Wisdom and strength require bootstrap-pulling and the placing of noses to grindstones.
“If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed” (John 8:36).
How do the words “The righteous shall live by his faith” go from a context of hope in hopelessness to the cornerstone declaration of the chief doctrine of the Christian faith?

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When we own up to our sin, our Father is not scandalized, and his response is not to reconsider his calling us.
There is perhaps no better observation about the nature of anxiety and depression than its fundamental desire for avoidance.
I may feel today that the Lord has not found me, but in fact he has – he is intimately acquainted with all my ways.
If God ever forgives you, it is not just allowing you to start over and try harder the second time, but it is a whole, new, complete justification that is given as a free gift and without any work of our own—outside the law.
The world we inhabit is wrong in so many ways, and a holistic approach to this “wrongness” traces its cause both to sin itself and to the effects of sin.
You might not know it, but every Christian hopes for the day when their faith will die. Really. I promise. Faith’s death is our celebration.
Christians do have a hope that those who sleep in death will be awakened and their joy will never end, and we yearn for that day.
God’s candle is not so easily extinguished. His promise is not some vague light at the end of the tunnel that we may or may not reach. In fact, God’s light has a name: Jesus Christ.
Isaiah speaks to our time. He speaks to our rejoicing now and an anticipated joy-filled future. Christ’s coming, Christmas, brings them both.
The early biblical stories about Bethlehem are dark and violent. They wreck us. They frighten us. In this little town, we see a microcosm of the vast and mangled mass of humanity, each individual thirsty for even a single bead of light to be dropped into the blackened depths of their souls. He who is born in Bethlehem is that Light.
There is no other transitionary event in human history that warrants three full months of focused attention and persistent acknowledgment than the incarnation of the Son of God.
A Sermon on Psalm 130:3–6.