Yukon First Church of the Nazarene

09/04/2026

Good people read Romans 9 differently than I do, and I only gave that a minute on Sunday. Here's the longer version. If you left unconvinced, this one's for you.

Good people read Romans 9 differently than I do, and I only gave that a minute on Sunday. Here’s the longer version. If you left unconvinced, this one’s for you.

09/02/2026

If I sang you the first line of "9 to 5," you would hear Dolly finishing it for me before I got to the end of the sentence. You would not need the rest. You already have it.

That is exactly how Paul's readers heard the Old Testament.

So when he quotes four words from Exodus in Romans 9, they heard the whole story around it, and we do not. We just get the four words. And that is how you end up building a doctrine out of a sentence that meant something very different in the room where it was first said.

Both of the Old Testament quotes Paul leans on in Romans 9 come from stories about God relenting. One of them is the golden calf. The other one is basically the book of Jonah.

Part two on the study of Romans 9.

Chapter 10 this Sunday.

If I sang you the first line of “9 to 5,” you would hear Dolly finishing it for me before I got to the end of the sentence. You would not need the rest. You already have it. That is exa…

09/01/2026

Some people read Romans 9 and come away believing this: that before you were born, before you had done anything good or bad, God already decided where you would spend eternity. And there is nothing you can do about it. You do not get a say.

That reading has done real damage. I have sat with people who carry it. It is why some folks quit praying years ago — if the answer was settled before you showed up, why bother?

I have been reading Romans over and over for months now. I started before we ever finished our prayer series. And I ended up with so many notes on chapter 9 that if I had preached all of them, you would have been sitting there for hours. My wife has a word for that.

"No bueno."

So Monday I sat down and turned those notes into three blog posts, laying out what we believe as Wesleyans and how we read Paul in this chapter. Today's deals with Romans 9:22–23.

Here is what I found. In verse 22, Paul says the objects of wrath were "prepared for destruction" — and never says who prepared them. One verse later, writing about the objects of mercy, he says "whom he prepared in advance for glory." God, named, no hesitation.

Same breath. Same argument. He could have written the same word both times. He would not do it.

I do not think that is an accident.

08/16/2026

These two are killing it SNU NSI.

08/12/2026

Every debt you will ever carry has a last payment except one.

“Owe no one anything, except to love one another.” — Romans 13:8

The mortgage. The car payment. The favor you owe your brother-in-law. All of it ends someday. Love is the one account that never closes. Not because you keep failing at it. Because it has no ending balance.

08/06/2026

Paul says both of us are sitting in a chair that doesn't belong to us. Each of us will give an account of himself to God. Of himself. Not of his brother.

You will never be asked to defend someone else's conscience. Only your own heart.

TODAY: Catch yourself in one judgment or one eye-roll. Don't defend it. Just hand it over to God.

08/06/2026

https://kentmullens.wordpress.com/

Hope for Today. Vision for Tomorrow.

07/31/2026

As we hit the end of Romans chapter 15, we see Paul wanting to head to Spain. In his day, Spain was at the end of the map they had. Paul's ambition was never to play it safe. He wanted to carry the message of Christ where no one had heard it. But before Spain, he needed to take money to Jerusalem that the Gentiles had collected for the mother church. Money carried by Gentile hands, for the very people who once doubted they belonged. I believe that isn't charity. It's theology you can hold.

Today my blog post looks at Paul's Spain, God's peace versus Caesar's peace, and the question worth thinking on: what is your Spain? I hope you'll take a minute to read it.

Where the world ran out “It has always been my ambition to preach the gospel where Christ was not known,” Paul writes (15:20), and then he shows his hand: “I plan to do so when I …

07/29/2026

When David prayed Psalm 69, he was writing down his own heart, but he was also writing down Jesus’ prayer book.

In Romans 15:3, Paul points back to Psalm 69:9 when he says:

“For even Christ did not please himself but, as it is written: ‘The insults of those who insult you have fallen on me.’”

When you read Psalm 69, you aren’t just reading ancient poetry. You are listening in on the internal life of Jesus:

The agony of the cross: “They gave me poison for food, and for my thirst they gave me sour wine to drink.” (v. 21)

The weight of rejection: “Those who hate me without cause outnumber the hairs of my head.” (v. 4)

The motive behind it all: “Zeal for your house has consumed me.” (v. 9)

Jesus didn't just come to live for us; He willingly took on the shame, scorn, and hostility meant for God so that we could step into grace. When Paul calls us in Romans 15 to build one another up and carry each other’s weaknesses, he points us straight to Jesus in Psalm 69 as the ultimate model of self-giving love.

How does seeing Jesus in the Psalms change the way you read them today?

07/28/2026

We hit play on Romans 15 this week, but you can't appreciate the music unless you know the story that happened before the song was written. Rome expelled the Jewish believers for five years, and when they came home, the church they walked back into wasn't the one they left. Paul refuses to let the lyrics of this song be just "tolerate each other." He answers with a stronger line: "accept one another, just as Christ accepted you" (15:7). Not tolerance. Welcome.

Pastor Kent's blog post today digs into that history and what it means when rotary-phone generations and iPhone generations are called to share the same room. Hope you'll take a minute to read it below.

REWIND · Romans 15:1–13 · Tuesday, July 28, 2026 This week our REWIND journey through Romans lands on chapter 15 — and to understand it, you need to know about the year the church in Rome lost half…