A Baptist preacher told this story to his congregation one Sunday: When God walked into heaven and found everyone there, he decided it was too crowded. He owed it to justice, did he not, to reward those who were faithful? So, he had one of his angels read the ten...
God never said that the journey would be easy, but He did say that the arrival would be worthwhile.--------------------------------------------------------Gender-neutral version: God never said that the journey would be easy, but God did say that the arrival would be...
... whether they come from the Muslim world, or the Buddhist world, or the Christian world or the non-believing world, they are members of the Body of Christ because they’ve been called by God. They may not even know the name of Jesus but they know in their hearts...
Our culture is so fixated on dying and going to heaven, when the whole of Scripture is about heaven coming to earth.
I suspect that Western individualism has done more than any other single factor to anesthetize and even euthanize the power of the Gospel. Salvation, heaven, hell, worthiness, grace, and eternal life all came to be read through the lens of separate ego, crowding God's...
Eastertide and an Expanding Christ If Silent Saturday belongs to those grieving the death of the only Jesus they have ever known, Eastertide (the fifty days following Easter) belongs to those who are open to experiencing Jesus differently than they ever have....
Blessed are the agnostics. Blessed are they who doubt. Those who aren’t sure, who can still be surprised. Blessed are they who are spiritually impoverished and therefore not so certain about everything that they no longer take in new information. Blessed are those who...
Practicing an art, no matter how well or how badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous...
Heaven is by sheer favor, not merit. If it were by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.
But it is a dangerous error, surely very widespread among Christians, to think that the heart can pray by itself. For then we confuse wishes, hopes, sighs, laments, rejoicing--all of which the heart can do by itself--with prayer. And we confuse heaven and earth, human...