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...
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.
When Christian believers care more for their own interests and security than for the good and salvation of other races and ethnicities, they are sinning like Jonah. If they value the economic and mili...
What’s the story line of the culture in which I live and the field where I work? Who are the protagonists and antagonists? • What are the underlying assumptions about meaning, morality, origin, and de...
We humans may say, Let there be light in this room, but then we have to flick a switch or light a candle. Our words need deeds to back them up and can fail to achieve their purposes. God’s words, howe...
Ultimately, the gospel is offensive because the cross stands against all schemes of self-salvation.
To experience the joy and freedom of love, you must give up your personal autonomy.
Thomas Goodwin, a seventeenth-century Puritan pastor, wrote that one day he saw a father and son walking along the street. Suddenly the father swept the son up into his arms and hugged him and kissed...
This, too, is part of God’s plan for what our work should be about, and what it would still be about if we had not experienced the fall, which marred everything including our labor.
This shows us that the good God always is working for us is character change. He is making us as loving, noble, true, wise, strong, good, joyful and kind as Jesus is.
This is an enormous claim, but there is a certain logic to it. One of the most recent people to note this logic is Bono, the lead singer of U2, in a conversation with Michka Assayas: Assayas: Christ h...
There is ultimately no such thing as unanswered prayer. If the answer at first is no or not yet, it is because he gives us what we want in ways better than we asked.
Then the Bible says that human beings were made in God's image. That means, among other things, that we were created to worship and live for God's glory, not our own. We were made to serve God and oth...
The reason marriage is so painful and wonderful is because it is a reflection of the gospel, which is painful and wonderful at once. The gospel is this: We are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than...
The effects of sin touch all of creation; no created thing is in principle untouched by the corrosive effects of the fall.
The classic Old Testament example of these two ways to run from God is right here in the book of Jonah. Jonah takes turns acting as both the younger brother and the older brother. In the first two cha...
The amazing truth is that God works through sinners, and through sinful situations. He keeps his promises to bless his people in the dark and disastrous periods of our lives, as well as through the ti...
The Gospel, because it is a true story, means all the best stories will be proved, in the ultimate sense, true. THE
Si nuestro valor viene de la aprobación de los compañeros, o del dinero en el banco, o de nuestra reputación por el éxito, entonces estas cosas son nuestros tesoros. No obstante, Jesús señalaba con ra...