Second semester is in full swing and it’s been good so far. The workload is a bit off-balance right now, but I’m making do and it’ll settle in once I get use to the Wednesday/Thursday reading schedule.

  1. Greek this semester is over Romans 9–11. We’re building out all three chapters as sentence diagrams (high school grammar anyone?) and then will walk through it again using a technique called “arcing” to understand how the propositions all relate to one another as Paul builds an argument. Walking through a chunk of Scripture and really digging into the semantics of it has helped my Greek immensely. It’s helping me see what questions need to be asked of the text and give me a feel for how all the words relate. The main problem I’ve had here (read main prayer request) is that focusing on words and syntax this narrowly really distracts from seeing the whole passage tied together and distances me from feeling the impact from it personally. It massively improves my exegesis, but I’ve struggled to then back that into application.
  2. Hermeneutics 2 is proving really helpful in thinking through NT genre and means of reading and interpreting bigger picture stuff, like parables or how the synoptic gospels differ and strengthen one another. In this, I’ve been thankful both to feel the usefulness for interpretation and more personal application and impact. Even so, this tends to lean on the more academic side and I often gravitate towards that over feeling the text impact me or applying it usefully in the lives of others. Pray that I can guard against that tendency.
  3. Missions… This course is completely blowing up my frame of reference in the world. It’s hard to describe all the things that have come out of these short four weeks in this class, but I’ve never been more excited about what God is doing in the wider world and more burdened for my own and my family’s role in it. Pray for clarity of vision and calling and for our heart for the nations to be increased.
  4. Lastly, Old Testament 2. We’re covering the prophets this first half of the semester, then to move on to poetry and the like. As with last semester, this course has blown up my view of seeing Christ in the OT, seeing the OT authors as having written Christian scripture, not just “old covenant” words. We’ve been challenged to interpret the OT the way the NT authors did, seeing it all pointing to Christ: seeing history as leading to, pointing to, screaming about the coming of king Jesus. It’s magnificent. This has been the course in both semesters that has probably kept me the most grounded, making me eager to see Jesus, to seek him in his Word everywhere.

So thats a recap and requests for where we are now. Pray for me. Pray for my family who suffers joyfully and patiently through the many hours of work laid upon us by many well-meaning professors. Pray for my cohort, for their financial needs, for their own studies, for the unity of our brotherhood and spiritual pursuit of Christ. Pray that the Holy Spirit will fill and work mighty things in the pains of academic rigor and that in the midst of it, God’s kingdom would grow through our hands.

Many thanks.