If the church is to flourish, we cannot build our religious lives around a gospel of fear, or a gospel of reward for our meanness. The Christian faith is not about being afraid of God. Fear may get us to submit but fear always leads to anger and resentment and...
If happiness is what we feel when we think we’ve got what we want, then joy is what we feel when we discover we already have what we most need. Joy is still present when life is hard. Christ comes for grieving people with broken homes and broken hearts. Christmas is...
The process of being conformed to the image of Christ takes place primarily at the points of our unlikeness to Christ’s image. God meets us there, in grace, offering us the forgiveness, the cleansing, the liberation, the healing we need to begin the journey toward our...
Gratitude keeps us clear that not only do our gifts and our challenges come from God, but that our gifts and challenges are essentially one and the same… Without gratitude, our enjoyment of the world shrinks into cramped self-indulgence and the unscratchable itch of...
Without love, the outward work is of no value; but whatever is done out of love, be it ever so little, is wholly fruitful. For God regards the greatness of love that prompts a man, rather than the greatness of achievement. —————-Gender-inclusive version: Without love,...
Women, pretending to be less than the person God made you to be never helped any man grow into the person God made him to be.
The wonderful thing about praying is that you leave a world of not being able to do something, and enter God’s realm where everything is possible. He specializes in the impossible. Nothing is too great for his almighty power. Nothing is too small for his love....
If our churches aren’t very inclusive, it might be because too many of us have mistaken ourselves for the Giver of the Feast. We’re not hosts extending invitations. We’re guests among guests. Yet we behave as if having arrived earlier than others has given us...
What is it about your own miserable works and doings that you think you could please God more than the sacrifice of His own Son?
Faith isn’t about having everything figured out ahead of time; faith is about following the quiet voice of God without having everything figured out ahead of time.