We can bring our troubles, griefs, sorrows, and sins to Jesus, who meets us smack dab in the middle of our messy mob.
Confession isn’t a detour in the liturgy. It’s the doorway.
American religion did not become optional because the gospel failed. It became optional because religion slowly redefined itself around usefulness.

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When the direction of preaching is dictated by the hashtag issues of the day, the pulpit becomes the perpetual servant of CNN and Fox News. The news and social media cycle, with its chameleonic alterations from this all-important issue (this week) to that next-all-important issue (next week), does not create a rhythmic dance for the church but a sort of frenzied whack-a-mole worship. Now smack your homiletical hand down on this…now that…now this…now that. We need something better.
If the world could have been saved by bookkeeping, it would have been saved by Moses, not Jesus. The law was just fine.
The lordship of sin and its reign have been deposed by Jesus Christ. Nothing can stand to oppose those who are in Him.
The enemy comes with his wounding, haunting words, and I stand behind my advocate Christ the Lord. He gives me more words, better words, truer words.
Silence is an important and valuable tool for change and empathy, self-reflection, and learning.
Christ is joy and sweetness to a broken heart. Christ is a lover of poor sinners, and such a lover that He gave Himself for us.
Unlike any mortal legal representative, our divine Attorney does not perform an inquiry to ensure our case is worth taking. He secures no retainer from us prior to advocating for our vindication.
We are meant to serve in love both our neighbor in need as well as the neighbor who doesn’t think they need us.
There is a time for justice. And there is a time for love. But love must always have the final word. Jesus must have the final word, because Jesus is God and God is Love.
When Revelation’s words read against their original context, old meaning and new meaning are simultaneously brought to light as language and imagery is translated from the Old Testament to the New.
We must also remember that our enemy is a creature of God. He is someone for whom Christ Jesus died. He is a sinner just like any other, no more or less selfish than us.
We are free to be in the world, but not of the world. We are freed to stop treating the pursuit of pleasure as an escape from pain, suffering, and death.