Psalm 12, Part 2: The Saint Fails, The Word Purifies
By Steven Paulson
01/16/26
18mins

Psalm 12, Part 2: The Saint Fails, The Word Purifies

God makes us pure saints by planting us back in the earth we imagined we needed to escape.
Psalm 12, Part 1: Set in Salvation
Steven Paulson
Steven Paulson
01/15/26

Psalm 12, Part 1: Set in Salvation

Salvation is not merely to be put in “safety” but to be put into Christ.
Welcome to My House
1517 Guest Contributor
1517 Guest Contributor
01/14/26

Welcome to My House

Bringing your family to church to receive “the one thing needful” (Luke 10:42) in Word and Sacrament honors and pleases God.

All Articles

Steve Byrnes
Steve Byrnes
04/17/14

Foot Washing on a Maundy Thursday

In the pageant of Easter Week, Maundy Thursday speaks about the last time Jesus ate with his Disciples and how He washed their feet in preparation for participating in the Passover meal (John 13).
Dan van Voorhis
Dan van Voorhis
04/15/14

The Gospel According to Tom Waits

Waits wants to pen the songs with beautiful melodies and lyrics dark as sin. Whatever his church background, he sings “the big print giveth, and the small print taketh away."
Chad Bird
Chad Bird
04/12/14

What Would You Want for Your Last Meal?

I am lord of all I eat. I lord it over meat, potatoes, pecan pie. I make those foods serve my body, transforming them into me. But it is not so with the meal of Jesus.
Chad Bird
Chad Bird
04/03/14

All Sins Are Forgiven, But Some Are More Forgiven Than Others

In this particular church, all sins are forgiven, but some sins are more forgiven than others.
Chad Bird
Chad Bird
04/02/14

I Haven’t Made Jesus My Personal Lord and Savior

I say I was dead before Jesus called me, but actually, I was worse off than that. Imagine a corpse who is at war with life, who is an enemy of the Life-giver. That was me.
Chad Bird
Chad Bird
03/27/14

Scandalous, Damnable Divine Love: Jonah Takes God to Task

I hoped like mad they’d spit in my face and laugh me all the way out of town. I wouldn’t have even cared if a mob of them had beat me to death in a back alley. But heavens no, I couldn’t be that lucky.
Chad Bird
Chad Bird
03/05/14

The Wife Who Gave Up: Mrs. Job’s Beautifully Untrue Words

Of all the words this woman ever spoke, these alone are chiseled forever into the stone of holy writ, and into the church’s memory. Mrs. Job becomes the patron saint of quick-tongued women.
Chad Bird
Chad Bird
02/24/14

Smut and Smug: Secret Religious Delight in Society’s Moral Degradation

I think the chief reason that a faction within me welcomes the disintegration of the American ethos is this: it makes me feel so much better about myself. The smut makes me quite smug.
Chad Bird
Chad Bird
02/19/14

Tripping Helen Keller

Why, given all the things we wish God had told us, but didn’t, does he “waste our time” by stating the patently obvious? Was there, in Moses’ day, an outbreak of violence against the disabled?
Chad Bird
Chad Bird
01/27/14

A Tale of Two Sodoms: The Difficulty of Escaping from Our Past

It shows the extent to which an environment of iniquity can seep into the souls of believers, transforming them from the inside out, so that even when they “flee to the mountains,” like Lot and his girls, they take Sodom with them.
Chad Bird
Chad Bird
01/03/14

Your Own Personal Jesus

Hell is just as happy with those who believe in a fake Jesus, as with those who believe in no Jesus at all. For there is no difference.
Chad Bird
Chad Bird
01/02/14

I've Spent the Better Part of My Life Trying to Kill a Man

If I had hated him even while a child, in his late teens I grew to loathe him as the very antithesis of the man I wanted to be.
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