Will Vaus

I hope you will put up with   me in a little foolishness.   Yes, please put up with me!   I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy. I promised you to one husband,   to Christ, so that I might present you   as a pure virgin to him.   But I am afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent’s cunning,   your minds may somehow be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ.   For if someone comes to you and preaches a Jesus other than the Jesus we preached,   or if you receive a different spirit   from the Spirit you received, or a different gospel   from the one you accepted, you put up with it   easily enough. I do not think I am in the least inferior to those “super-apostles.”   I may indeed be untrained as a speaker,   but I do have knowledge.   We have made this perfectly clear to you in every way.   Was it a sin   for me to lower myself in order to elevate you by preaching the gosp...

Before we read from 2 Corinthians 10, I would like to remind you of what some scholars think is the  chronology of Paul’s correspondence with Corinth... Paul’s connection with Corinth began with his first visit there sometime in AD 51 or 52. Scholars believe this first visit was followed by two letters. The first letter, some scholars think, is contained in 2 Corinthians 6:14-7:1. Paul’s second letter is 1 Corinthians. After writing these two letters, Paul made a second painful visit to Corinth, painful because he had to correct some problems in the church. This painful visit was followed by a painful letter, which some scholars believe is contained in 2 Corinthians 10-13. This painful letter was probably delivered by Paul’s protégé, Titus, whom Paul dispatched to Corinth with the letter. When Titus did not return right away, Paul got worried. So much so that he left Ephesus for Macedonia. But before he could get to Corinth himself, Paul met Titus in Macedonia. Finally, Paul wrote ...

I have a confession to make… I am not much of a gardener. In fact, I am not a gardener at all. One of the only times I have ever done any kind of extensive planting of seeds is when we had a house built in a new neighborhood in South Carolina. Part of the package in purchasing the house was landscaping for the front of the house, including beautiful green sod. However, no landscaping for the back yard came with the package. Thus, we had to do it all ourselves. When we moved in, the back yard was perfectly raked and graded. It was a beautiful patch of level dirt. My plan was to plant grass seed. I thought, “How hard can it be?” Unfortunately, I waited a while before I got to work, and the rains came, and that beautiful, level lot that was our back yard, started to slope downhill. I thought, “I better get to work soon.” So as soon as the rains stopped, I bought some grass seed and got to work. I followed all the directions, scattering the seed, and then covering it all with straw. But th...