To worship is to quicken the conscience of the holiness of God, to feed the mind with the truth of God, to purge the imagination by the beauty of God, to open the heart to the love of God, to devote the will to the purpose of God. All this is gathered up in that...
We keep doing these things over and over again on Sunday morning because we know that if we didn’t we might lose our love. In fact, those times when we don’t feel like it, when we really feel no deep attachment or desire to worship the Beloved, are the times we ought...
There are three ingredients that must be present in making healthy changes. First, you have to love the people, genuinely be on their side. Second, what you propose has to make sense. Something totally “off the wall” and foreign to a given tradition is not likely to...
If you do not know the presence of God in your office, your factory, your home, then God is not in the church when you attend. I have come to believe that when we are worshipping—if the love of God is in us and the Spirit of God is breathing praise within us, all the...
Christian worship is our affirmative, transforming response to the self-revelation of God… We are not seeking to find or to know an obscure, frightening being who needs to be placated. God makes and continues to make the first move, showing himself in power and in...
Worship is our response to the overtures of love from the heart of the Father. Its central reality is found “in spirit and truth.” It is kindled within us only when the Spirit of God touches our human spirit. Forms and rituals do not produce worship, nor does the...
It is obvious that it is not enough to say: Love one another. That has been said for centuries, and has been repeated ad nauseam, in all tones, from all platforms, religious and secular. And yet we continue to war instead of love one another. Why is this? No one can...
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...
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...
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....