I continue to be stunned by the level of deadness that most people consider normal and seem to be content to live with. It had been more than a year since Diane and Ted first came to see me for counseling. As with most marriages, the real issues...
READ MOREWhere would we be today if Abraham had carefully weighed the pros and cons of God’s invitation and decided that he’d rather hang on to his medical benefits, three weeks paid vacation, and retirement plan in Ur? What would have happened if Moses...
READ MOREEven Jesus endured assault — not the open accusation that he had a wicked heart, but the more subtle kind, the seemingly "innocent" Arrows that come through "misunderstanding."
After this, Jesus went around in Galilee, purposely staying...
READ MOREMany people think the theme of war ends with the Old Testament. Not at all. Jesus says, "I did not come to bring peace, but a sword" (Matt. 10:34). In fact, his birth involved another battle in heaven (Rev. 12:1-5, 7-8, 17). The birth of Christ...
READ MORESuffering will try to separate you from Jesus. You must not let it.
The worst part of suffering is the damage it can do to your view of God, your relationship with him. Feelings of abandonment creep in: Why did he let this happen?...
READ MOREIndeed, part of God's victory over the enemy of our souls, which we will be invited to take part in, will be an open mocking of Satan and his forces in view of all the peoples of the earth along with the angelic hosts. We are given a picture of...
READ MOREWe need to look into what has damaged our union with God.
I realize this is a very poignant thing I’m raising, and I want to proceed tenderly. Do you know what’s damaged your soul’s union with God?
Suffering in all its forms will...
READ MOREAn old saint who first taught me to pray — may he be blessed forever — would often say, “When you think you are finished praying, you are probably just getting warmed up.”
Often when we first turn to prayer we are coming in out of the...
READ MOREThe Greek of Revelation 21:1 speaks of one world “passing away” so that a remade world may take its place. Therefore Eugene Peterson in The Message translates the passage, “I saw Heaven and earth new-created. Gone the first Heaven, gone...
READ MOREIn the mythic story of The Lion King, the lion cub Simba is separated in his youth from his father through a murder engineered by his uncle, Scar, the character symbolizing the evil one in our story. Scar arranges for the cub to be...
READ MOREWhat have we come to accept as "discipleship"? A friend of mine recently handed me a program from a large and successful church somewhere in the Midwest. It's a rather exemplary model of what the idea has fallen to. Their plan for discipleship...
READ MOREIt is possible to recover the lost life of our heart and with it the intimacy, beauty, and adventure of life with God. To do so we must leave what is familiar and comfortable — perhaps even parts of the religion in which we have come to trust —...
READ MOREI ran across a news release so shocking I had to read it twice. It didn’t make the front page but it should have: the average person now spends 93 percent of their life indoors (this includes your transportation time in car, bus, or metro). ...
READ MOREThe kingdom of heaven is like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son. He sent his servants to those who had been invited to the banquet to tell them to come, but they refused to come. Then he sent some more servants and said, "Tell...
READ MOREWe shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. (T. S. Eliot) Look, I am making all things new! (Jesus of Nazareth) See! The winter is past; the rains...
READ MOREIf for all practical purposes we believe that this life is our best shot at happiness, if this is as good as it gets, we will live as desperate, demanding, and eventually despairing men and women. We will place on this world a burden it was never...
READ MOREBecause Jesus drank from the cup of suffering and wrath, that cup became the cup of salvation. The cup of suffering became the cup of joy. Turns out, it’s the same cup.
Hebrews 12 says that it was for the joy that was set before Him that...
READ MOREOnce upon a time the earth was whole and beautiful, shimmering like an emerald, filled with glory, bursting with anticipation. Such wonders waiting to be unveiled, such adventures waiting to be ours. Creation was like a fairy tale, a...
READ MOREPeter was one of Jesus' closest friends, one of only three that were invited into his innermost circle. In Gethsemane, at his hour of greatest need, Jesus again took Peter aside, poured his heart out to him; he looked to Peter for strength. Three...
READ MOREFaith looks back and draws courage; hope looks ahead and keeps desire alive. And meantime? In the meantime we need one more item for our journey. To appreciate what it may be, we have to step back and ask, what is all this for? The resurrection...
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