Lord, Long my imprisoned spirit lay fast bound in sin and nature’s night; Thine eye diffused a quickening ray—I woke, the dungeon flamed with light; My chains fell off, my heart was free, I rose, went...
Life is filled with hard choices, and it is childish to think you can avoid them.
Judges is the best book in the Old Testament for the understanding of renewal and revival, while Acts is the best place in the New Testament.
Jonah wants a God of his own making, a God who simply smites the bad people, for instance, the wicked Ninevites and blesses the good people, for instance, Jonah and his countrymen. When the real God—n...
If human rights and equality exist just because we say so, then activists are not able to persuade, only to coerce. They can force cultures to adopt Western, individualistic ideas of rights and equali...
Idols of power, then, are not only for the powerful. You can pursue power in small, petty ways, by becoming a local neighborhood bully or a low-level bureaucrat who bosses around the few people in his...
Identity apart from God is inherently unstable.
I cannot live up to my parents’ standards – and that makes me feel terrible. I cannot live up to your standards – and that makes me feel terrible. I cannot live up to society’s standards – and that ma...
How will you get the strength to be courageous like that? By looking at Jesus himself. Because if you think it takes courage to be with him, consider that it took infinitely more courage for him to be...
How silently, how silently The wondrous gift is given! So God imparts to human hearts The blessings of His heaven. No ear may hear His coming, But in this world of sin, Where meek souls will receive h...
Havel puts it well—humanity cannot save itself. In fact, he argues, the belief that we can save ourselves—that some political system or ideology can fix human problems—has only led to more darkness.
God's reckless grace is our greatest hope, a life changing experience.
But if you are unwilling to risk your place in the palace for your neighbors, the palace owns you.
A salvation earned by good works and moral effort would favor the more able, competent, accomplished, and privileged. But salvation by sheer grace favors the failed, the outsiders, the weak, because i...
We think of a prospective spouse as primarily a lover (or a provider), and if he or she can be a nice friend on top of that, well isn't that nice! We should be going at it the other way around. Screen...
We tend to see gifts as the sign of the Spirit’s work in someone. But the Bible never does. Judas and King Saul were used by the Spirit to prophesy, do miracles, and so on… but they did not have Spiri...
We should be glad of success, but not overly glad, and saddened by failure, but not too downcast, because our true joy in the future is guaranteed by God. So we are to enjoy but not be engrossed (I Co...
We have too much faith in our technology and our democratic institutions, and we are conditioned by our secular, materialistic culture to seek most of our happiness in fragile things like good looks,...
Ultimately, your marriage partner should be part of what could be called your mythos. C. S. Lewis spoke of a secret thread that unites every person’s favorite books, music, places, or pastimes. Certai...
Tolkien has helped my imagination. He was a devout Catholic — and I am not. However, because he brought his faith to bear into narrative, fiction, and literature, his Christianity — which was pretty ‘...