We should not forsake wisdom and be reckless on mission. Paul himself occasionally fled. But in all our contemporary concern for mitigating risk and exercising caution, I believe it is possible that we have all clenched our lives and possessions too tightly. Instead of counting our lives as precious to himself, let us return to... Continue Reading

Like Augustine, we cannot understand time entirely. Nevertheless, we know that we are creatures made to exist in and through time. We can’t even fathom what it would mean to be strictly timeless. Yet there is One who is timeless—God. “From everlasting to everlasting you are God” (Ps. 90:2).     “What time is it?”... Continue Reading

Jeremiah does more than describe the symptoms of the fear of man, though. He also helps us understand what it really means to fear man. “Cursed is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh his strength, whose heart turns away from the Lord” (Jeremiah 17:5). The fear of man is not only fearing... Continue Reading

How is it possible to renounce God or not believe in His judgment?  As believers, we know that God sees, and will work justice.  On the one hand we know that Romans chapter one teaches us that fallen men suppress the truth.  On the other hand, as those whose eyes have been opened by the... Continue Reading

Paul commands us to “rejoice always” (Phil. 4:4, for example). We should understand “always” to mean “frequently,” and learn to find wisps of joy even in the midst of difficult circumstances. Our joy varies in intensity and pitch. This was true even in the life of Jesus. In Luke 10:21 we read, At that time Jesus, full... Continue Reading

One flaw of human nature is that we think we are right about almost everything. The Bible says, “Every man is right in his own eyes” (Proverbs 21:2). This insistence that we are right is rooted in pride, and it results in friction in marriage, in politics, between friends, family, and in the workplace. It was... Continue Reading

Lament cannot exist with self-sufficiency. The gospel of self-sufficiency says that I am enough, that I have within me what I need to endure and to fight back. It promises victory to whomever has the willpower to push through. Lament says the opposite: it boldly proclaims my weakness, my anguish, my inability to rescue myself.... Continue Reading

We get so fixated on the 10% that we fool ourselves into thinking God hasn’t spoken at all. He has, but we often aren’t putting ourselves in a posture to listen. We listen by doing the same old things we’ve always done – we read, we pray, we meditate, then we act on what we... Continue Reading

My dad was raised almost completely unchurched and I think he was getting at the dynamics I’m discussing here. He longed for his children to be raised knowing the word of God. True, we do not know when (or ultimately, if) the wind of the Spirit will blow and produce the miracle of the new... Continue Reading

Mobs often depend on general slogans, unspecified grievances, vague (if any) purposes for uniting, and little to no solutions for change other than destruction. They think with their rage, and many get caught in the tide. Something important seems to be happening — many seem to know why they gathered, so why not join? It... Continue Reading