Mid-America’s Institute of Nouthetic Studies Blog

An agnostic? Well, I can see how this is at least a tenable position for an unbeliever. After all, Paul wrote about the impossibility of such persons to understand or welcome the things of the Spirit of God (1 Corinthians). If your eyes are closed and you admit it, as the agnostic in a sense […]

We talked about the phrase “Tell me about it,” which is one a faithful counselor will be regularly asking because he is interested in facts—not in guesswork. But there’s another phrase, heard too often, that he should learn to avoid. “What’s that?” The phrase is, “How do feel about that?” “What’s wrong about that phrase? […]

The words of Revelation 3:20 are interesting—and sad! Here's how that sentence in Jesus' letter to the church at Laodicea reads: See, I'm standing at the door and knocking. If anyone listens to My voice and opens the door I shall come in to him, and I shall eat with him, and He with Me. […]

Listen to this important injunction: Listen to counsel and submit to discipline that, at length, you may be wise" (CCNT/P) —Proverbs 20:20 How many young people have gone wrong because they failed to heed one or the other—or both, as is often the case—of these admonitions! Are you one who has messed up your life […]

God guides—but not by supernatural visions, hunches, whispers, hunches, etc., etc. How then? Listen to Psalm 73:24: You guide me with Your counsel, and afterwards You will take me up in glory. Who counsels the counselor? God counsels us. And we have that counsel in the very book from which this verse is taken—the Scriptures! […]

At least it was in the time when Amos wrote his prophecy. Listen to this: You . . . commanded the prophets ‘’Do not prophesy!” (Amos 2: 12) But Amos replies: God has spoken; who will not prophesy? (3: 8) There are, as well, those who do not want to hear the truth today—who would […]

The first name by which the church was known before the word “Christian” became attached to it at Antioch, was the “Way.” You can read about it in Acts 9:2; 18:25; 19: 9, 23; 24: 14, 22 (and possibly 2 Peter 2:2). “What is the meaning of that title?” Well, no one is quite sure […]