Jason Locke's Blog

The final installment in this Spiritual Arsenal series deals with scripture. Listening to God's word as spoken in the ancient biblical texts is a key weapon in your spiritual fight. Jesus defended himself from the devil with it, "One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God."  By quoting scripture in his resistance, Jesus was modeling precisely how you can live on God's word. Just how exactly does God's word function in your spiritual battle against evil? Some folks will of course immediately protest that they can hear the Word of God through avenues other than the Bible. There's no doubt about this fact. God can speak through a sunset, in a piece of music, via the touch of another human being, or even through a donkey if needed. There's no serious argument about this. One could also point out that Jesus is the living Word of God. That's what John says in John 1:1. It's the message of the Hebrews write...

Just finished a preaching series on First Thessalonians. I hadn't spent much time in this, the oldest of Paul's letters, since seminary. According to the first verse, he co-wrote it with Timothy and Silas. We think they probably wrote First Thess from Corinth not too long after Paul had to leave Thessalonica (also known as Thessaloniki or Salonika) because of persecution. People have access to all kinds of commentaries and resource materials on First Thessalonians. Some of them are good. Others are not worthy of attention. As an approachable commentary, I like Beverly Gaventa's little volume from the Interpretation commentary series. Thought I would share a couple quick reflections on Paul's letter. I was refreshed by a new look at this short letter and enjoyed sharing 5 messages with our church. I'll share a couple things that stood out and encouraged me as I lived in this text. Here's the first: (1) God is incredibly pleased with us when we tune our ea...