 
            The Hebrew writer reminds us, We must pay closer attention to what we have heard lest we drift away from it, Heb 2:1.  You can wander back one fencepost down the road and still see your way back pretty easily.  But one fencepost will lead to another and another until you have rounded a curve and the goal is no longer in sight.  When you can’t see it, it seems much farther away than it really is, and that’s when you give up—that’s when you say, “Might as well go a little further.  It can’t be any worse.”
            Yes, it can.  You can get caught back there, time ending on a day when you meant to turn around and head back where you belonged, but suddenly it’s too late.  God won’t reset the clock for us either.  So turn back now, while you still can.  Just go one fencepost at a time and you will soon be back around that corner within sight of the goal, making progress, perhaps not as quickly as you would like, but in the right direction, which is all that really counts in the end.
 
"Seek the LORD while he may be found; call upon him while he is near; let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the LORD, that he may have compassion on him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. Isa 55:6-7
 
Dene Ward
 

I grew up reading and playing the piano instead of playing outside where it was dangerous to someone who couldn’t see well.  As a result, I was about as physically un-fit as anyone could possibly be.  Even after a genius of a doctor fitted my strangely shaped eyeballs with contact lenses more or less successfully in my mid-teens and I could finally see what lay in front of my feet, I had grown accustomed to sedentary activities and preferred them.
            Then I had babies, gained thirty pounds and could hardly walk across the house—which is not exactly large—without gasping for air.  I decided it was time to change things.  Keith had jogged since I had known him.  My closest friend, who lived just across the cornfield from me, also jogged.  Surely I could do this, too, I thought.  But I did not want to be embarrassed by how I looked doing it or by failure if indeed I couldn’t. 
            We lived well off the highway on property not ours, but whose owner allowed us to use it in exchange for the improvements we made to it—tearing down and hauling off a dilapidated frame house, digging a well and septic tank, and putting up a power pole—and for watching the property and livestock for him since he lived a half mile away.  We were surrounded by his fields, including a small hay field and larger cow pasture.  Neither of those could be seen from either the highway or the neighbors’ homes.  So I drove around the fields and measured them with the odometer.  The hayfield perimeter measured a quarter mile and the pasture three-quarters.  Now I could keep track of my progress.
            Nathan was four, so that first day I set him on a hay wagon in the middle of the hayfield and jogged the quarter mile around.  When I finished I thought I might pass out, or die, or both.  The next morning I could hardly get out of bed, but I did and after Keith left for the meetinghouse I jogged again, but this time I went all the way around plus one fencepost further.  Once again I survived.  The next day I went two fenceposts past one lap, and the next day three.
            The hayfield was a rectangle and I was adding my fenceposts on a long side.  When I finally reached the end of that side, I added the whole short side at once making one and a half laps.  The day after that I added half the other long side, then the other half and the last short side, making two whole laps.  Once I could do three laps I moved to the cow pasture.  One lap around the pasture plus one around the hayfield and I had completed a whole mile.  I could hardly believe it.
            I made that progress in one month and lost ten pounds without even trying.  Within six months I was jogging on the highway, a five mile circuit six days a week.  I had lost thirty pounds.  I was never fast.  The best I ever did was the tortoise-like pace of 5 miles in 47 minutes, but it wasn’t the 47 minutes that got me back to my front door that day, it was the fact that I kept going.
            Sometimes we expect too much of ourselves.  I have known new Christians who expected their lives to change instantly the moment they came up out of the water.  They thought sinful attitudes would suddenly morph into godly ones and temptation would be a thing of the past.  Once the adrenaline rush wore off and life became routine, their lack of speedy progress discouraged them.  No one would expect a person such as I was to run five miles the first time she ever tried, but for some reason we expect that in our spiritual progress.  We do have a lot of powerful help, but powerful doesn’t mean “miraculous.” 
            We seem to expect it of others too.  If a person has a failing as a young man, it will be held against him forever.  The fact that he improves is seldom noticed, but let him slip one time, even if it has been ten years, and suddenly everyone is saying, “There he goes again.”  Many of my brethren would never have allowed Peter to reach the eldership for exactly that reason.  Peter’s impetuosity was a problem for him, as was fear of what others thought, even after Pentecost (Gal 2), but he did improve, and those people noticed instead of saying “again,” or he would never have been an elder.
            Do you think others didn’t have problems after their conversion?  Look at the admonitions in Romans 14 and 1 Corinthians 8.  They were still suffering from a background of idolatry.  They couldn’t eat that meat without “eating as a thing sacrificed to an idol” (8:7).  That problem did not disappear overnight.
            Unless we are willing to say that we have reached perfection, none of us believes that it’s how fast we progress that matters.  We all believe that it’s the improvement that God judges.  Some of us have gone farther than others, but if we have stopped and are leaning on the fence, perfectly content with where we are, God will not be pleased with us.  God rewards only the one who is progressing, even if it’s just one fencepost at a time.
 
Brethren, I count not myself yet to have laid hold: but one thing I do, forgetting the things which are behind, and stretching forward to the things which are before, I press on toward the goal unto the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. Phil 3:13-14
 
Dene Ward
 

First, please note:  "Second Edition."  This book is written by various members of the Florida College Bible faculty, and was intended as their own textbook to the class "Survey of the Pauline Epistles" which was first offered in 2018.  At that time the book included only essays on each epistle so that it could be printed in time for classes.  But over the years essays on "Pauline thought" were added.  These include Paul's view of God, Scripture, Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit, Humanity, Sin, and Salvation, and several other topics, all taken not just from one epistle but all of them as an aggregate.  Indeed, the first edition anticipated the second and would have been that if not for the time factor.
            Second, do not think "textbook."  That may be an unfortunate description of a book that is far more and will be used often as the reader grows in his knowledge of the Word and begins to teach more.  The second edition opens with the newer essays and lays a good foundation that enhances the essays on the epistles.  Those essays, just as in the first edition, cover each epistle thoroughly with things like date, culture, themes and content, giving you both a new appreciation and possibly even a new viewpoint for each of those books.  This should be thought of as a necessary book for any Bible class teacher.  It can profoundly affect his ability to teach each epistle accurately as he learns its context and purpose.
            As with any collection, the essays are not equal.  Some are better written than others.  But the book is well worth your time and money overall because most are excellent or even better than that.  Just to name a few you do not want to miss:  David McClister on "Paul's View of the Holy Spirit," Tom Hamilton on "Paul's View of the Local Congregation," and Nathan Ward's "Paul's View of Humanity, Sin, and Salvation."  In the essays on each epistle, David McClister will let you know that yes indeed, there is a reason to study Philemon after all.  And leaving any of the others out in this list does not mean that they are not worthy of your attention just that I did not want to list almost every essay in the book!
            From the Pen of Paul is published by Florida College Press.
 
Dene Ward