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We live in a time in which there are hyper-obsessions with how we describe ourselves and then how we label others.
The last couple of weeks have been a huge reminder to me that there is still more goodness in this world than bad.
It is always the transformation of the smallest part that leads to the transformation of the whole. 
We groan and cry out in this painful life experience together. 
The cold, hard fact is that there are prayers that God does not answer.
Who can stand before this cosmically-sized love without being completely transformed?
Either way, you will ultimately face then refiner’s fire.
The problem is that Hell is never once mentioned in the Bible.
When you are confronted with the reality of an undeserved kindness, it can be transformative.
The word wrath isn’t an unloading of God’s fury and rage on the unrepentant.
Should we pray for the president?
The judgment of God is simply giving a person what they have freely chosen.
We have only ever been alienated from God in our minds.
I was told that I needed to be saved from my sins so that I wouldn’t go to Hell when I die.
The most misunderstood word in all of Christianity.
The love of God is radically offensive to those who do not understand it.
But what if, in the midst of celebrating the peace of Christ through ritual and routine, we have actually neglected peace in our lives?
So what exactly is the good news?
There are many people who struggle to understand a God who unconditionally and preemptively forgives everyone.
The forgiveness of God is unconditional and preemptive.
Where O Light are you in this darkness?
You may not trust these words now, but there is hope in your pain and suffering.
'Love your enemies' ought to be sufficient.
The issue of arming our churches is now more relevant than ever.
Joy is an ever-present reality to which we open wide our souls to receive, but it is also a remembering and a longing.
God, I am done with you.
"Thoughts and prayers" are devoid of meaning, of value, of consequence, of participation, of action, of change.
We live in an age in which stimulation and consumption are all too normal in our lives.
All you have to do is walk outside and take a deep breath and accept the invitation.
The Good News of the Kingdom of God is not one of the many things.  It is the thing.
I'm not sure how to describe the feelings that go beyond heartbroken and devastated. Honest to God, I don't.
It is a very, very bizarre phenomenon. Despite clear and overwhelming evidence that Jesus wants his followers to be peacemakers, to love our enemies, and to not repay evil with evil, the vast majority of Christians in the United States are pro-capital punishment and pro-war.
An absolutely essential parable to the Church for this political season...
It is a sad reality how weak we are, how eagerly we consume what we are being fed, and how easily we allow our moral structures to fall.
The message of “your work only matters if thousands of people are reading it” began to unconsciously work it’s way into my head. And that’s a message that completely kills.
There has always been an overwhelming temptation for people of faith to fixate on and obsess over how we worship God, rather than focusing on how our worship ought to change us.
The truth is that we can very easily miss the fact that "life to the fullest" has been here all along... right in front of us... in everything we do... in every moment.
The most important thing I would tell students about living their faith at school is- live your faith without fear or embarrassment.
In private, I struggled with intense guilt, shame, and depression. I never talked about my abortion to anyone. Ever.
For even in the face of death, our own blood will cry out and give testimony.
I do not need any legislation to pronounce the freedom I already have, and will continue to have, despite my changing circumstance or situation.
The church of the future is around a table- breaking bread and taking the cup together. It is where we move from a personal, individualized faith to a place of shared, relational, and communal faith as a family.
In a single moment of indescribable beauty, the opposing forces embraced, heaven and earth collided, and it captured our hearts with the possibilities of how things really could be, not just one day in the distant future... but today.
There is no question that we live in an incredibly unique time in history in which there is a strange mass collision of shallowness, superficiality, competing narratives that try to explain our existence, and depersonalization wrought by technology, all accompanied by a growing disdain for spirituality, in general, and religion, in specific, from a hyper-rationalistic culture.
If death is the end toward which all life is moving... then why does anything in our lives matter at all? Why ascribe any purpose to it whatsoever? It is all death in the end anyway.
Sometimes we need the desert to find our hearts and souls... and to remember who we are and what our purpose is. And no matter the endless circles and varied pathways we take in this desert life, the point at which they all converge is at the cross. For it is when we come to the cross that we choose to no longer go our own way.
Will we ever find joy? Will love ever prevail instead of hate and violence? Will the longings of hope ever be realized into something?
We will not take part in continuing the endless cycle of death and destruction. Not with what we think. Not with what we say. Not with what we do.
We marry as a celebration, as a signpost, of how God takes two beautiful and unique individuals and brings them gloriously together as one.
If we aren’t living like Christ in the present, when times are relatively good, then we will never live like Christ when things get difficult.
One Sunday we showed up at our rented church building. Someone had spray painted a Nazi swastika on the front of the building.
I know who I am today and I know what role I play in this life because of my mother.
"This my body, given for you" is not simply a statement reminding us of what Jesus did, but a declaration of what his Body (the Church) will continue to do.
We live in a culture that does not stop, that does not rest, that does not breathe, and does not understand our desperate need for sacred space.
If we are God's ambassadors then we can't give up on even the most hard headed, hard hearted, stubborn mule of a person.
There is a beautiful word, an elegant descriptor, that has been maligned, tarnished, lampooned, distorted, and completely misunderstood.
Spiritual transformation is a process. It is a daily walk of letting go and receiving, of dying and coming to life, of being refined into something new.
If the Church is to be the embodiment of new creation, a sign post of God’s present reign in our lives, who will nurture and guide us along the way?
We must become people of the bottom; people who are below; people who are last; people who are in the back; people who are the least.
Our communities are in desperate need of people who love each other and seek out Truth in love and who can hear it without egos and attitudes.
There are so many positions, angles, self-interested ideologies, and half-truths surrounding us that we are not sure what truth is anymore.
The central purpose, the grand narrative, the over-arching achievement of God is to bring heaven and earth back together as one.
You are telling me that a disembodied, spiritual heaven is not the end? I am not sure that is something I can believe.
Our future hope does not involve us as disembodied spirits floating around in the sky.
We have erroneously viewed the Kingdom of Heaven as a disembodied future existence and destination for Christians.
Real thanksgiving is saying right now and right now and right now, “This is the very best life can offer and I want to fully embrace it.”
Not only can I not kill my enemy or have someone do it on my behalf or with my support, I can not even hate my enemy, or avenge the wrong he has done to me.
"You will be the servant and I will be the master," my oldest daughter declared to my youngest daughter as they played together the day before Christmas.
Our time would be better spent discussing how to demonstrate a greater love to the Muslims or how we can better serve them with our actions.
The sacrificial way of Jesus has been co-opted by the self-serving, consumer driven interests of cultural America.
When did we get so thin-skinned and so easily offended by everything that people say or do to us as Christians?
Every single time we take the humble and submissive way of Christ, it may look like defeat for you as an individual.
The Christian is confronted by the paradox of the Holy Scriptures when told to consider it pure joy when faced with all kinds of trials.
response to a cnn.com article: Americans switching faiths/dropping out  one of the things i have been thinking about lately is how we treat Church as the ends…rather than the means.  when we let our faith, our relationship with God, and even our emotions rise and fall based on “the event” on sunday…we have already taught people that […]