I have a hunch that most of us have “one thing”—one main thing—that prevents us from receiving a deeper experience of life. We all have some “possession” that we need to give away.
Read MoreLiving a faithful life doesn’t mean that we don’t lose our health, our jobs and our friends. Accepting that is tough enough, but what really galls us is this: While we often suffer misfortune in spite of our faithfulness, we are aware that many people prosper who are selfish and narcissistic….What sustains us in a world like this?
Read MoreKing Jehoiachin clearly didn’t want to hear what the Lord had to say and in dramatic fashion denounced these words. I wonder how often we still do that today in the church. No, we don’t burn various pages of the Bible; we just don’t read them.
Read MoreThe fundamental criterion for being the one true God is this: care for those who lack the resources to sustain their lives.
Read MoreThe Christian hope is that the love of God made known in Jesus that embraces us in this life will also embrace us in the next life even if we are not given a lot of details.
Read MoreGod refuses to be contained in our pre-determined categories. And thank God for that! If God were more consistent, Israel would have been destroyed for its transgressions. If Jesus were more consistent, the Gentile woman’s daughter would have remained possessed.
Read MoreThe mission of the church is to advocate for and model here and now the kind of world that God will eventually bring into being everywhere. Our way of being in the world is to be a foretaste of the end.
Read MoreGod gave the Israelites the 10 commandments so that they would retain their peculiar identity over the long haul. The Church today needs to be aware of the commandments that will keep it from losing its peculiar character in a culture that wants to co-opt it for its own ends.
Read MoreThe Church has often fallen woefully short of embodying God’s love and many people have found the church anything but Good News. However, all it takes is one disciple and one church to give the skeptical reason to believe that the church has something to offer
Read MoreSo imagine this: Imagine you are in an elevator with someone and you are holding a newsletter from your church, and the other person in the elevator says, “Is that where you go to church?” What would your elevator speech be about your church? You have at most 15 seconds before the elevator gets to their floor.
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