Worship is right because God is worthy of it; it is the best of all antidotes to our own self-centeredness, the most effective way to “disinfect us of egotism,” as one writer put it long ago. In true worship we turn the searchlight of our mind and heart upon God and...
Churches have almost come to blows over whether God is better heard in an organ or a guitar. Sometimes worship is fast and loud—a find way to celebrate God’s goodness. At other times, worship is solemn and thoughtful—also a fine way to celebrate God’s goodness. Some...
The Scriptures include or allude to just about every approach to worship there is: organized, spontaneous, public, private, simple, complex, ornate or plain. Yet there is no comment anywhere about one way being preferred over another. Rather, it is the spiritual...
Christian worship is alive because, in its essence, it is a conversation between two living realities—the one true, eternal God and the body of Christ, the church. Because worship is a conversation and not a mere review of the past, it is dynamic, unpredictable, and...
Worship is the expression of the Christian believer’s relationship with God. However that relationship is very complex, since God is at one and the same time our Creator, Redeemer (through Jesus Christ), Sustainer, Indweller (by the Holy Spirit), Friend and Judge. I...
To say that we believe that God loves the poor, judges in their behalf, wills their deliverance but do nothing ourselves to free the poor, to hear their pleas, to lift their burdens, to act in their behalf is an empty faith indeed. To say that God is love and not...
The bedrock of my faith—mind you, I didn’t get to it easily—is that we are loved by God. He loves us as we are, but too much to leave us that way. We are loved by God, and that’s what gives us value. We don’t achieve value. It’s not because we have value that we’re...
I believe God dwells with those who make love their aim. And there is no sentimentality in this love; it is not endlessly pliable, always yielding. Prophets from Amos and Isaiah to Gandhi and King have shown how frequently compassion demands confrontation. Love...
Jay hugged me hard when I left. He was going back to Colorado in a few days. “I don’t believe in God,” he said. “But sometimes when I’m up in the mountains above the tree line, it’s like whoa, you know: There’s a big, big love.” “I know,” I said. Christianity wasn’t...
You wonder how long my love will last? Find your answer on a splintered cross on a craggy hill. That’s me you see up there, your maker, your God, nail-stabbed and bleeding. Covered in spit and sin-soaked. That’s your sin I’m feeling. That’s your death I’m dying....