Considering the church and not just my individual self as the temple of God (which many professing Christians do) emphasizes such things as the importance of being at worship, learning from others, serving together in the church, etc. Recognizing many of the epistles were written to congregations or to ministers serving them can help apply... Continue Reading

“To ensure the patient’s compliance, the doctor gave her coffee spiked with a sedative.” When that proved insufficient and the woman recoiled from the looming needle, he “asked family members to hold her down.” Finally, “After 15 minutes were spent by the doctor trying to find a vein, the lethal infusion flowed.”   Ideas have... Continue Reading

The matter is time itself. The time allotted. The days ordained. The life has been spanned, traversed with aplomb or angst, likely both, at different times or perhaps together. Life is not linear, never one act, the drama playing itself out on different stages, ourselves the actor on each, and the acted upon.   We... Continue Reading

When love is lacking, the message of the truth may be lost if our attitude, tone, and words are harsh. Does that mean we compromise the truth? Absolutely not! Pitting truth against love is a false dichotomy, for we need both and need not sacrifice one for the other. Graciousness is also more than just... Continue Reading

In the Bible, the tongue can be used for wisdom or for folly. Many of the Proverbs contrast a wise tongue and a destructive tongue. The question is, how does one gain wisdom and use the tongue for good? How do we use our words for healing and to bring life rather than death to... Continue Reading

There are approximately 60 million North American evangelicals—by contrast there are probably no more than about 500,000 confessionally Reformed Christians in North America. Virtually all of those evangelicals either assume or consciously confess some version of a Baptist account of redemptive history and some version of a Baptist view of the church and sacraments. Because... Continue Reading

“At the heart of worship is a sense of ‘giving yourself away’ to another.  Key to worship then are the questions ‘To whom are you giving yourself away and in what manner are you giving yourself?’ Genuine worship is giving yourself to the living God in whom and for whom you ave been created.  Idolatry... Continue Reading

The amended resolution softened the directions, “to utilize expansive language for God from the rich sources of feminine, masculine, and non-binary imagery for God found in Scripture and tradition and, when possible, to avoid the use of gendered pronouns for God.”   An Episcopal Church resolution calling upon the denomination’s General Convention to “avoid the use of... Continue Reading

The goal in studying this is being able to realize when you’re actively engaging in depression-anxiety. In the moments below, depression-anxiety is not “happening to you” but “coming from you.” These are patterns that, by the freedom God gives in the gospel, you can overcome.   Just as we can have bad physical habits like... Continue Reading

According to official LDS doctrine, Heavenly Father has not always been a god. He was once like us (some say he was a sinner, and some think he never sinned), but he followed a plan (just as we’re required to follow a plan) to reach godhood. He has a physical body as we do and is... Continue Reading