{"id":21984,"date":"2026-10-12T10:10:22","date_gmt":"2026-10-12T14:10:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nycphantom.com\/journal\/?p=21984"},"modified":"2026-10-12T10:52:36","modified_gmt":"2026-10-12T14:52:36","slug":"journal-of-the-week-136","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nycphantom.com\/journal\/?p=21984","title":{"rendered":"Journal of the Week"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

10\/11\/2026 Sunday<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pastor Joe's sermon on Psalm 148<\/strong> is not particularly impressive and may be leaning towards Catholicism in his analogy: He used an out-of-tune guitar<\/strong>: left in the cold and untuned, it drifts into disharmony. Likewise, our hearts need to be continually \u201ctuned\u201d to praise God.<\/em> The slight nuance for this is our \"sinful\" hearts. Without addressing our fallen nature, the Gospel is lost. Roman Catholics view mankind created with concupiscence in his natural state (pure nature \/ natura pura<\/em>). Mere mentioning of Jesus as the object of worship is weak in the Gospel. Start with the right relationship with our Lord, without which, no matter how much we try tuning our hearts, will never work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The pastor used the golden calf<\/strong> as an example of idolatry: the Israelites worshipped it, and God described them as \u201cstiff-necked.\u201d His point was that people begin to resemble what they worship. This is a miss on the point that the golden calf was really a twisted view of the true God, rather than idolizing a different god which seems to be implied in the sermon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would say, unlike before, this time his sermon seems unprepared, unorganized, no central point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We ate at Bollywood Indian Buffet after church. It was really the first time I feel there's not much use staying at church after service, so when Nadia said let's go but went to toilet first, I told her I'd wait for her in the car. However, I actually would stay for the \"family\" meal after the 2nd service, even if I had to wait through the 2nd service. But Nadia wouldn't have it I'm sure, first, she doesn't see the family meal as \"family\" meal but \"workers\" meal, which I think is absurd on her part, meal is just meal, how you get the meals really matters not, then there's whoever she talked to usually disappoint her, as if they were more worldly than Christians. Her problem is that she couldn't stop holding them as Christians, hence her frustrations with certain few of them. I on the other hand, am more interested to talk to anyone, especially the young and the poor, from an evangelistic stand. But that opportunity will have to go somewhere else, unfortunately<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At night we watched a comedic series called The Promised Land on Youtube<\/a>, found by Nadia. The humor is okay, I don't believe it's irreverent to God, but it should at best provoke one to study his own Bible more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

10\/11\/2026 Sunday Pastor Joe's sermon on Psalm 148 is not particularly impressive and may be leaning towards Catholicism in his analogy: He used an out-of-tune guitar: left in the cold and untuned, it drifts into disharmony. Likewise, our hearts need … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-theologization"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nycphantom.com\/journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21984","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nycphantom.com\/journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nycphantom.com\/journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nycphantom.com\/journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nycphantom.com\/journal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21984"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/nycphantom.com\/journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21984\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21997,"href":"https:\/\/nycphantom.com\/journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21984\/revisions\/21997"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nycphantom.com\/journal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nycphantom.com\/journal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nycphantom.com\/journal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}