Ministry will break you. It will break your self-reliance, your expectations, your emotional and mental balance, and it will break your heart, over and over again. And all of this is good. Ministry is never the making of you, if “you” is a successful, fruitful version of the sinner who started out in the pastorate.   ... Continue Reading

“Supported and animated by this love [for Christ], he [Paul] exerted himself to the utmost, in promoting the knowledge of Him whom he loved, and bearing testimony of His power and grace. Nothing could dishearted, or weary or terrify, or bribe him from his duty: and this must and will be universally the leading principle... Continue Reading

Heaven without Transformation I think there are two main misunderstandings people have of the central idea of reformation with which Luther and the Reformers started. The first is that justification is abstracted from the person of Christ. The problem there is that I might hear a message of salvation saying You can have righteousness and assume that... Continue Reading

“The American religious terrain, plowed deep by the soulful individualism of Ralph Waldo Emerson, was fertile soil for a high anthropology (which is to say, an optimistic theology of human capacity.) As many New Thought authors worked inside a Christian framework, they explored “salvation” not as an act imposed from above by God, but rather... Continue Reading

Since God’s triunity is bundled together with the gospel, it is the foundation of the spiritual life of every believer. The more you understand the deep structure of the spiritual reality you experience in Christ and the Spirit, the more you understand and are experiencing the deep things of God for us. If you think... Continue Reading

At the heart of this calling is the need to prepare a generation of Christians to think Christianly, to engage the academy and the culture, to serve society, and to renew the connection with the church and its mission. To do so, the breadth and the depth of the Christian tradition will need to be... Continue Reading

The message of “Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Cor. 2:2) is the greatest paradox in the history of the world. It defies all human wisdom. It is also the most profound, powerful and important truth in the world: it is “the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1 Cor. 1:24). The man... Continue Reading

We can find God everywhere, and if we do that, then all of reality becomes an invitation. Everything in reality from our family to our food to our hobbies to the natural world—all of it is God saying, Come, know me in very deep and real way, because you’ve known the things that I’ve made.  ... Continue Reading

  There are layers of themes that tie in this big story in a remarkable way. Some parts may have different emphases and different authors have different styles, and the story develops between the old and new covenants. But the story and details of the Bible are unified in amazing ways. The Bible tells one... Continue Reading

I want to say to anybody in any position of authority at church, the home, or the office: that’s your job. Be that rock, be that platform on which others stand. You use your top-down authority to get yourself in a bottom-up position. Authority is dangerous—more so than you think because it can kill. But,... Continue Reading