Perhaps, you’ve heard a preacher say, “Preach the Gospel; use words if necessary.” The quotation is attributed to Giovanni di Pietro di Bernardone, or, as he is more famously known, Saint Francis of Assisi (1181-1226). With the best intentions, pastors, missionaries,...
Doctrinal disagreements among “men of goodwill” are not uncommon. Fourth-grade country boys “duke-ing it out” in the schoolyard over unconditional election is appallingly real but mercifully rare (as rare as, say, once in two millennia). The author of the words you...
Perspective allows you to see farther than you can look. Take Apollo 8. The crew of William Anders, Frank Borman, and James Lovell were a hurry-up “dream-team” thrown together by a pressure-cooker NASA Leadership and a beleaguered US president named Lyndon Baines...
Why Partnerships[1] There is a discernible theology of partnership in the Word of God. The purpose of this article is not to list and evaluate every instance of “partnership,” “partner,” or “partaker” in the Holy Bible (a worthy undertaking that), but rather to...
Introduction to the Reading In between the memories of yesterday’s glory and the promises of tomorrow’s dreams lay storms. In yesterday’s memories are crowds gathering, lingering with family and friends on green grass, with the miracle of multiplied blessings. In...
Introduction What is the message we have to preach, but this? “The kingdom of heaven is at hand.” Recently I preached this core Christian message. It was recorded, and subsequently broadcast on several sites that ended up on the Internet. I often receive replies to...
C.S. Lewis said that science has the notes to the poem. But in the Bible, we have the poem itself. And the miracle of miracles for C.S. Lewis began with the Incarnation: God became Man. Yet, we can sometimes get hung up on the notes to the poem, particularly with the...
Sometimes I don’t recognize myself. I mean that. Walker Percy said that he wrote about the "dislocation of man in the modern age." Novels like The Moviegoer and The Last Gentleman demonstrate the existential hopelessness when culture is untethered from faith,...
The glory of “God with us” shines brightest when lit beneath the things most seemingly God-abandoned. That is why I love Advent. Advent has the power to turn over the inconceivable to discover the unimaginable. I especially love preaching Advent. No literary work...
“I thank God, whom I serve with a pure conscience, as my forefathers did, as without ceasing I remember you in my prayers night and day, greatly desiring to see you, being mindful of your tears, that I may be filled with joy, when I call to remembrance the genuine...