The greatest obstacle to friendship in middle age isn't that nobody wants friends. It's that everyone is waiting for someone else to go first. But here's the good news: Christ has already gone first for you. And because He has, you are free to go first for someone else.
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09/02/26
Ecclesiastes tells us that there is a time for everything under heaven. But God has also placed eternity in our hearts, and that makes us strange creatures: able to rejoice in this life yet always aching for a life that only Christ can give.
08/28/26
What does it take to draw near to God? It takes a perfect priest, a finished work, and a broken body to open the way. In short, it takes everything, which is exactly what Christ has given for you.
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10/22/18
The biblical response to suffering, to recognizing that things are not as they ought to be, is lament.
10/21/18
In the last two decades U.S. Americans have given way to fear of many things: economic decline, loss of values, limits on our personal rights, to name a few. Too many of us live with some sense of threat and menace hanging over our heads and haunting our hearts.
10/21/18
The Feast of the Reformation affords preachers a special opportunity to catechize on the doctrine of justification by faith. It is also a perfect week for us to read through Romans in full for our devotions. It is an opportunity to hear again those marvelous words of absolution and sins forgiven and to recognize a righteousness which is revealed apart from the Law (Rom. 3:21); our need for absolution must be very great.
10/21/18
So, in keeping with Mark’s focus on discipleship this Fall, your Reformation Sunday sermon on John 8 might reflect on what it means to be a disciple. As you proclaim the commands and promises of Christ, you might invite your hearers not only to believe his Word, but also to abide in it. To hear and mediate on his promises in the various ways he delivers them.
10/17/18
It is only when individuals are bound together in community that they become fully human.
10/16/18
Jesus’ forgiveness will not collapse. Jesus’ forgiveness will take us places our legs can’t take us.
10/14/18
Good communication depends on trust to make such conversation work effectively. The truth springs, first, from God's own promise and the punch put into that promise by the mysterious power of the Holy Spirit.
10/14/18
The “entering into His rest” of Hebrews 4:1 is paralleled with Jesus’ words in the Gospel for the day: “How difficult it is for those having riches to enter the kingdom of heaven.” Love of riches or material wealth certainly bars us from God’s kingdom and eternal rest. They weigh us down miserably. Israel’s idolatry, however, was not only about the love of money.
10/14/18
The heart of a sermon on this text, therefore, would be fairly basic. God alone graciously saves. We, in response, do what the rich man didn’t do. We follow Jesus humbly. As we do so, we cling to the promises of eternal restoration.
10/13/18
Here is a lament I’ve written especially for victims of hurricanes. May it be for you, for your family, or for your church, a way to put into prayer the anguish of your souls.
10/11/18
She said, “Keep coming back, and you’ll know joy.” He wanted to vomit a rainbow of resentment, bitterness, and loathing all over her faux-leather boots.
10/09/18
They say girls in our society should have nothing to worry about. They should have the opportunity for education and choices far beyond generations before.
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