Skip to main content

Introducing "The Rambling Disciple"

Greetings all! I've had the idea for this blog in my head for quite some time now. Ever since launching "The Christian Geekly" blog I knew that I wanted to have a blog where I explored the Bible, theology, and contemporary issues directly. Whereas my other blog specifically deals with our culture and how to interact with it in a Christ-like way, the aim of this blog is to interact with God's Word in a way that challenges and informs.

So some of you may ask why "The Rambling Disciple" as a title. I aim to be a completely devoted disciple of Jesus. That is the goal to which I strive for in all aspects of my life. The "Rambling" piece of it is pretty self explanatory. This blog will contain the thoughts, ideas, and challenges I encountered while studying and meditating on God's Word.

Now that the purpose and title are out of the way, here is a brief biography about me. My name is Ryan Martin. I was born and raised in Spring, TX (which is a suburb of Houston) and have been attending the Churches of Christ all my life. In December of 2014 I graduated from Harding University with a degree in Bible and Preaching. In April of 2015 I began working as the Hearts on Fire Director (youth and children's minister) at the Church of Christ Northwest in Peoria, IL. In January of 2016 I began working on a Masters degree focusing on theology from Lincoln Christian University.

I envision that this will be a weekly blog, with a new post going up each Wednesday. I pray that this blog helps you in some way to meet Jesus. In the end my goal is to be a true disciple of Jesus and to help others reach this goal along the way. God bless.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

We Need More Images

What is your favorite way to describe God? Is there a particular name of God in scripture that you are drawn to? What images and pictures come to mind when you think of God? These are questions I don't think we ask often enough. We all have an image of God in our heads that we work with. It may not be a literal picture, though it might be, but ideas and concepts we tend to associate with who God is. Some of those images and associations may come from the Bible, but some may not. These things are influenced by our upbringing, Bible reading habits, personalities, relationships, culture, and more. The way we picture God has a dramatic impact on the way we live our lives. For example, if the primary idea you have of God is "Healer," when you hear or read that you are made in God's image you will likely feel called to heal, be it physical ailments or spiritual wounds. But, if your primary image of God is "Judge," that changes things. You very likely might tend to...

Thankful

Today is Thanksgiving, the day that we are supposed to celebrate all the things we are thankful for. It is a time of family reunions, football, and turkey eating. I sincerely pray that each and every one of you has a good day today. I'll admit that being thankful has not been easy for me this year. As pretty much all of you know, my mother passed away December of last year. Though she had been in the hospital for months, we were not expecting it. In fact I was sure she would be finally able to come home within a matter of weeks. Instead she peacefully passed on into the arms of Jesus, whom she loved more dearly than anyone else. As you can imagine, the entire family was heart broken. After what can easily be described as the worst Christmas ever, I returned to home to Illinois. It was here that I finally broke down. I spent the next months doing everything except being thankful. I cursed God, wept, screamed, begged to have her back, and was generally not the nicest person to be...

The Early Middle Ages: Historical Friday

The next segment of history that we are going to overview is the Early Middle Ages. This dates roughly from AD 450 to AD 1100. This is intended to be a very general overview. There are probably historians that would classify some other time period as the "Early Middle Ages" or a more specific time period. For our purposes this will cover the aforementioned time period. This was a very influential period in the history of Christianity. It saw the formation of what we now call the Roman Catholic Church and its separation from what we would now call the Eastern Orthodox Church. Before this time there was only ONE church. There weren't different denominations or groups. It is hard for us to think about in our modern context, but there was a time when Christianity was visibly unified. Brief History The first major thing to happen during this time period is the remaining three ecumenical councils. We discussed the first four several weeks ago. These councils discussed va...