No son sus pecados los que crean una barrera entre él y su padre, es el orgullo que tiene en su buena conducta; no son sus malos actos, sino su rectitud la que le impide compartir el banquete con su p...
Many voices argue that it is exclusionary to claim that you have the truth, but as we have seen, that view itself sets up a dichotomy with you as the heroically tolerant and others as villainously or...
Jesus’s example and grace heals our will to power. The normal response to our sense of powerlessness is to deny it, to find people to dominate and control in order to live in that denial. But Jesus sh...
Jesus's sacrificial service to us has brought us into deep union with him and he with us. And that, Paul says, is the key not only to understanding marriage but to living it.
It is not surprising, then, that after children leave home, many marriages fall apart. Why? Because while the parents treated their relationship with their children as a covenant relationship—performi...
In this view of marriage, each person says to the other, I see all your flaws, imperfections, weaknesses, dependencies. But underneath them all I see growing the person God wants you to be. This is ra...
If the distance between the Earth and the sun—ninety-three million miles—was no more than the thickness of a sheet of paper, then the distance from the Earth to the nearest star would be a stack of pa...
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...
Haidt, for example, believes that Buddha and the Greeks took things too far.7 He argues that modern research shows some external circumstances do correlate with increased satisfaction. In particular,...
God does not love us because we are serviceable; He loves us simply because He loves us. This is the only kind of love we can ever be secure in, of course, since it is the only kind of love we cannot...
For example, if we ponder the very beginning of the Lord’s Prayer—Our Father—it could work like this: As instruction, it shows us that we cannot know God only on our own but must do so in community wi...
First, are you willing to obey anything the Bible clearly says to do, whether you like it or not? Second, are you willing to trust God in anything he sends into your life, whether you understand it or...
Do you want to know who you are, your strengths and weaknesses? Do you want to be a compassionate person who skillfully helps people who are hurting? Do you want to have such a profound trust in God t...
Christians have their attitude toward God changed from one of duty to free, loving self-giving because of what Jesus did for us on the cross.
God made you to love him supremely, but he lost you. He returned to get you back, but it took the cross to do it. He absorbed your darkness so that one day you can finally and dazzlingly become your t...
We can conclude that a professed Christian who is not committed to a life of generosity and justice toward the poor and marginalized is, at the very least, a living contradiction of the Gospel of Chri...
Pointing to these underlying realities. But Matthew’s Gospel refutes that by grounding Jesus in history, not once upon a time. He says this is no fairy tale. Jesus Christ is not one more lovely story...
Pastor replied, ‘What if God hasn’t given us a watertight argument, but rather a watertight person?’3 Jesus is saying ‘I am that person. Come to me. Look at who I am. Look at my cross. Look at my resu...
Malcontents praised least. The good critics found
When we use God's grace as a motivator, we can criticize sharply and directly, but the other person will generally be able to perceive that we are nonetheless for them.