Only if your God can say things that outrage you and make you struggle (as in a real friendship or marriage!) will you know that you have got hold of a real God and not a figment of your imagination....
On the one hand, we know that we have not because we ask not (James 4:2). There are many goods that God will not give us unless we honor him and make our hearts safe to receive them through prayer. Bu...
Obedience flows out of faith; it is a consequence of saving faith, not a second condition for salvation.
Notice that Paul says that the gospel’s power is boundless and boundaried at the same time. He says it is to everyone. It came to the Jew first, through Jesus, but it is for the Gentile as well—everyo...
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 evokes extreme reactions. Some are so furious with him they try to throw him off a cliff and kill him. Others are so terrified they cry out, Depart. . . . Get away from me!5 Others fall down bef...
Jesus did not merely weep for us; he died for us. Jonah went outside the city, hoping to witness its condemnation, but Jesus Christ went outside the city to die on a cross to accomplish its salvation.
Jesus declares not that he has come to reform religion but that he’s here to end religion and to replace it with himself.
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...
I am no longer my own, but thine. Put me to what thou wilt, rank me with whom thou wilt. Put me to doing, put me to suffering. Let me be employed for thee or laid aside for thee, exalted for thee or b...
He is both the rest and the storm, both the victim and the wielder of the flaming sword, and you must accept him or reject him on the basis of both. Either you’ll have to kill him or you’ll have to cr...
Habermas writes: The ideals of freedom . . . of conscience, human rights and democracy [are] the direct legacy of the Judaic ethic of justice and the Christian ethic of love. . . . To this day there i...
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...
Fear always haunts and then overwhelms you when you seek to save yourself, to earn your own sense of worth, and to construct your own identity.
Christmas shows us that Christianity is not good advice. It is good news. THE
Cheer up: You’re a worse sinner than you ever dared imagine, and you’re more loved than you ever dared hope. 1
Augustine concludes, pour out your heart’s desire, but remember the wisdom and goodness of God as you do so.
A focus on being good distracts us from coming to terms with our sin; and it is because of our sin that Christ needed to die.
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...
This is what a true elder brother would have done. He would have said, Father, my younger brother has been a fool, and now his life is in ruins. But I will go look for him and bring him home. And if t...