Teaching through Psalms over the course of the last months has been a joy. Yet, it reminded me of one of the greatest challenges in Bible study: the challenge is to listen to the Word of God rather than simply using the Psalms as a book of verses to solve a random set of personal psychological challenges.

The temptation of Jesus Christ is among the most important accounts in Scripture. It displays how Jesus Christ the Messiah was tempted under hard conditions and succeeded where Adam failed (Romans 5:12–19). It displays how our Savior overcame the Enemy without the use of His divine power or authority, but simply by relying upon the word and authority of the Bible (Matthew 4:4, 7, 10). The way every human should. It is also one of the clearest passages illustrating spiritual warfare in the whole Bible (Ephesians 6:10–17). Satan squares off personally with the newly recognized Messiah (Matthew 4:3). He has home field advantage, and his opponent is weekend from hunger and thirst that has been building up and assaulting His senses and his resources for the past forty days (Matthew 4:2). In so many ways, this is Satan's game to lose.

Just hearing the word "freedom" elicits an emotional reaction. It is the cry of every student on the first day of summer break. It is in the sigh of a person who retires after a long career of steady and faithful labor. It is the sentiment of everyone who has been freed from oppression, and my eyes still mist over when I sing "Let freedom ring!" in our national anthem. Freedom is beautiful. Freedom from oppression, freedom from slavery (Galatians 5:1).

“Life is pain. Anyone who says differently is selling something.” – The Princess Bride

This is one of the many lines from The Princess Bride that I have passively committed to memory along with “Inconceivable!” and “Anybody want a peanut?”

True stories and fictional stories. This is so much the case that entertainment is among the biggest industries in the modern world, and it is all stories. This is true for every kind of entertainment. A game of chess is a sort of a story played out before your eyes - which kingdom will win the war? The story of a great chess player like Magnus Carlson or Bobby Fischer can capture the imagination of the world.

The movie Tombstone tells the story of the friendship between Doc Holliday and Wyatt Earp. They stood by each other through thick and thin, took risks, and beat the bad guys together. The movie ends with a scene in a hospital where Doc is dying of consumption and Wyatt visits him (apparently weekly). In this final visit Wyatt brings a gift. A book that he has written entitled: My Friend Doc. Whatever else Doc Holliday was or did, to Wyatt Earp, Doc was his friend. That was more important than anything else.

Watching my kids grow up is one of the greatest blessings of this life. Seeing those precious little babies grow from infants to toddlers, children, adolescents, and now mature young men and women has been truly amazing. I am so proud of each of them, and getting to know them as adults is the sweetest thing about getting older. (3 John 4)

The police in the United States have long had the simple motto — “To Serve and Protect.” They are authority figures, they are crime fighters, and they are there for the protection and safety of the city. I have witnessed these courageous men and women doing their job with humility and wisdom in some of the most difficult and painful situations. They are among the people I most admire in the modern world.

  In the novel Great Expectations, a young orphan boy is blessed with an unknown benefactor who helps him financially on his way to becoming a gentleman, a very expensive endeavor. He is totally in the dark about the identity and intention of this mystery supporter, and he spends most of the time in the dark - wrongly guessing at one person or another.

                As a pastor I spend a lot of time reading the Bible, studying, thinking, and praying. I interact with as many viewpoints as I can, on the chance that there is something that I have missed. This means that I spend a good deal of time reading people with whom I have fundamental disagreements, and those disagreements can yield a great deal of passion and emotion. This is not entertainment, this is the truth of the living God. It concerns salvation of souls and living in a way that pleases God. The stakes are high. It is serious and it can make us very serious people.  What is the other alternative? The admonitions for Christians in general, and pastors specifically are serious warnings indeed. Not to be taken lightly. Yes, it is no wonder the scripture exhorts us to approach the decision to teach the Bible with gravity.

    Thomas Hardey was an English novelist who was also a notorious fatalist. His novels, Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Jude the Obscure, and Return of the Native were some of my favorites in high school, and they had a tremendous effect on me. The characters in Hardy's novels are all doomed to unwanted fates. They all work to overcome that fate, and they all fail. These books were instrumental in disproving fatalism for me. They always leave the main character in the same spot...stuck, hopeless, and asking (in essence) "Why, God?"

       I was sitting in my Introduction to Music History class during my freshman year as a music student at CSU when I first learned what makes a masterpiece. I expected this class to cover esoteric and hidden music from Western history. Much to my surprise, we covered Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Stravinski, and Philip Glass. I had already heard all those composers. When would we get to the obscure stuff? My professor, dressed in a suit, with his shirt half untucked, and a bow tie holding together the ensemble.  Imparted some great wisdom that has stuck with me ever since: “You know, Brad, the classics are the classics for a reason!” I thought getting a music education would mean that I would know all the obscure composers and compositions, and when asked what my favorite composer was, I could half close my eyes and say: “You’ve probably never heard of him. After all, I have a music degree.” Later in that course, my professor would define a masterpiece as a piece of art that offers fresh insights, regardless of how many times you listen to it.

"Too late" can be two of the saddest words in the English language. Too late - you missed your flight; you can't go to the beach. Too late - you missed your anniversary and you cannot make up for it. Too late - the assignment was due at three o'clock and it is now 3:02 - no grace period. While I have never missed a plane or forgotten an anniversary, and I never missed a deadline serious enough to fail a class, I have been too late on enough occasions to feel the anxiety when I hear those two words together. I think it is this anxiety that turned me into a rather punctual person. I prefer to show up on time or early to most events and meetings and will often accomplish that goal. It is a statement of respect for the person that I am meeting (Romans 12:10). It is also an issue of integrity. I said I would be somewhere at a certain time, and I will try to accomplish that goal (Matthew 5:37). I have served in other cultures where the perspective on punctuality differs and still find it difficult to understand the difference, though it is easy to be respectful.

In his classic horror story, The Call of Cthulhu, H.P. Lovecraft delivers one of the spookiest narratives of all time. This is not of zombies or vampires, but something far more unsettling. The narrative surrounds the discovery of an idol that has a surprising effect on the person who owns it. The idol drains the person of sanity, robs them of their sleep, and calls them to take part in reviving a dark evil that slumbers far away - but will come to take the planet. The story progresses as other occult groups are worshiping the slumbering evil one. This is one of the greatest horror stories of all time because of the remarkable restraint that it shows - but it all starts with the power of a stone idol that is small enough to fit in a box in the closet.

J.R.R. Tolkien wrote a very profound statement in his famous essay "On Fairy-stories":

"I have claimed that Escape is one of the main functions of fairy-stories, and since I do not disapprove of them, it is plain that I do not accept the tone of scorn or pity with which 'Escape' is now so often used. ... Why should a man be scorned if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if, when he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison-walls? The world outside has not become less real because the prisoner cannot see it."