The God Who Relieves Every Burden
The imprecatory psalms are like release valves for hurting souls. Their stanzas are God-given spaces in which we can bear our soul’s torment.
Contributors
Brad Gray
Brad Gray is the senior pastor of Stonington Baptist Church in Paxinos, Pennsylvania (www.stoningtonbaptist.org), where he lives and serves with his wife Natalie, daughter Lydia, and son Braxton. He is currently pursuing an M.Div. from Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. He blogs regularly at graceupongrace.net and hosts a podcast, “Ministry Minded.”
Christ Hold Fast
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The Words That Fill the Halls of Our Churches
I write this as someone who’s genuinely concerned that American congregants are getting bamboozled by preachers who are giving them less than what they need Sunday after Sunday.
Nothing But the Blood
Your Christian faith is a bloody faith, and that ought not make you fearful or scared or embarrassed.
Jehoram, Jehoshaphat, and Jesus
The Word of Yahweh is not a trifling thing that can be visited only when it’s convenient. It’s a book of life, for all of life, that imparts life to those who believe in it and the God of it.
A Tale of Two Cities
The youths that mock Elisha are representative of Israel’s collective contempt and disregard for all things relating to their One True God.
The True and Better Naboth
When we — sinful, reprehensible we — become the enforcers of justice, we never bring about true justice. We either go too far or not far enough.
The Mystery of Faith
The Son of God is still God the Son in the Incarnation.
The Grace of Falling Up the Stairs
The essence of sin is man substituting himself for God, while the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for man.
Free Indeed
Jesus’s freedom is different. It isn’t meant to indicate that the moorings which tether men and women to what is true, beautiful, and holy are unfastened, liberating them to do anything they please.
A Visit with the Transfigured Voice
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.
The Mountainous Gospel of God
Calvary is our mountain of pardon. It is the place which reveals most definitively God’s plan to redeem and reconcile sinners to himself.
Never Tell Me the Odds: On the Implausible and Improbable Deliverance of God
God picks the unexpected and the unlikely, and goes to the unforeseen places, stacking the odds against himself, in order that age after age might stand in open-mouthed wonder at his sovereignty in and over all things.
Gentle and Lowly: A Reflection on the Love that Will Not Let Us Go
For sinners who cannot seem to get out of their own way, Dane brings to bear the gospel of Christ’s heart, which aerates one’s spiritual lungs with undiluted grace.
The Rock of Truth in the Storm of Fake News
The Psalms aren’t the clandestine successes of a faithful soul, but are the journaled hopes of a desperate soul — of one teetering on the edge of oblivion.
A Lamp in a Dark World
Through the often abominable and lamentable and occasional commendable season, there is one who remains unmoved by it all.
A Kingdom of Sheathed Swords and Severed Ears
But Jesus didn’t see it that way. He saw his arrest not as the kingdom’s program being thwarted but as it being “fulfilled.”
Come to the Waters of Repentance
Mankind’s “thoughts and ways” on the matter of pardon and forgiveness do not even come close to exhausting, let alone fathoming, God’s “thoughts and ways.”
The Gospel of a Fulfilled Law
Despite what the Pharisees believed and advertised, Jesus was not intent upon deconstructing the fundamental tenets of the Old Testament law. Actually, he proceeds to do just the opposite.
Answering the Universal Inquiry of Humanity
Everyone is living as a naked sufferer who’s been duped into believing that the nakedness of suffering has to be covered up.
The Religion of the Sacred Cow
If you and I were to examine our own lives, we’d likely have to admit that we are frequent disciples of Jeroboam’s “bootleg religion.”
A King Greater Than Solomon and a Place Better Than the Temple
You and I have a God who pardons all our wrongdoing by taking all of them onto himself. He doesn’t zap us into oblivion at the first sign of rebellion.
Now I lay me down to sleep
What is it, though, that makes bedtime so fraught with anxiety?
It’s All Part of the Plan
God always keeps his promises even if/when we don’t. God is always faithful even if/when we aren’t.
The Receiver of Wrecks
Jesus’s touch of this leper is the touchstone of the gospel itself. It’s a living parable of his entire ministry.
Who Can Erase Diamond-Point Sins?
If sin is only a matter of “doing,” then “undoing” and/or “redoing” would serve as the equivalent savior necessary to find redemption.