Mitchell Landress

Reflections on Scripture Memorization Most spiritual disciplines can be accounted for by the budgeting of your time. Taking time to read your Bible, time to pray, time to witness to other people, but one spiritual discipline stands out from the rest. This is the discipline of Scripture memorization. It seems that it is easy to remember all sorts of things. I can remember my wife’s cell phone number, countless user names and passwords, and my personal favorite – song lyrics. I have countless songs stuck in my brain from the not-so-fabulous 80’s. Oh, that my brain were a hard drive that I could go in a delete out all the junk and then defragment for extra space. No such luck! Scripture memorization is so much harder to remember than any of these. Why? I really do not know for sure, but I have an idea. I think it is due to the fact that Scripture is living and active. So it just doesn’t go in peacefully. It goes in cleaning house and the flesh fights against it. In essence, Scripture memo...

Reflection on Attempting To Make Godly Decisions A brief overview of 2 Samuel gives us a peculiar insight into the mind of God, at least I think it does. This is why I doubt myself. Jeremiah tells us that "the heart is more deceitful than anything else and desperately sick – who can understand it?" (Jeremiah 17:8-10, HSB). Therefore, I cannot judge right and wrong simply on my feelings, though I do find myself following them too often. Since my heart is sick it must stand in judgment of something else –God, and how He has spoken through Scripture. Now back to David in 2 Samuel. David had a desire to build God a house and the reason appears to be that David’s palace was nicer than the tabernacle. Man’s judgment was wrong, but it did not sound wrong. Even Nathan told David to proceed with his plans – that was before the Lord spoke to him (2 Samuel 7:4vv). The Lord would not allow David to build the temple, which seems to be a rejection of David as a person or at least as a king...

Reflections On A Week In Mexico When Matthew records Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapter five, the first of the beatitudes is recorded like this – “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven”. Luke shortens this phrase and leaves it simply as “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours in the kingdom of God.” (Luke 6:20). Now it could be that Luke means exactly the same thing and has taken “in spirit” as an assumed part of the phrase, but it could be more. In fact Luke gives great attention to the poor in his gospel and frequently brings them to the forefront. The question is left for us though – is there anything great about being poor? It is hard to imagine, especially living in such a materially saturated society that being poor could have a blessing to it. Often the poor of society receive the worst of public education, the least of health care and live life entirely in the day with no security of tomorrow. So what is it that God could possibly have ...