While God can, and often does, appear to people face to face, he also often employs the use of several types of messengers.
The “further up and further in” we go, the table keeps getting bigger, the guest list keeps getting longer, and the grace keeps on flowing.
Christianity does not locate freedom in radical autonomy. It does not tell either men or women that happiness consists in escaping obligations arising from relationships we did not entirely choose.

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A seed grows the kingdom of God. A whisper eventually turns the world upside down. A carpenter’s son from nowhere becomes the Savior of everyone. Such is God’s way.
Today, we begin a short series profiling women in the Bible (Who are not named Ruth or Esther). Both the stories of Ruth and Esther are beautiful, gracious, and profound. We love reading and rereading them. However, in an attempt to bring attention to more stories of more women throughout the Scriptures, we choose now to shift our focus. Our first woman, is, the first woman herself: Eve.
The Second Edition of “The Christian Life: Cross or Glory?” by Steven Hein is now available from 1517 Publishing.
Despite his trust in empiricism, throughout his life, Locke never entirely let go of the inspired Scriptures—or perhaps more accurately, the Scriptures never let go of him.
The text gives beautiful imagery of the “waters of life” and how they will transform the dead and barren and bring new life.
To act according to a “theology of glory” that exalts in money and status at the cost of your brothers and sisters who are hurting or suffering in any way is to act in the opposite way of Christ.
Jesus does not remain at a distance from our suffering. He fully enters it and bears its burden.
For all mankind, the answer is terrifically simple and remains the same: God wants to turn us towards the cross and then turn us back to our neighbors.
Although God is always closer to us than the nose on our face, he has not taken the wraps off and given any sinful and mortal human being a full-measure, face-to-face meeting.
In writing City of God, Augustine sought to demonstrate that the events of 410 were but a glimpse of all history.
Calvary is our mountain of pardon. It is the place which reveals most definitively God’s plan to redeem and reconcile sinners to himself.
Our enemy is both external AND internal. Outside of us AND inside of us. It is the old evil foe who prowls around us AND the old Adam who wreaks havoc inside each of us.