Feb 28, 2019
Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, (Matt. 28:19)
"How many do they worship?"
This question was asked of me by a representative from a neighboring church.
Feb 27, 2019
God is used to working with colorful figures. One of the most colorful in the Bible is Balaam. Hailing from Mesopotamia, Balaam was what we might call a shaman or a soothsayer. He was not a Hebrew. But he knew the God of the Hebrews, in addition to other purported deities he believed he could summon or charm.
Feb 26, 2019
What happens when Jesus is separated from the Gospel? He becomes an abstraction, free to be molded into any image or idea we want Him to take. No longer is He the God who loves us through concrete, verifiable ways in history. No longer is He the God who came down from heaven to die on a cross for our sins. No longer is...
Feb 25, 2019
It's difficult, even painful, for Christians to daily suffer the full weight of our past sin. Often our past drives us forward like a blind animal fleeing from the sound of the hunter. Wherever we go it's always there, our sin, made so brutally clear to us in hindsight, like a big ship's anchor chained to our foot....
Feb 22, 2019
Current approaches to discipleship tend to run along one or the other of two tracks. One type copies the neo-revivalist tactics of North American evangelicals. It anchors discipleship in a unique experience of God in worship and serves then as the basis for specific practices that move “nominal” members of the...