St. John Studies

I have never done this before. When I began St. John Studies on December 30, 2014 I was “on fire” to write my thoughts on the blog.

Now, in October 2025, things have happened.  I have found more significant priorities that have taken me away from writing.  I also have found that I am not writing the way I want to write.

Let me explain:  in 2022 my Mother [age 95] changed her residence.  She moved from a small town in western Kentucky to my community in Hopkinsville, Kentucky.  She lives in an assisted living home about a five minute drive from where I live.  She has been a challenge at times because she has dementia and has morphed into a person I no longer recognize.  Some would say she has returned to childhood.  She can no longer manage the daily aspects of live without assistance [from the wonderful staff where she lives and from me].  

Starting in 2023, my brother Larry and I [also my wife Susan] have worked tirelessly trying to get her home ready to sell.  My Mother’s large home is a typical Depression-era, WWII-era home where she saved everything she got her hands on.  In every drawer and closet she stashed items.  She did not have a “hoarder” home with trash piled all over the house but she had massive amounts of clutter sitting around on every table in the home.  We have had multiple yard sales, then a tag sale and now we are down to maybe four or five hundred items, ranging from small pieces of porcelain to larger pieces of furniture.  It has been unbelievably time-consuming.  I have made so many trips to her home to work.

This past year, we made the final push.  We worked hard to empty everything out in preparation for a tag sale.  The tag sale was an amazing way to get rid of large amounts of stuff.  My wife warned me.  “This past year, do not commit to anything extra”. 

I did not.

I did not play one round of golf, did not go fishing one time, exercise has fallen off and I did not plant a garden and so many things I needed to do at my home have been neglected.  St. John Studies has suffered too.  Some may say this is an obsessive response to the demands of selling my mother’s home but I am not sure.  I am 73 and my energy level is not what it used to be.  On top of this, my Mother has progressed into the deeper, darker world of dementia.

I have tried to write blog posts.  Lately I have been working on Matt Chandler’s The Explicit Gospel.  The book has grown on me.  I started it on March 24 of this year and it has been a slog.  I have struggled to get two posts a month.  I am currently about to wrap my comments on Chapter Two. 

I began this post with the words “I have never done this before.” 

I have never worked so hard on such a complex project as selling my Mother’s family home.  I have never taken on a caregiving job so demanding as taking care of a person who is suffering so badly with dementia.  I have never admitted that I need to start over with a book I have been blogging on. 

Yes, I am going back to the beginning of The Explicit Gospel and I am going to comment on the book with my best writing.  What I have discovered at the end of Chapter Two is that there is a lot of top quality thought in this book and I have not been giving it my best.  I think I have been putting “sub-par” posts on St. John Studies. 

Since 2014, my writing has been “uneven.”  Some of it has been pretty good but some of it has been not so good.  I was absolutely convinced that I had to contribute as much as I could on a daily basis and then a weekly basis and now I am struggling to write two times a month.  I am teaching an adult Sunday school class right now and it is centered around Dallas Willard’s book  Hearing God.  It has made me go back and read and edit some of the blog posts I wrote about Hearing in 2015, some good; some not so good. 

At this stage in my life, I have been blogging too long to put up sub-par comments.  Maybe this is what I have learned after 1,123 posts.  If anyone stumbles across this blog they deserve the best post I can give them. 

So I am starting over with Chandler.  If it is not good, it is not going on St. John Studies.  I am not going to pressure myself to post regularly and quickly.  The distractions of my personal life are not over but I realize my life struggles are a season, a period of time that will not last forever.  The distractions and struggles will eventually pass.

What has not passed is my desire to share my thoughts about God.  I still want to do this, but I want to do it the better than what I have done in the recent past.

Thank you for understanding.

“The Gospel on the Ground: God’s Glorious Self-Regard” has been replaced with a “do-over post” which you can read. I am not pleased with the half-hearted effort I have put into St. John Studies this past year. I am reposting my comments on Matt Chandler’s book “The Explicit Gospel”. The do-over post is entitled “’Making Man Feel Important” posted on December 31, 2025.

“The Gospel on the Ground: God’s Perfect Self-sufficiency” has been replaced with a “do-over post” which you can read. I am not pleased with the half-hearted effort I have put into St. John Studies this past year. I am reposting my comments on Matt Chandler’s book The Explicit Gospel. The do-over post is entitled “’Getting to Know’ God’s Perfect Self-sufficiency” posted on December 6, 2025.

“The Gospel on the Ground: God’s Sovereign Knowing” has been replaced with a “do-over post” which you can read. I am not pleased with the half-hearted effort I have put into St. John Studies this past year. I am reposting my comments on Matt Chandler’s book The Explicit Gospel. The do-over post is entitled “Most Christians Salute the Sovereignty of God but Believe in the Sovereignty of Man” posted on November 30, 2025.