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Highlighting Personal Impact: Clara, the Book of Psalms and the Slovak Church

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In this post I’m going to tell you the story of Clara, who is a collage of four different students (all young ladies) who wrote research papers or Bachelor’s theses for me in the last couple of years. For each of them, the process of researching and writing turned in to a love for God’s Word and a desire to dig deeper to discover more about the depth of God’s lovingkindness and faithfulness as Scripture reveals it to us. You should be aware that since it’s a collage of my students, it’s a little idealistic. Still, it represents some of the things I love about teaching and real encouragement I’ve received from four different students.

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I Must also See Rome!

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In this series I’ve been trying to demonstrate that the book of Acts works like a story. It has a tension that finds resolution at the end. In other words, it has a climactic conclusion. In these next two posts, I want to show that nested in the story of Acts is another story. It’s the story of Paul’s journey to Rome via Jerusalem. This story has its own tension and resolution while at the same time bringing the story of Acts to its climactic resolution.

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A Work that You Will Not Believe

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The first of Paul’s significant speeches is recorded by Luke in Acts 13 when Paul speaks in the synagogue in Pisidian Antioch. The speech is interesting because it contains a cryptic quote of Habakkuk that is often preached horribly out of context. That’s too bad because it plays an important role in setting up the second half of the book of Acts.

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We’ve Only Just Begun: The Emergence of Paul

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At the beginning of the book of Acts Jesus said to his disciples,

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.

As we’ve worked our way through the first half of the book we’ve found that we have gone through each one of these elements. The Holy Spirit has come upon the disciples and they have been his witnesses in Jerusalem, in Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the eart. Since we’re reading Acts as a story it might seem like the tension of the plot has been resolved. Why isn’t the story over? While it’s true that the Gospel has been preached to “the ends of the earth,” there’s still more to be explored about this idea of the gospel to the ends of the earth.

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Rembrandt’s Stoning of St. Stephen

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I can’t really recall when I’ve ever looked at a classic piece of artwork and felt like I understood all those things about the lines and the blah, blah, blah, that you can read in some of the art critics’ commentaries. But as I was selecting a piece of art for my next theology post (The Story of the Book of Acts) I noticed something really interesting about Rembrandt’s piece on the Stoning of St. Stephen pictured above.

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