The Tulip Driven Life

By: Thomas Booher It seems like I haven't been able to entrench myself anywhere since graduating high school. I went to the same Christian school from K-5 through graduation, but since then everything has been turbulent.  I dropped out of college three times before coming to RBC. My reasons, believe it or not, were quite good, except for the first time. The first time I was still in high school and was taking some college classes, and after a semester of doing that my buddy and I decided we would rather focus on sports and worry about college after we had graduated. Then I went to UNC- Pembroke, a public university, where everything changed. It changed the day I got there, immersed in a new environment on a much larger campus than anything I was accustomed to. It changed because I was no longer living at home and now had to set my own schedule and decide what I was going to do with my life. The first thing I wanted to do was find the Baptist Student Union, not because I was ...

The Spirit Well by Stephen Lawhead is the third book in the Bright Empires Series. Having not read the first two books in this series, I relied on previous posts from the CSFF blog tour to catch up. For background information and plot prior to this book, I refer you to my Dad's posts from the CSFF blog tour here and here . For the plot in this story, here is my Dad's post as well. What I want to focus on is the writing of Lawhead. I do not think I have ever read a work of fiction that utilizes such a wide range of vocabulary. The real genius isn't just using "big" words, but using them skillfully, and I believe Lawhead does so masterfully. Many of the words I admit I was unfamiliar with or knew only vaguely, but he placed them so well that, in context, I could grasp the gist of their meaning. This is how I knew he wasn't just going on thesaurus.com and looking up fancy words to make his vocabulary and writing prowess seem better than it is. He is able t...

The Psalms are songs that we sing but also prayers to God. The Psalms show you how to respond to God when you are happy, sad, angry, facing tragedy, etc. The Psalms are special because they are God's Word given to us to respond to Him.  Most of the Psalms are laments to God. God gives us the Psalm Book full of laments to show us this world is a world of suffering. This world is sick with sin.  Our hymnals and praise songs tend to paint a far rosier, optimistic picture. There is a hypocrisy in church where every one pretends everything is okay, that no one has marriage problems, etc.  We should not get rid of lament songs from our worship.  Yet, the whole book of Psalms is called "praise songs." This is because they always end with David and others trusting God in their trials and tribulations. The laments are to God, indicating that the authors of Psalms know that only God can alleviate their trials and sufferings.  ***When we hurt, we can cry ou...

Thomas Booher                1 Corinthians Study Notes 9/6/12 1 Corinthians 9:19-16:24 1 Cor. 9:19-23: Paul had already declared that there is no longer a distinction between Jew and Gentile in Christ (Acts 15:9; Rom 3:22; 10:12; 1 Cor. 10:32). Yet here Paul makes a distinction for the sake of gospel clarity. Although in Christ we are valued equally, there remains distinctions between those in the body of Christ, such as varying spiritual gifts (Eph. 4:1-16; 1 Cor. 12:12-31). We also learn that God respects cultural differences and sensibilities, insofar as we learn things best through the medium of our own culture. This is why Paul becomes like the culture he is around: to clearly communicate the gospel. Thus, we should utilize the cultural patterns that we find the lost in to our advantage, and we should be sensitive to the consciences of Christians who have more troubled consciences over matters of liberty than ourselves. ...

I first became a big fan of R.C. Sproul, perhaps surprisingly to some, through his apologetics teaching series "Defending The Faith," which aired on the NRB network. I was working at a Cracker Barrel at the time in the dish room, and would use the opportunity to talk about God and proclaim the gospel to my co-workers. One guy in his early 40's said he was going to be a pastor and briefly attended SEBTS, but had fallen away from the faith. He questioned the goodness of God, since God was supposed to be all-powerful, all knowing, and yet evil existed. I gave my best answer to that, which I felt was fairly satisfactory, but he had another tactic ready. "Well who made God then?" He asked. I didn't know how to answer that one. For me, that was like asking why ice is cold. God by definition is unmade. I told him that, but he said that wasn't possible, that that didn't make any sense. I realized I had always accepted that God was unmade, but didn'...

REFORMATION BIBLE COLLEGE DIALOGUE PAPER IN A BAR WITH JOHN LOCKE AND DAVID HUME CHURCH HISTORY BY THOMAS BOOHER SANFORD, FLORIDA MARCH, 2012             I strode into the bar. It was past eleven now, and my nerves were on edge. My church history oral presentation and final paper would be due in a few short hours, and I had yet to postulate what to talk about and what to write. After pacing about in my room and realizing I was fresh out of ideas, I figured the rational thing to do was hit up the bar and have a beer or two to calm my nerves. After all, drinking seemed to always have that effect on me.             “What can I get for you?” the girl at the bar asked. As she spoke, two other men scooted in, each looking a bit disheveled and flustered with one another. They were garbed i...